If it wasn't bad enough that I am one of few Americans in my city, we made ourselves stand out even more last night. When we heard about the Women's World Cup having games in Tianjin, my friends and I were pumped about the chance to see the US. Our chances came last night against England!
After our carefully planned out purchases of water-based paint,brushes, baby powder, hair spray, and a flag, we got together a couple hours before the game to prep! Myself and 6 other guys got decked out with "GO USA!" on our dark red chests and parts of the American flags on ours backs. We then made haste to the stadium!
Wow, its not everyday you lead cheers for the loudest group in a stadium of 60,000. Apart from the hundreds of pictures, and smiles from other entertained fans, the highlight of the night was our "lap of patriotism" in the beginning of the 2nd half. With red, white and blue hoisted high, 15 of us ran around yelling USA at the top of our lungs and going ballistic! This inspired thousands of fans to to get up and cheer as well as conjuring up quite a few amused smirks from security guards. But the highlight had to be the first goal the US scored during the middle of our lap only to be followed by 2 more insurance goals soon after! It was quite a rush and I think I know what they mean when they talk about the 12th man!
The match left us with having lost our voices, in dire need of some long showers, and the feeling that we had truly done a service to our country. Not to mention that we were celebrities for a night and had made absolute fools of ourselves (which could have resulted in a possible loss of face if we had been nationals). On the bright side, we even had some other American fans tell us that they thought our run around the stadium in the second half inspired the fans and players so much that they gave us four free tickets to the following night's match!
Then I began thinking about professions in cheerleading (well, not really, but it did make for an unforgettable experience!)
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I'm so jealous of this story! What a great memory. Bud, I totally got up and watched the entire first half and about 10 minutes of the 2nd, but ESPN2 was hating...no coverage of crazy American fans. The only people they showed were attractive 20-something women, and then cute kids. No males : ( Love these posts, keep them up!
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