Archive for the ‘Miscellaneous’ Category

It’s been a few days since our last post.  A lot can happen in a couple of days.  we took our first drive to Natal to see the USA vs Ghana game.  We prepared a little better for this trip and did a lot of research before the trip to find out more about travel and parking for the game, as before we found nothing on the FIFA website, but fortunately found some very useful information on blogs and the Brasilian government website.  At Natal itself, pretty much zero in the way of signage to actually assist in the process, thank goodness for GPS and Waze.

Our seats for the USA game were much like the Ivory Coast v Japan game, right up there sitting next to St. Peter in the last but one row.  We don’t have an issue with these seats as the view is fantastic, although the really loud cheering crowds tend to be much lower down closer to the pitch.  Talking of fans, arriving in Natal was like a big party with the Ghana fans.  These folks were singing and dancing big time and they never stopped, not before, not during and not after when their team had lost, true fans just having a great time.

Here are a couple of videos of the Ghana fans, and Chris’s introduction video.

Chris Jr, has an upgrade for the World Cup final. He’s now in colour and sporting a new hair do. Orange hair? Who could he be supporting I wonder?

Chris Jr shows his true colours

Last night, I feel very privileged to have had the pleasure to go to the Uruguay vs Ghana game. The crowd going to Soccer City on the train was in high spirits, cheering and singing the whole trip. The noise in the stadium with the VuVuZelas and the singing was just incredible, I’m not very good at describing things in words, but let me try by saying the noise rattled your rib cage, it was loud!

The game was incredible, Ghana played really well and deserved the win, and if there was ever the evidence needed for the football equivalent of a rugby penalty try, yesterday showed it. Cheat and you can still get through to the next round of the World Cup. Ghana played great, passing the ball, using the wings, holding the ball up, basically they should have won. Sadly it was decided on penalties, and it looks like the English teams penalty coach has been training the Ghana team.

I did take the video camera with me, but it’s taken a little while to sort out missing codecs, but I think I have it now.

Intro video 1

Intro Video 2

Kristine, a pretty girl from Wilmington, USA who liked to dance and I think was very cheery cos of cheap Budweiser, I promised I’d post her video.

A few beers later, Andy doing the closing.

And finally, Andy introduces Chris jr to complete strangers on the train. This lady it turned out is Colombian and lives in Atlanta USA.

I mentioned yesterday I would introduce Chris’ replacement today, and here he is, Chris IdoNotes jr.

We just got back from dropping Chris at Johannesburg airport for his flight back to the USA. Obviously this is a big blow for our traveling team but all is not lost, I have already found a replacement and I will be introducing him to you all tomorrow!

Today was our first day without football, what with there being a two day break until the Quarter Finals begin.  So today we did something different, we headed off to a nearby game park where they rehabilitate animals.  This had a few benefits for us over a regular game reserve in that we knew we were going to see some animals and in some cases even get very close to them.  As usual I dragged the camera along with me and snapped a few pictures, which you can see here.

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