The blatent patriotism that canada demonstrated while they held the olympics was astounding.. i've said for quite a while that i appreciate canada more when i am not actually in the country.. although by the looks of it, i'm missing out on one hell of a party..
i had a very hard time watching the olympics this year... i came out with the idea i would download all the team canada men's games,and watch the rest streamed off CTV.. well when i arrived for the first two weeks i had no internet...that messed up the downloading plan.. and apparently CTV won't allow their stream of the olympics to be viewed internationally.. it was quite the blow.. I was only able to watch events in korean..
i've been asked a couple times about the figure skater.. and the answer to whatever your questions are is.. YES... that woman is revered here as a goddess...she is everywhere.. commercials.. newspapers.. magazines.. i haven't really seen any bilboards. but i'm sure she's on them too.. Korean's have tv's in their cell phones.. you see people with these little antenae's coming out of them while they silently ride the subway.. well when the short program was on.. that was playing in my classroom.. the korean teachers and one of my bosses huddled around this little tv.. every jump they would hold their breathe...only to vibrantly cheer upon her landing.. and its a jump.. so it took a second.. but there was an obvious process at work there....
As for the men's gold medal game.. it was the only hockey game i was able to watch live.. the game started at 5am in korea.. talk about a pain.. SO the plan was to go to itaewan and head to canadian bar...aptly named rocky mountain tavern... at around 10pm.. a whole 7 hours before the game started.. and try not to get too drunk that we would forget the game..
Well i can tell you that we succeeded.. we arrived at the bar around 10pm.. it didn't really start getting packed till about 2 or 3am.. Gill and i made a pact.. NO shots, NO chugging, and pace ourselves.. We both made it, although both with the aid of energy drinks.. The game however.. HORRIBLE.. the bar was using an internet feed.. the first 6 minutes or so you couldn't see because it lagged so much.. we then got kicked off the feed for the next couple minutes of the game.. i'd love to say i blacked out and missed it.. NOPE.. the bar blacked out, and made me miss it.. once the bar got a feed that didn't lag or kick us out.. good luck reading any of the names on the jerseys.. and to be truthfull you were mostly guessing where the puck was.. I SWEAR none of that was because of drinking.. i was a good boy remember...
The bar was about 75% canadian i'd say. 24% of arrogant americans (bastards)... and the remaining 1% didn't care (yet stayed in the bar till then anyways..)there was one in my group.. she got so tired of telling people she didn't care who won.. that she had 'i don't care' written on her face in red eyeliner.. neutrality has never before been so aggressive..
'the goal'... much like the interviews with sidney crosby... i never saw the puck go in (see above paragraph if you can't connect the dots).. i simply heard people screaming.. i then screamed.. jumped up and down like a 4 year old and hugged everyone in my vacinity wearing the maple leaf.. screaming 'we won..we won..we won'.. the atmosphere was electric.. that game created a moment for all canadians to remember.. mine will not be any different, although just a different soil under my feet..
i finally managed to leave the bar about 11 hours after i got there.. i fell asleep on the subway and missed my stop...i managed about four hours of sleep that day...
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