Ayoba!!

Thursday June 10th, 2010
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Frankly, this day didn’t amount to anything much worth blogging about. It was very average, I mainly did administrative things around Philisa Abafazi. Also, I found an internet café, but it didn’t let me use Skype or play videos (NO GLEE STILL) or upload photos (UGH). Dinner was good as always. We then watched The Bodyguard (which was awesome!!) and Grease (since my housemate Ryan hadn’t seen it yet! UNBELIEVABLE). Andddd that was Thursday. Oh give me a break – not EVERY single day is an adventurous epic tale on my blog. We’ll save that for Friday.

Friday, June 11th, 2010
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Today was the official beginning of the World Cup!! AHHHHHHHHHHHH!!! I slept til 10 AM (glorious. Absolutely glorious.), got up and at my “Frosties” (the equivalent of Frosted Flakes here) and had some tea, and got dressed. After messing around on the internet and helping a friend out with her computer, I ate some lunch and got prepared to head to the Retreat station where I was meeting some of my friends to head over to Cape Town. I am proud to say that I walked there all by myself and didn’t get lost! I’m slowly getting my bearings around here.

The entirety of Cape Town and all of its suburbs was decked out in the classic Bafana Bafana yellow and green attire (Bafana Bafana is the name for South Africa’s world cup team; it means “The Boys, the Boys.”). You could hear the vuvuzellas (the long, cylindrical trumpet horns everyone plays as a South African pride thing) everywhere; this place has a pride and spirit that I have never encountered anywhere else. We took the train down to Cape Town from the station.

Once at our destination, you could barely hear anything else because of all of the vuvuzellas and other people shouting. This town was ready for the match of a lifetime. We arrived at the Fan Park (the next best thing to being at the game), but it was full and had been full for some time. Soo.. we watched the game on the roof of a shopping mall with a bunch of other fans and ProjectsAbroad volunteers (you could see the big TV screens of the fanpark from the roof still, but it wasn’t very clear what was going on during the match). I’m pleased to say that Bafana Bafana didn’t lose, but we unfortunately didn’t win either. At least we scored the first goal of the tournament; that has to count for something.

Our view from the top of the mall.

After the Bafana game was over, we headed to the Fan Park since most of the fans had vacated after the first game. We chilled out and watched a laser light show as we waited for the France Uruguay match to start. I noticed that the FIFA Fan Park is nothing but one HUGE advertisement for Coca-Cola; literally EVERYTHING is Coke themed. I don’t mind though – it’s clearly the better choice over Pepsi, and when it comes to international recognition, Coke has Pepsi beat by a long shot.

France Uruguay was frankly kind of a boring match for me (other than the red card! Woah!), but being in the fan park with all of the fans and spirit was a really great experience. The energy in the air was infectious, and you couldn’t help but have a good time just being in the general vicinity. Sadly, this match ended in a tie as well; I’m not sure I had any preferences over who I wanted to win beyond a small favor towards France (since one of my volunteer friends was from there).

Shelley and her Vuvuzela!

The cab ride back from Cape Town to Retreat was again an epic sing-along consisting of tunes from Gaga, Ke$ha, and the like. Archie (the driver) never fails me.

And tomorrow? I’m heading to the mall with Shelley and Dan (other US volunteers) to buy USA gear for the big brawl against the UK tomorrow. We’re gonna slaughter ‘em!

USA! USA! (The fact that we haven’t even made the top 3 teams in the World Cup since like 70 years ago is a minor deterrent to my spirit, but we’ll ignore that for tomorrow.)

Title Reference: 'Ayoba' is a word meaning 'cool' here, but it can also mean 'GO TEAM!' and similar things. It's basically an expression of excitement.