I have no problem admitting that I don't fully understand the full rule book of hockey and can likely count on one hand the number of hockey games I have watched live, in their entirety. I am also fine with admitting that until approximately a week ago, I didn't know (or care, really) who Sidney Crosby is. And while I had high hopes that Canada would win the gold on our own turf, I was skeptical after the ass-kicking we endured last week.

Well.

Wasn't that just the best game ever?

We took our red mitts over to a friends house and enjoyed the game with 3 fellow Canadians, 4 Americans and a British friend who proclaimed herself the Switzerland of the occasion, for obvious reasons. We drank Portugese beer, ate hummus and listened to the wind rushing through the palms outside as we watched the NBC broadcast (our only option) of the game. We figured out fairly quickly that there is a 5 minute delay on the NBC broadcast, because the pub up the street with satellite TV would suddenly go crazy with cheering so loud that we could hear it inside the house, and then we'd be in agony until our broadcast caught up and we could figure out who scored.

It was a tense situation with our crowd being split down the middle and the game being...well, intense. I felt like I was going to vomit through most of it. Sometimes I covered my eyes because I couldn't watch. It was just SO EXCITING. Every minute. And especially those overtime minutes.

Watching our flag raised and hearing our anthem sung by the crowd made me tear up, just a bit. I'm sure I wasn't the only one. Actually, I looked around the room and realized that I wasn't. I can't even imagine what it would have been like to have been there.

To my home and native land, yesterday left me with a glowing heart, for sure.