Go Canada!

I am a bit of an Olympic nut. I love the Olympics - especially the Winter Games. There are so many incredible sports and I love the spirit of the Games, the challenge, the heart warming triumphs, the scandals and the victories. I LOVE the Olympics.

I missed the Turin Games in 2006. I was living in South Africa at the time, and really who in South Africa cares at all about the Winter Games? So there was no coverage on TV and with very limited internet access I could only keep a loose count of medals. So in my mind 2002 was the last Winter Olympics. In my mind Canada still has gold in both Women's and Men's Hockey. I like it better in my mind :)

So given how much I love the Olympics you can imagine how frustrated I was to be working last night during the opening ceremonies. I love watching the different teams coming in, critiquing and commenting on outfits. I love seeing what the host country puts together to showcase their cultures to the world. So I was a little annoyed to be working at the coffee shop last night. It actually turned out to be a lot of fun. We had permission to turn off the music and turn up the volumn on the TV. My coworker Sarah and I did most of the cleaning during the official speeches and other boring parts. We served several people during the pagentry, although I caught the whales and the tap dancing with the flaming feet among other peices. It was really cool! :) We had several customers who had come into the cafe to study or to hang out who ended up staying and just watching the opening ceremonies with us. There were people cheering and applauding when the Canadian team walked in. There was comments and fun conversation about the singing and dancing - a bunch of strangers hung out for the evening and enjoyed the spirit of the games together for the evening. We let them all stay until the flame was lit even though we techinically closed before that happened. All of that and Sarah and I still got everything done and closed in a very reasonable amount of time.

Now the Games are officially on and I will be spending most of the next two weeks watching and following the different events. I am especially looking forward to speed skating, figure skating, skiing and of course hockey! GO TEAM CANADA!!