Sunday, October 12th, 2014

I got up once during the night at 2am.  I took the Passion Flower drops but still had difficulty getting back to sleep.  While lying there I was thinking about a cheaper way to get my Chicago Bears games on TV.  Maybe I can hook the HDMI cable from my laptop to the TV, use an IP changer to change my location to Chicago, access Chicago TV using something – is there a Comcast Online – so I can get just my Bears games.  I remember Patrick at his bar mentioning something about having Slingbox in his home in Arizona so that is something else I can explore.  After quite some time I finally fell back asleep and woke up at 7:20.  Teresa got up right away and I got up 30 minutes later.  I had a quick breakfast of arepa de chocolo, arepa with butter and hot chocolate.

I understood she wanted to go to mass in Amaga and if there was time available we would buy some groceries.  She wanted me to look nice so she picked out a long sleeve shirt.  I went along with it because the last few days have been quite cool and we aren’t going into the warmer weather of Medellin.

We left the finca at 9:05, I contributed 4 sprays to the killer dogs, and we waited 5 minutes for the bus to Amaga.  The fare was only 2mil each.  It is a small town a 20 minute bus ride away including one stop at a toll booth.  Amaga is on the side of the hill and has a smaller than usual town square but it has the usual church at one end with small stores surrounding it.

As soon as we hit the steps of the church Teresa asked someone about mass.  I understood something about a children’s mass.  We looked down the steps and saw a hearse so I guess there was also a funeral planned.  

We walked to the other end of the town square where we found a vegetable store where we bought 2 bags of vegetables for 14mil.  By 9:50 we carried them back to the church and sat on the steps just inside the door.  It was nice and cool sitting on the stone steps.  The church was pretty packed and I understood this was a mass for children.  We could easily hear one little girl singing louder than the others and she made up for her lack of skill with her enthusiasm.  We left at 10:45 and stopped at a grocery store where we bought 2 more bags of groceries for about 40mil.  Teresa told me that food is even cheaper in Amaga than in Caldas.  She promised me that we weren’t going to have to lug bags of food around all the time; once a month we will go to Caldas to buy most of our food and bring it back in a taxi.

We walked to the bus stop where at first we got on the wrong bus.  When we got on the right one it felt as hot as an oven.  With help from another man we managed to open a couple of windows where we were sitting in the back.  After about a 10-15 minute wait we were finally under way.

I only needed 1 spray this time to deter the Doberman.

We got to the finca right at game time and I was happy to finally get out of my long sleeved shirt.  I went through the Direct TV NFL channels (687-696) and there were 8 games (2 channels not available) but not my Bears game.  I checked through all the sports channels and found one more game on FXS2 (channel 608) which is probably Fox Sports 2 but it still wasn’t the Bears game.  Teresa started making calls to Direct TV as I went through the channels again.  I tried doing the arithmetic: 36 teams, 18 games, 1 (or is it 2 now) on Monday night, 1 (or is it 2 now) on Thursday night, 1 (or 2) on Sunday night, and maybe there aren’t enough channels for all the games.  I was watching the scores at the bottom of the screen and I never saw one for the Bears at Atlanta game.  I started thinking maybe this game got changed due to Flexible Scheduling but I didn’t think it started this early in the season.  Not having an internet connection I couldn’t check online.  I checked the schedule I had printed out and laminated and I saw that FS started last week.  Someone called Teresa back and I understood the game was on later on the same channel as the Packers game.  I checked the guide and scrolled to the right where I saw the Bears game starts at 3:30.

Teresa made a nice lunch of chicken leg & wing with rice, cole slaw (although I wasn’t crazy about her choice of “dressing”) and juice.

She then took a nap from 2:15 to 3:00.

The game started at 3:25 but there was no sound.  Nothing.  About 20 minutes later the sound returned but it only lasted for about a minute.  Teresa made popcorn and she took the bottle of Pepsi I bought earlier out of the freezer and it was partially frozen.  Finally, 30 minutes into the game the sound came on for good.  

Since this is my first Direct TV game I’ll mention some unusual things.  The play by play and commentary is sometimes in Spanish and sometimes in English and whenever there is a stoppage of play, where you would normally see a commercial, instead there are just the words NFL Sunday Ticket displayed on a blue background with some obnoxious “music”.  I’d much rather see the American commercials.

At halftime the Bears were ahead 13-3.

Teresa made more popcorn only this time she said it was all for me.

The final was Chicago Bears 27 Atlanta Falcons 13.

There must be some way I can get a more American broadcast of Bears games.

We went to bed at 10pm.

T-shirt of the day: Zumba – join the party.