Olympic Size Woes

This is terrible. The hardest thing so far about South Africa is not being able to watch the Olympics. For many of you this would not be such a big deal, but I live for the Olympics. Every time they come around I start getting excited months in advance and obsess over them for 2 weeks. Last summer Olympics I went Beijing time for 2 weeks, sleeping during the day and staying up all night to make sure I saw everything live. Here the winter Olympics are not that big of a deal. Winter sports aren’t really South Africa’s thing and they only have 2 competing athletes. There are 15-30 minute recaps of the previous day’s events on TV, but it’s not the same and TV isn’t always accessible. Internet is the most annoying because every time you find a website with live events it tells you that you must be in a certain country in order to watch it.

However this hasn’t be good enough reason for Pablo and me to not obsess over the Olympics. He is constantly updating the results online and we will sit and watch people’s names and their flags alternate on a list. He, although a Mexican citizen, pretends to be from Norway or Sweden when rooting during events. It was horrible missing out on the big US hockey win over Canada, but I have mixed feelings over it anyways. Although I’m a USA hockey supporter, I have a soft spot for Canada because it means more to them and I hate seeing Brodeur lose. This is extremely disheartening because with his pull from net I fear that his legacy may have been affected, but at least I can now root for the US without having this fear. We refuse to miss the gold medal game and will hopefully be watching the US and Canada meeting for a rematch this coming Sunday.




Winter sports aren’t really of interest here, especially since its summer. This country is obsessed with other sports as those of you who have seen Invictus may know; the black people love football, the whites love rugby, and they both agree on cricket coming in behind them. This has been interesting getting to know some different sports while being here. I got a season pass to the rugby game and have gone to the 2 home games that they have had. These have been pretty cool experiences because they are the best college team in the country by far. The first game they won 72-0 and gave much to celebrate about. Although I’m not that into rugby, I tried to cheer and enjoy it like I was. Cricket has been an interest to me since I have come here and although I’ve only watch some on TV and had limited firsthand experience during recess at Lynedoch, I think I’ve gotten to understand it. It is actually very similar to baseball and yet still very different. One night I expressed my lack of knowledge to a South African and got an hour lesson on the rules of cricket and he even gave me a book on it. It makes a lot more sense when you see it played rather than drawn on a napkin.
















In conclusion, please people appreciate the massive amounts of coverage that you get because me and Pablo would kill to just be able to see some biathlon or speed skating! I can’t believe Sven blew it as much as that reporter who asked him who he was!