On Wednesday, I went out for a couple beers, something I haven't done on a Wednesday night since... well, probably since I've been in Colombia. I went because there's a bar that I like that supposedly has live music on Wednesdays, and I was hoping in the back of my mind that it was an open-mic sort of situation and I could get up there and entertain the crowd by speaking self-deprecatingly terrible Spanish, regardless of whether they liked the songs or not.
The music didn't happen - apparently it's going to happen Friday, so this is just another example of "Colombia Time", when things start extremely late, sometimes days late - but the other reason I went out was because it was the quarter-finals in the Olympic hockey tournament, and I thought maybe the bar would get the right channel. Turns out they did! So my friend José and I sat down with a couple of Hoogardens (yeah, this is a very different bar from the usual places around here) and watched the 3rd period.
Our waiter, who was the guy who spent about 10 minutes trying to find the right channel, was great. Really friendly, constantly making jokes which I sometimes understood, and one of those people who physically can't stop smiling. After explaining how important the hockey tournament is to Canadians (comparing to Colombia playing in the World Cup really drove the point home), he disappeared into the back of the bar and returned with a placemat which was, yes, a Canadian flag. I was ecstatic, obviously. (He also pointed out the 2 "Canadian" dishes on the menu - this menu specifies the origins of each of its dishes - Canada is apparently home of the Turkey Sandwich (okay, I guess) and the "Picnic Sandwich" (what?). I told him that the picnic sandwich doesn't actually exist, which he thought was hilarious.)
Anyway, the game was 7-3 when we arrived, and 7-3 when the 3rd period ended. It's too bad we didn't see any goals, but Canada won, so I'm not complaining. Of course, nobody else in the bar was watching (except our waiter, whose interest had apparently been sparked by this Crazy Canuck, and every time I looked over he was fixed on the game, likely having no idea what was going on), but José and I had a good little celebration at the end.
The game put me in a great mood (that, or the beer), and on the walk home I decided that tomorrow in class I'm going to enlist my kids into making Maple Leafs to plaster all over the place. Semis on Friday, Finals (fingers crossed) on Sunday. And I now have a place to watch it. Can't wait.
Aside: José, whose English isn't very good, was telling me a story about some girl from Turkey who added him on Facebook. I don't remember his exact wording, but it was something like: "so a girl added me on my face".
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