WORLD. CUP. BOUND.

right when i woke up wednesday morning i felt it. there was a strange feeling in the air. it was a somber, yet anxious feeling. spain was preparing for their semi final game against the renowned german team. im going to be honest with you.... i was not betting my money on a victory for spain. but i was trying to be optimistic.
as i made my way out onto the streets wednesday morning, i saw that everyone was decked out in RED. red red red. spanish flags EVERYWHERE.
what i found interesting a few days ago is when one of our directors told us that the spanish flag is NEVER hung or seen as much as it has been this past month. for the spanish people, you are actually considered ¨different¨ if you wear or hang the spanish flag. odd, huh? in the u.s., i see american flags in all sorts of places. and by no means are any of us against wearing our colors: red, white and blue. interesting, i think to myself. this made me realize how much more soccer really means to this country. it is literally all they have. no other sport means anything to them. it is all about SOCCER here. i want spain to win the world cup this year because: 1. they never have 2. i would be here to experience it :) and 3. it could very well unify this country more and allow them to share the pride of their country with one another. though it may take something as little as a single soccer game- perhaps this is what spain needs in order to appreciate their identity as spaniards. we shall see i guess :)
i got to school early yesterday because my late night class was rescheduled to 8 a.m. rather than 8 p.m. why, do you ask? well, the game was at 8:30 p.m. last night and according to my art history prof, ¨in life...there are a few things that are more important than education. and one of them is soccer. your homework is to watch the game. viva espana!!!!¨ hahaha. ok, ill go with that ;)
i then stuck around the school during my long break to do some homework and enjoy my new favorite form of electricity: air conditioning. YES. for all of you over there in seattle enjoying that 70 and 80 degree weather- embrace the coolness of it. and please, for my sake, dont you dare say, ¨oh my gosh....its SOOOOO hot here!!!!¨ you. have. no. idea. what. hot. is.
i had my geography class yesterday and i felt like i was keeping up better with the professor and his 1,000 words per minute pace ;) i really do love learning about climate, topography and the affects altitude has on the regions of spain. thats where my ¨nerdiness¨ comes out ;)
i used my break to do more homework because i knew i had a big night ahead of me!!
my language class was next. walked into class and saw that our teacher was wearing an espana shirt and had the spanish flag painted on her forearms. YES! hahaha. she is too cool.
this class always starts at 6 and goes until 8. the game was at 8:30. eeeeeeeeeg were cutting it close!! but she knew what we were thinking and she was thinking the same thing too :)
we have class for an hour then about a 10 minute break then we go for the next 50 minutes. we came back from our break and all sat down ready to pound out the last 50 minutes. but rather than starting class right away, she whips out her camera and her face paint and says, ¨alguien quires??¨ (anyone want some!?) while holding up the face paint. WHY YES I WANT SOME FACE PAINT!!!!! i raised my hand and said, ¨si, lo quiero! lo queiro!!!¨ the other girls did too so she started walking around and painting our faces!!! ¨ok. i love school in spain¨ is what i was thinking. i mean how cool is this!? i took out my camera and started taking pictures of it all, yes, in the middle of class. hehe. once she painted our faces, she picked up her camera and got a picture of all of us. soooo funny. i wish spain was playing a soccer game every day im in school here ;) the excitement of game days just hovers in the air.
we went for another 30 minutes or so and she sensed our antsyness. so she said ¨ok, es todo para hoy. viva espana!!¨ (ok thats good for today. lets go spain!!) then we all joined in with her, grabbed our stuff and ran out of that building so fast im pretty sure the other students thought there was a fire or something. ;)
aileen and i ran to meet up with our friends at one of the fun bars in town. we got there just in time to get the last table. we all ordered drinks and sat down. the game was to start in about 15 minutes. i began to get this feeling that i havent gotten in about 5 years. when i did summer swim league from ages 7-16, i would always get soooooo nervous before EVERY RACE. no other sport i was a part of game me the rush that swimming gave me. before every race, my nerves would be out of control, to the point where i had no appetite and i felt like my stomach was going to come up and right out my mouth. that feeling resignated in me last night. it was almost a foreign feeling as i havent swam competitively in years. sitting there waiting for that game to start made me lose all appetite for food. wow. imagine how those players felt. thats pressure right there. but whats funny to me is that im an american. why am i soooooo nervous for this game?? i guess there is no other way to explain it but that if you were to be in spain with me now, you would probably feel the same way. the atmosphere here forces every nerve in your body to want nothing more but to see spain win the whole thing.
