Why I Haven't Really Been Updating

This was written in early July, I thought I would end up writing more before posting, I didn’t. And it was written a few weeks after some of the events, which is why some of it is short on details.
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As I said below, most of my time has been taken up from “working” (I’m not going to get into that) and watching the World Cup, which is conveniently on at 4 and 8:30 pm here. Anyway, now that we’re into the semi-finals and there’s some time off until the next round, I figured I should get back on the Microsoft Word grind (sorry Pages!) and churn something out.

So first, I discovered an American bar here in Valencia and figured it would be the prime viewing place for the U.S. games. Before the Slovenia game, Germany was playing Serbia, so I showed up a little bit after halftime of that game. It was packed. With Germans. There were probably fifty depressed Germans, which is shocking because Germans don’t have emotions (right?) by the end of that game. It was the first time they’d lost a group game since the Weimar Republic or something. There was no burning of wheelbarrows full of money after this one though.

When that game ended, there were three people left in the bar. It was me, another American from Ohio, and the guy behind the bar. A few more people filtered in as the game started, but there were only about five or six of us in all. We were surprisingly optimistic at halftime (although I was asking myself why I subject myself to this kind of disappointment as a serious fan), ecstatic when we took the lead, pissed off when it was taken away, and overall just happy to still have a chance to move on to the second round.

The next game, against Algeria, was on at the same time as the England game. I figured that the American bar would have it for sure. In fact, it was the only bar in town that had the game. On my walk over I stood awkwardly at a crosswalk with a guy in an Algeria jersey. He was probably the only person in the city wearing an Algeria jersey and I happened to walk up next to him at a crosswalk. You figure out the odds. Once at the bar, the game had to be streamed via computer onto the screen, because the U.S. game was on PPV (the England game on the regular provider, there’s no ESPN/ESPN2 setup here for multiple games at the same time).

With multiple screens in the place, us Americans settled in the back, joined by about ten students from UVA who were studying abroad for the summer. The front half of the bar was packed entirely with English fans, which made for a fascinating atmosphere at the end of the games.

The first half went off fine, the stream worked, only there was no audio. England took the lead fairly early in their game, making an American goal even more important. Altidore missed a wide open net, Dempsey hit the post. Everyone was frustrated. One kid from UVA even asked where Algeria was (really UVA? I thought you had higher standards than that). But, once the second half was fully underway the stream began freezing up, and by the 85th minute in the England game (which was also roughly the same minute in the American game) our stream was only at the 68th minute. Reloading did nothing to help our cause. We knew if anyone scored, we’d hear it on the England broadcast. Finally in the 90th minute, as depression set in, we told the guy in charge of the computer to just turn it off and bring up ESPN.com. As he did, I saw Mike (the American from Ohio, who was at the Slovenia game), look at his iPhone, jerk his had back like he’d seen something bizarre, and then covered his phone and looked around, only whispering to the person next to him “I think we just scored.”

ESPN.com came up on the TV. Front and center it said something along the lines of “Desperation” but the score read 1-0. Only the font was so small that 1) nobody recognized that it didn’t say 0-0 and 2) I wasn’t sure who had the 1 and who had the 0. Using my fantastic vision, I made out that it said USA 1. Mike had checked his phone again and jumped out of his seat screaming, then I yelled “It’s one nothing!” and our entire half of the bar went absolutely nuts. About two seconds later the page reloaded and read “Donovan Strike!” The England game had ended before ours, so their chanting was interrupted by our madness (and our stereotypical “USA! USA!” chant straight out of Lake Placid 1980) and me yelling to an English guy named Lee (whom I had met a few times before) “We won the group!” to which an improptu “we won the group” chant started. It was by far the happiest bar in town. Both sets of fans saw their teams move on, and not a single person had actually seen the American goal happen, even though it was probably the biggest goal in American soccer history, outside of Gregg Berhalter’s goal against Germany in the 2002 quarterfinals. (Oh, wait. http://www.sikids.com/photos/24199/pinnacle-moments-in-world-cup-history/19).

The Ghana game was the first time the U.S. played at night here. The bar was packed with all kinds of people, and the Spanish were clearly on our side. Another early goal in the first half for Ghana, an electric atmosphere in the second half after the entire place fell quiet waiting for Donovan to step up for his PK. There was nothing left in anyone’s tank when Ghana retook the lead in extra time (see the picture above), the entire place was morose, save the random English guy in the background of that picture. He’d get his the next day against Germany. I took off my Steve Cherundolo jersey, put it around my neck, and walked home. A Spanish guy was playing some sort of upbeat tune on his bugle at some party (yeah, they do that kind of stuff here) as I walked past an apartment building. It may as well have been taps to me. At least I still had Spain, who themselves were playing terribly.
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Coming Up Next: Spain’s World Cup run, my (brief) experience at the running of the bulls and the San Fermin festival in Pamplona (read: Spanish Mardi Gras), my commentary on how no one in Spain speaks Spanish, the hilarity of my French roommate, and the recent addition of another roommate from Bulgaria, who I'm pretty sure is a gypsy that is trying to steal our souls.