Watch the London 2012 Opening Ceremony

On Friday night, the London 2012 Opening Ceremony officially opened the Olympic Games. Directed by Oscar-winning film director Danny Boyle, the ceremony was both spectacular and very clearly British at the same time.

It was based loosely on the Shakespeare play The Tempest and charted Britain's history, right from rural greenery, to the industrial revolution, to World War I, to the Beatles to modern day Britain. It climaxed with a stunning lighting of the Olympic cauldron. Seven young Olympic British hopefuls were handed torches by current Olympians and they each lit one of 204 separate 'petals'. These all slowly caught fire and rose up to create one huge flame. Watch the stunning footage here.

Instead of us simply describing the ceremony to you, you can watch it for yourself in its entirety on the BBC website here. One particular highlight was an amazing scene when James Bond met a very special person at Buckingham Palace. You can watch it below.  

One of the ForeignStudents.com members of staff was lucky enough to go to the final rehearsal of the Opening Ceremony. He filmed this great footage of a Mexican wave from inside the stadium:

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