the game started and an uproar went through the bar. here. we. go.
all eyes were on the t.v.´s and for the first 70 + minutes of that game, the bar was full of tension. pure tension. spain was dominating the entire time. sprinting at full force to each ball, out running and out enduring each german on the field. they made the german team look lazy. just watching them, you could tell that every cell in each one of those spaniards wanted to win so bad.
i started getting more and more nervous as there were missed shots on goal from spain and germany. my heart just about jumped out of my chest the few times germany came close to scoring. honestly, if i were to be watching this game in about 60 years from now, i would probably have had a heart attack. no joke.
it seems that there is something about the 70 minute mark that pumps up the spain team. the 70 minute mark rolls around and the score is still 0-0. minute 73 comes around.... corner kick: spain. well, whats new? spain had several corner kick attempts that ended in failure. what would be different about this one? psh, we had no idea.
xavi (the player whose jersey i wear ;) kicked a beautiful ball right into the middle of the 18 box where players surrounded the area. puyol (who has quite the head of hair, if i must say so myself) leaped into the air, almost out of his own body, and with all the strength he had in him, nailed the ball into the right corner of the goal. GOAL ESPANA!!!!!!!!!!!!!
readers, did you hear spain screaming from where you are? no? that surprises me because it was SO LOUD. people screaming, hollering, crying, yelling, everything and anything you can think of to make noise. such an exciting moment. now spain only had to hold on for about 20 more minutes and they would have it.
the rest of the game was still nerve wracking as we knew we had to keep the lead. luckily, we did. spain advances to THE. WORLD. CUP. FINALS. FOR. THE. FIRST. TIME. EVER.
as predicted, we ran outside and heard the uproar just like when spain beat paraguay last saturday. craziness again. except this time, crazier. more people. more excitement. a world cup victory was actually closer in sight. and i am here to see it unfold. i still cant believe it.
we ran around the streets and joined in the partying, singing and dancing. i definately did some more high fiving with the crazy spaniards. whenever i would, they would give me this funny smile and later i realized that i rarely see spaniards high fiving each other over here so they must have known right away that i was a crazy american girl...in a spanish jersey....face painted with the spanish flag.... running around high fiving people because of a soccer game. ¨loco, loco, loco¨ they must have thought about me ;)
i got some gelato in celebration and i sware, probably about 3 times i almost got it spilled all over me because of the mobs of people. and i almost lost the group about 5 different times as it took a lot of concentration to follow each other in the enormous crowds there were. so so so fun.
after celebrating and going out for the wonderful tappas- monica, aileen and i were on our way home when this younger spaniard guy wearing the flag asked us for directions (he was from northern spain...so he claimed...). we helped him to where he needed to go and he came up to each one of us, kissed us on our cheeks and said, ¨my name is antonio, what is yours? thank you for your help. and ladies, in spain, we kiss!¨ we all just laughed and he proceeded to say, ¨dont go to bed tonight! i want to see you all later!¨ hahaha.
my dad told me that when the seattle sonics won the nba finals in 1979, that people were so excited that they threw couches and t.v.´s off their balconies.
well, when we turned the corner to our street, lo and behold, there sat 2 different couches in the middle of the road that definately were not there earlier that day and definately did not belong there. hahaha.
the celebration went on to the wee hours of the night as i heard several of my friends returning to the dorms around 4 or 5 a.m. ay ay ay.
today everyone is just super happy and content. still on a high from last nights game, yet still far enough away from sunday to be nervous about the next game.
went to lunch today and antonio, our cook, said, ¨que comida quires por este noche rubia y guapa??¨ (what food do you want for tonight pretty blonde??)
ok. 1. im not blonde. i dont ever plan on being blonde. but i guess here, my hair is light enough to be considered blonde because everyone here has dark hair. hmmmmmm ok then. and 2. dear antonio, thank you for calling me pretty, just dont do it again or you will freak me out because you are an old man ;)
goodness there must be something about the name antonio ;)
headed outside to walk to class for today and the temperature board read 42 degrees celsius again. 108 degrees fahrenheit. ohhhhhhh gooooodness.
what shocked me even more was when one of my profs said that we should enjoy the weather now before it gets too hot. because in late july, it gets to 50 degrees celcius. yup, 122 degrees fahrenheit.
uh oh.