Well...that was an experience....

     At 5:45 we heard the crunch, crunch of footsteps coming up to our front door. It was our next door neighbour and his son. "So I have this program on my computer that I downloaded when we were in Entebbe that allows us to watch the Olympic hockey games and since it is the women's final tonight with Canada and the USA we were wondering if you wanted to watch it with us."

     Our eyes lit up...we had been scheming for a long time about how to watch this game!

     We decided that at 8 Uncle Brendan and Aunt Sarah Joy would come over to our house and we would try and watch the game on the internet.

     Eight rolled around and we looked on the Sochi website for the minute-to-minute updates. John kept us up to date with the penalties and shots on goal while we waited for Uncle Brendan and Aunt Sarah Joy to come with their computer. They came with cookies, popcorn and the computer and we eagerly set it up and tried to find the website. The dreaded "Internet Explorer cannot display the webpage" came up and we tried again and again! Finally we got to the site and tried to stream it live but it didn't work. We all sighed as we realized that we may not be able to watch the game.

     My dad then asked "Did you call that theatre in Kiwoko? They have satellite TV so there is a chance they could have it. Do you have their phone number?"


     Uncle Brendan had the phone number of the man who ran the theatre and called him up "Are you busy tonight? Could we come and watch something at your place?"  Uncle Brendan gave us a look that said oh this is a good sign. Then he asked “Can you check to see if you have a Sports Channel that is showing women playing ICE HOCKEY? They play with sticks and a puck and two goals and they play on ice….You know? It is in the Winter Olympics and it is happening right now…yes you can check and I will call you back soon. Yes thanks”

     While we waited we looked up on DSTV what was on the sports channels that the theatre had and found out that yes, there was the women's gold medal game on! We quickly called the man back and he said "Come on over!"

     So we grabbed the cookies and popcorn, hopped in the Hollingsworth's car and headed down the dirt road to Kiwoko. Once there, we drove off the main road onto and side road down a road and turned into a driveway with metal gates guarding the parking lot. We parked and walked inside a brick building. The benches with a few lawn chairs scattered around filled the long room with a dirt floor.  We sat down on the lawn chairs and we watched the live hockey game on a big screen on the wall. We were the only ones there except for the odd person who would sit down for a few minutes and see what the crazy "muzungus" were watching. 

     My mom and John both wrote about the actual game, so you can read about it on their blogs but it was an amazing game to go to and I'm very glad I went! We had all given up on winning but in the end they won and it was amazing!! Needless to say, the next few days I had a very sore throat!

 

It was a very strange thing, watching live hockey on a satellite TV, in hot weather, in the bush of Uganda!