Day Five - A day with host family & large dinner

February 14 - Valentine's Day...Today the boys stayed at their family's house. With no "official" hockey plans, the boys were allowed to sleep in...and might have even gotten a little homework done. Some boys got their laundry done. In the afternoon, they all had an opportunity to go out and play pond hockey for 2-4 hours. When asked what they have enjoyed the most about their experience in Quebec, the majority of the boys have given the answer, "Playing Pond Hockey."

At 7pm, all of the host families, all of the boys and all of the parents who were in town met at a restaurant called RDS Zone (similar thought as the ESPN Zone, which many of us are familiar with...RDS is one of their local sports channels). There were a lot of big screened tv around the place and small ones located in the booths...all on hockey games (go figure). During dinner, the boys sat in the back of the restaurant where there was a bubble hockey table and a pool table. The host parents sat with any of the San Jose Jr. Shark parents who were in town to visit and get to know each other. It was fun to get to know about the families, how they got involved in the billeting program, what they did for a living, how our boys were behaving and so on. Since it was Valentine's Day, we thought it would be appropriate for our boys to present red roses to their billet mothers...so, we got 15 red roses and each player presented them with a flower and wished them a "Happy Valentine's Day!" It was a very nice evening.

After dinner, it was time to go back home.

Tomorrow? Well, on Sunday, we have an outdoor game planned for them at 10:30am against a team from Montreal. Since the majority of the boys live near the rink, the host families are just going to let them sleep in and feed them a nice warm breakfast before taking them to the rink. It is going to be chilly...probably more for us than them!