Kissing Colombians and Crying like a Baby

Sorry I missed a day yesterday, so I'll try my best to catch you up on my past two days here. Needless to say they were incredibly busy and exciting.

Prior to coming over I had really started to get into Soccer. I figured that I should keep up socially on the sport of my new country so I watched all the games, learned all the players and teams and made my friend Mitch explain how everything all works. For whatever reason I chose Chelsea as my adopted team. Turns out that i live in Chelsea so it couldn't have been better. It just so happened that the first soccer match of my trip was Chelsea vs. Manchester United. For those of you all who are not into soccer, Chelsea and Man U are hands down, far and away the best teams in England, and arguably all the world. This rivalry makes Boston vs. New York, Duke vs. North Carolina, and Little Chute vs. Xavier seem like some useless t-ball game.

Before the game we all got together and got on the tube (London subway system) and headed down to the stadium. Everyone who didn't already have Chelsea gear went to the gift shop and bought a bunch of stuff. Then we headed down the street to the pub to watch the game. People really got into it. Definitely a good time. The game however sucked. Chelsea went and laid an egg. They just got demolished 3-0. At this point too everyone had been drinking for quite a while and it was not a pretty site. It took a lot for me not to cry. I was trying so hard to be European and fit in that we may have gotten a little too into the game.

After that disappointment we went and asked the bartender if there was a place in town that we could watch the NFL playoffs, and he responded with "right here". It was awesome. But of course, sitting at the pubs for over 8 hours, has its side effects, namely our ability to not be the stereotypical loud obnoxious American. Ha, we are all having a good time and about half way through the 3rd quarter the jukebox came on with Brian Adams "Summer of '69". Needless to say none of us missed a word. Also needless to say we got a couple of very funny looks from people.

We calmed down a bit after that and a group of young people sat down next to us. I went over and talked to, or at least tried to talk to them and found that they only spoke Spanish. They were from Colombia. I talked to them for about an hour and struggled for 95% of it. Turns out finishing taking Spanish would have been a great idea. We were able to get through some things and had a pretty cool conversation. On a side note I noticed that people are very open here. And they are not afraid to talk about perceptions and things of that nature. I have never once been afraid to say I was American and in fact the people I have talked about it are very interested in our culture and talking about the myths and stereotypes that are associated with America.

Anywho, back to the story. I get up to leave then and reach out to shake their hands which i do and one of the guys leans towards me as if he was going to kiss me. I flinch for a second and he laughs and explains that it is customary to do an air kiss type thing on their left cheek to someone as you say goodbye. I go down the line to the couple colombian guys and girls, shake there hands and do the kiss thing and walk away thinking....that was kinda cool.

We all get on the tube to head back after the Eagles won, we sit down on the tube and realized 2 main things. 1. English beer has A LOT more alcohol in it than American beer and 2. Pints are A LOT bigger than glasses. We get off the tube near our house and as we are walking down the street I have taken the Chelsea flag that I was using to cheer, and put it on as a cape. One of the guys we were with starts singing American Pie. At that point it was all gone. We sang at the top of our lungs all the way back to the flat and when we all woke up this morning we realized that, that was not a good idea, and although that type of stuff may be standard procedure in Madison, it prolly won't fly over here.

I'll finish getting caught up tomorrow. Today was more chill. I went to the Natural History Museum and my last oreintation, and started doing some school work. Things are starting to settle down but I'll talk about that tomorrow. Goodnight America!