Winners Never Quit!

Wednesday, June 16th
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Today was National Youth Day (an important national holiday) so most people had off from work. Everyone at Lucinda's actually was supposed to work, but the ProjectsAbroad drivers that take us to work every day took off of work.. Sooo.. I had a day off!

And what did I do with that day off? I wish I had a more exciting story to tell you, but unfortunately, I just kind of hung out around the house. In the afternoon, a new volunteer got to our house named Leo. Leo is from Switzerland and is 22 (I'm still the youngest in the house. Oh well). Once Leo got in, Philly cooked us a brunch of eggs and bacon! What's even better is that apparently bacon here is the equivalent of country ham back home! So, that was pretty awesome.

That evening, we decided to go down to the waterfront to watch the Bafana Bafana game. Sebastian graciously offered to drive the four guys now in the house, and we picked up one other volunteer, Inge from Denmark. Once we got down to the waterfront, it was incredibly packed; Cape Town's pride in their team was in full force - vuvuzelas were blaring, the amount of yellow and green was blinding, and people were just generally going crazy with pride. The Cameron Crazies don't have anything on these people.

I decided I was going to buy some World Cup merchandise to start supporting some teams, as well. I went to the store at the waterfront, and found a Bafana Bafana jersey that I really wanted, but they were out of my size. So, I'll have to hold out until the next time I see one. I finally found United States World Cup stuff at this store too; however, the section was embarassingly small and only had a few jerseys and a tacky sweatshirt. The jerseys were really cool, but I had two qualms with buying one: 1) They were about $80 (ouch!). 2) Was I really going to wear an American jersey back in the USA? I wasn't able to resolve these two objections, so I held off on buying America stuff. Maybe next time.. I did pick up a cool Bafana Bafana hat though!

The dinner crew! Me, Ryan, Sebastian, Inge, and Leo! My hat is on wrong.

The giant screen in the middle of the common area was not even visible; people were thickly crowded all around it. So, we wondered from place to place trying to find a place to watch the game. After about half an hour, we found a restaurant with a relatively small (but still functional) TV to watch the game on. I ordered the messiest chicken sandwich ever, and thoroughly enjoyed it.

Sadly, Bafana Bafana got slaughtered by Uruguay (I think we all secretly knew it was going to happen). Nonetheless, it was a fun night. You'd never be able to tell that we lost that night from the sound of the crowd after the game though. Vuvuzelas and cheers of "WE MUST BELIEVE!" and "WINNERS NEVER QUIT!" were resounding in the air. South Africa has some spirit, for sure.