Hora, in blog format

Canucks @ Ducks highlights - my friends and I on TV!

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Češi! Češi!

Ever since having picked the Czech Republic as our exchange destination, Shawn and I were excited to attend a hockey game in Prague. The first week we got here we mostly just explored and took in the sights, but starting with last week I becamse serious about finding tickets to a hockey game. I found out that Prague has two teams in the Czech O2 Extraliga, HC Sparta Praha and HC Slavia Praha. Slavia were the champions last year, and Sparta the two years before that, and I decided that I wanted to go see Slavia because they're higher in the standings and they play in the brand new O2 Arena (where the NHL debuted this season). So I began to look for tickets, and I found out that they're nearing the end of their season, but more importantly I found that the Czech Republic, Finland, Sweden and Russia are playing a mini-tournament (the LG Euro Hockey Tour), and that the first game of the series was being played in Prague! The game was Finland vs the Czech Republic, and I thought Jagr was going to be playing. All the newspapers had his face on the cover and mentioned Finland, and the Euro Hockey Tour, but it turns out that they all said he was sick and wasn't going to play against Finland... Yesterday was the day of the game and online ticket sales had already ended, so Shawn, three Americans (Kevin, Greg and Brandon) and I went to the arena to just buy tickets at the box office, but they were sold out. A scalper came up to us and offered us 5 lower bowl seats, row 20 behind the net, for 1500 CZK ($200 CAD). We decided that was a little pricy (or rather Brandon did, he was sure we could find cheaper tickets) so we walked around for a bit to see what we could find. Shawn and I were very nervous because we didn't want to miss out on the game, so we went back about half an hour later, and we told him we'd do 1000 CZK for the 5 seats. He agreed! That means we each paid about $13 CAD for lower bowl seats, 20th row behind the net, to watch an international game! Face value was just $2 cheaper too, that was the worst scalper ever. Before I go on to talk about the game, I want to say that I was really sketched out going into the arena because they wouldn't let me bring my camera in, and I had to check it in with them. I was worried that was just a scam to get my camera, and I argued for a good little while trying to get in with my camera but security there is much tighter than at GM Place (they even have metal detectors, and they scan everyone coming in twice), so in the end I went to check it in. I noticed that they already had a lot of other backpacks and bags, and a lot of Czech people were there checking in their stuff, so I took the risk and gave them my camera. In the end that turned out to be OK - this country is a lot less sketchy than I had thought. The arena was impressive. It was huge and everything was modern and up to date, they had all sorts of fairly cheap food (their food stands were called: Potato Land, Ice Land (Ice cream stuff), Hamburger, and Hot Dog). I had a Czech sausage and a beer for $5, which is over priced for the rest of the city but dirt cheap in comparison to GM Place. The game was a lot of fun! The teams were evenly matched for most of the game, although Finland seemed to have more players who played in the NHL at one point. Notable players were Sami and Niko Kapanen, Radim Vrbata and Petr Cajanek. The crowd was also very into the game, and everybody seemed to have a really good time even though the final score was 5 - 3 for Finland. A bit of a weird cultural shock was that the fans here don't boo; where we would boo in North America, they whistle! And it's a lot more annoying, hearing 20,000 people whistle made my head want to explode. They also chanted "Češi! Češi!" a lot, which I imagine means go Czechs or something similar. What was really funny was that they had this thing called 'Kiss Me', kinda like the KissCam at GM Place where they try to get couples to kiss. What was funny was that they'd give you a thumbs up or thumbs down based on the quality of the kiss, and they also kept trying to get girls to kiss (none of them did). Another hilarious thing was that they filmed girls with lots of cleavage and they had this road sign indicating bumps ahead displayed next to them, it was pretty embarrassing for them but funny for the rest of us. Also, at the end of the game the officials picked the best player from each team (Cajanek and Niko Kapanen), and as a prize they got a mini-keg of beer! It was funny, they'd skate up to shake hands and collect their keg. I'll post a link to Shawn's pictures when he puts them up on Facebook, so you can also see what it looked like, so check back later!

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Your 2008 Sofa Kings!

Thanks to Andy's photoshop skills, even Shawn and Travis are in the picture!

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Copper

If you've been reading my last couple of posts, you know that I don't do this very often, and that my posts tend to be an aggregate of a whole bunch of different topics. I need to stay on track and post more often, maybe now that school is over I'll have a bit more time. That brings me to my first topic: I'm done school! Finally, ugh, that was a brutal semester. I thought three classes would be a breeze, but it turns out that one class with an insane work load (CMPT 275) and two math classes (MATH 232 and MACM 201) at the same time is marginally more fun than smashing your fingers in with a hammer. At least now I've got the worst class in the Computing Science degree out of the way, and I'm down to just one more math class. Plus, I somehow managed to do really well in the two classes I've seen my final mark for, and those are the ones I thought I'd do worst in too... Anyway, I wanted to talk about the start of the Sofa Kings' second season in the VIHL! We won the Iron Championship last season, but that was in the least skilled tier. This season we registerd for Brass, which is one level higher, and either because we're really good or because our opponents really suck this year, we blew them out of the water. Our first game ended 13-3 or something like that, and the second 11-2. We played really well, everyone did. Our goalies were solid in both outings, and we kept the play generally in the other team's end. Not only did we score a lot, but we also shut the other teams down very well defensively. As a result, we're now in Copper! Yes, that's one level above Brass, so basically we're two levels higher than last season! I'm pretty excited. I'm looking forward to the challenge Copper will offer us, and even though I'm probably not going to be very good, it'll be really fun and a lot more rewarding when we win. We wrapped up our exhibition last week, and the regular season should start near the end of April or early May. I can't wait!

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