I was expecting the first day of my trip to actually be quite boring and a bit miserable, but it turned out to be one of the best adventures of my life. The flights in the morning from Cape Town were cheap, so I flew to Johannesburg at 7 o'clock. Our second game was that day, and Tyler and Scott, two of my roommates and fraternity brothers I had planned this trip with, were flying in from Atlanta. The plan was to wait at the airport all day, do some work from my internship that I was taking time off from, and watch the games in an airport bar. I was decked out in USA stuff on the plane, as were many other people. I knew that the game was in Joburg, but I didn't realize that people would be flying in on that morning. At the baggage claim, one of the Americans came up to me and asked if I had a ticket to the game. He explained that his wife had bailed, so he was trying to sell it. I was conflicted because it would mean abandoning my bros, but I realized they would do the same thing, called an audible and bought the ticket.
It really worked out since one of Hirsh's frat brothers from Berkeley, Dave Koken, was planning on going to the game, and I was going to crash with him at the place he was couchsurfing after the game. So I simply called and told him I had a ticket. Nelson Faria, a 23 year old marketing guy from South Africa with Portuguese roots was hosting us. Dave, Nelson, another of Hirsh's buddies named Mike Juborg, and two other guys came to the train station and picked me up at the train station. They were waiving American flags out of the window and I just dove into the back. I brought a ridiculous amount of USA stuff with me, so we all decked out and made our way to Ellis Park.
We stopped at a small local bar before the game, and it began to fill up with Americans. Once we reached a critical mass, we headed in.
The tickets I ended up with were absolutely incredible. Close to one of the goals, about 10 rows up. I had been to a US qualifier in Nashville, so I anticipated the awesomeness of the States in full force, but with Captain America's running around riling up the crowd on the other side of the world, you get pretty excited.
Our boys were wearing their blues and the Slovenians the Charlie Brown greens. We looked good, but as we always seem to do, we gave up a goal in the first 10 minutes. Ten minutes later we were down another. I was on the side where the scoring was happening, and Timmy was freaking out. Gooch looked good too, but it just wasn't going our way. Down 2 goals at halftime, most of the Americans realized that there were no purchase limits of the Budweiser for sale and bought about 5 each for the second half.
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