World Cup: USA vs. England

So my medically evacuated friends and I were hanging out in our guest house and someone says 'we should try to see if we can't get tickets to the world cup game on saturday.' We all agree this is a good decision. Here is the problem we have less than 72 hours to find tickets and transportation. A game plan is made, I call up our transportation guy who's a large man named Fanie (no joke). He can drive us! Now we just need to find tickets. We look in the obvious places, ebay, criagslist, the ticket selling site. We finally find some! We contact our friend, and we come to an agreement about the exchange. He said he would contact us back, but we don't hear from him 24 hours later. So we try another guy who can meet us at the game! Perfect! We also get invited to a big pregame tailgating party with a bunch of fellow Americans! The world continues to look a bit brighter. Wealso decide that we need to get the blessing from Peace Corps to go. Which was a bit of a hassel considering how we're all here because we're sick, but we convince them all that even with our ailments we are still able to go to the game. Lets face it, a sore tooth isn't really going to affect my ability to sit in the stands and cheer for my team, hell it might even help my emotional well being.

That evening we went out and picked up some hats and mittens (the game started at 8:30pm) and t-shirts to decorate, face paint was also involved. We spent the night decorating our t-shirts by bleaching out the red/ blue and writing on them with permanent marker. I made mine striped using a tie-dye technique.

From there we get picked up by Fanie in a mini bus. He is also picking up a bunch of boys from London in Pretoria to get to Rustenburg. 8 or 9 boys all got on and we had a bit of a party including singing and drinking on the way down to the stadium. They all saw that we had our face paint and so a couple asked if I would paint their faces, so I did. Although I really did think about painting some obnoxious things on their faces rather than what they wanted. When we arrived at the park and ride we found some more Americans and talked it up with them about the game. Personally, I don't know anything about soccer, and it was good to get some info about the teams before going into the game. I then painted some more faces in exchange for beer (this is a great trade off for anyone who wants to get free drinks at a tailgating party) After having done this we realized we needed to find our tickets.

And so the adventure for the tickets began! We found out that they were in park and ride E in the green zone. Now you have to remember there are many many park and rides with number/letter/color coordinates. There is a free shuttle service to and from the park rides and the stadium. None of the shuttle drivers knew were park and ride E in the zone was. They actually just led us to this English style pub on the road near a bunch of other park and rides. This was not where we wanted to be in England central. We finally found directions and proceeded to walk 20 minutes only to find an empty parking lot in the middle of a field. While this was E for empty in a green 'zone' it was NOT the correct place. So I did what I do pretty well, I asked for directions from a random dude sitting on a parking barrier.

(Side story: I was lost in Montreal with my brother and cousins around 10pm I asked a guy for directions, at the time my brother and my eldest cousin were arguing about how to get back to the hotel. the guy i asked stumbled to the left a little puked into a drain and then gave us crystal clear directions which my brother couldn't believe were actually correct until we made it back to the hotel from them.)

Back on topic. The directions this guy gave us were pretty good but we didn't want to walk there so we flagged down a mini bus shuttle and the guy said to us 'Well, I don't know what E green stands for but there is a park and ride east sort of in that direction' the direction he pointed was definately NOT east, for the record. It was actually south. On the way me and the girls decide that we aren't going in the right direction based on the advice of the guy sitting on the parking barrier. But the driver can't turn around so we just go to the park and ride. Which does turn out to be park and ride E green! Imagine that. We finally meet our friends who greet us in true American fashion by asking 'Hey how's it going, do you want a beer?' I can't remember exactly how I responded but it was some form of 'heck yes'.

From there we made it into the game! Security was a bit of a joke. I had a bag that was full of clothes and all they asked about it was 'hey are those clothes?' 'yes' 'ok you're fine' no checking necessary. We all did get frisked by those hand held metal detectored though. The american fans were out numbered 3 to 1 I'd say. It was really cool to be there. But the horns that people have, the vuvuzelas, are completely obnoxious. We got ear plugs which were necessary. All in all the game ended in a tie. Good for the American team who were expected to lose. All the England supporters were not very happy.

From there we had a hard time finding our transport back to our park and ride. We were stuck in traffic in the bus for over an hour just getting out of the stadium. We then found our guy, Fanie, who took us along as he dropped off some other people. We were in the car to keep warm. Because of traffic the game got out at 10pm-ish and we finally arrived back at our guest house at 4am. The drive from the stadium to Pretoria is only about an hour on a normal day.

And so our adventure of hte world cup finishes. Good game, good people, fun time.