Our Embassy is Lame

Which really shouldn't be too surprising. Okay, so there were people checking off names as we walked in and looking at ID, though my one friend forgot his photo ID (though I'd reminded them all about 12 times) and the woman at the door looked at me (as the Canadian in my group) and said if I vouched for him, he could just go in!! And while we did have metal detectors they were set up in such a way that there was about 10 feet on the one side where you could just walk around them and get in. In fact, the way we entered we had to go back through this gap to get to the main party room. No wonder Americans think all their terrorists come across our borders.

The main party room looked like a high school gym. It felt like a high school gym and pretty much smelled like a senior prom. Bob Rae was there though! Fun. I announced to my friends "Bob Rae's here!" and of course they looked at me blankly. A couple of other people looked vaguely familiar but I couldn't place them. There were 3 rooms where you could watch the game - what seemed to be the staff cafeteria where most of the families were, the gym area which was the biggest room and certainly the youngest crowd, and then the theatre in the basement. We rotated between them for most of the night. And I was told off twice for using my cell phone (I was just reading a text message!) and I thought, it's a hockey game, not a prime ministerial address of some sort! And maybe they should actually pay attention to whose coming in the front doors instead harassing me for looking at my phone...

I'm almost too embarrassed to talk about the food. At first it was okay - mini-hamburgers and your basic veggie platter, boring but fine. Then there were some little quiches (yummy). Then it got weird - deep fried salmon cubes. Yes, cubes. Obviously I didn't have these - apparently they were pretty revolting. But the best was at the end of the night when they brought out platters of pizza buns. Yup, the leftover hamburger buns with tomato sauce and shredded cheese! Not even baked or toasted or anything. I should have taken a picture, but I was too horrified. Like did someone's mom from Saskatchewan cater this thing?

Of course we also lost the hockey game which sucked. I was stunned by the numbers cheering for the US. I suppose everyone had brought Americans with them, but I had instructed mine that they had to cheer for Canada! And they tried to at least. I thought it was a bit arrogant to yell and scream and jump up and down in someone else's Embassy...

Anyway, I'm glad to have seen the place but wow, I can't imagine how bad our other embassies are if this one is anything to go by. As I'm assuming our best people are in DC...

Meanwhile, I let my friend Joel model my Olympic mitts as you will see below...