GO DAWGS!!

Last night I got to watch the Georgia game!!! And it wasn't just any Georgia game - it was FLORIDA. And we WON!!!!!

Friday night I went to the "American Bar" to ask if there was any possibility that they would show the game - they subscribe to an American sports channel via satellite, so seeing as it was a 3:30 CBS game, I asked if it was on this channel. Sure enough it was, so they told me if I came on Saturday they'd turn the game on!

So of course I came on Saturday. All decked out in Georgia stuff, with my friend Jordan (from Clemson) for company, we parked ourselves in this bar and I soaked up every second of the game. It was wonderful.

It's amazing how much that kind of thing gets under your skin - I have really missed the Dawgs this year and really missed football. After three years of Redcoats and attending virtually every game (except for the Derbies-only away games when I was an underclassman), an entire season when I have been so far away and unable to watch anything at all has been really hard. After years of participation, and eating-breathing-sleeping-living Georgia sports for so long, it feels like a part of me is incomplete without any connection to it.

And sitting there in the bar last night, I realized why.

It was a very surreal experience, watching this game on tv from halfway across the world. Especially because I knew that if I hadn't been sitting in that bar watching, I would be sitting in that stadium experiencing it live. I never got my "last Florida trip," and if I hadn't been here, I would have been there. And I knew exactly what it felt like to be there. Three years in a row I had been in that stadium, sat in those seats, celebrated wins and mourned losses, been on that field, worn that uniform. And everyone I went through it with was still in that stadium, still doing it one last time, and I was watching it from satellite tv in Germany. I knew exactly what it would have felt like to be there, celebrating with Katie and Carmen and Katie and Gabe and Matt and the others, screaming so loudly you're hoarse the next day, jumping up and down, playing Glory so loud you think your lips will burst, and so fast the drum major can barely keep up, and everybody's crying and shouting and celebrating and taking pictures and we can all hardly believe that the experience is real. For them, yesterday, it was. For me, it was a memory of how it used to be. When I went through the season last year, I didn't know it would probably be the last time.

I chose to leave. I chose to forgo my last year of that in order to do this. But that's what makes it hard - I know exactly what I'm missing. And I saw it last night on tv.

Once a Dawg, always a Dawg. How sweet it is.