I spent the day with Grandma. We talked about my parents, my sister, and my love life. She may be starting to slip a bit (at one point she briefly thought I was her late husband), but she can damn sure still focus in when grilling me about who I'm dating. We went through some old photo albums, and she showed me a scrapbook my mother had sent her, with pictures of Grandma's parents, Grandma as a young girl, Grandma as an adolescent (in a positively scandalous Indian maiden outfit), and Grandma with her kids and grandkids through the years. She promised to have her housekeeper help her tune in the Italy game (the only US game on broadcast television) so she could see what I'm up to in Germany. She's a great lady and I'm going to miss her when she's gone.

From there I went to the airport and met up with a guy named Roger, a friend of a friend who will be one of my fellow residents of Atlanta House. We saw a few red-clad US supporters around the ticketing area, and when we made it to the gate we saw that perhaps half the people on our flight were bound for the World Cup. The guy sitting on my right is from Wyoming and supports the US. The two guys in front of me are decked out in Trinidad & Tobago gear. Elsewhere on the plane I've seen people wearing shirts representing Germany, Mexico, and Argentina. I resisted the urge to ask the Mexican if he remembered Jeonju. Barely.

My computer is detecting a wireless network. I presume we're not flying at 75 feet and overflying some guy on a raft with his own wi-fi hub going, so it seems a bit odd. Perhaps the airline offers some sort of access, but I can't seem to even get to a welcome page so I guess I'll never know. Its probably for the best, as I suspect it probably costs roughly the GNP of Trinidad & Tobago per minute.

We are scheduled to land in Dusseldorf at 7 am local time, change planes, and land in Berlin at 9:30. It doesn't look like I'm going to be able to sleep on the plane, so I'll try to catch a nap at the flat before learning first hand what its like to try to watch a soccer match in Germany when the match in question is the opening match of the World Cup and one of the two teams playing is Germany. The opponent is Costa Rica, so I probably ought to be supporting our CONCACAF bretheren. Will I? I'm not sure, but if I think I'll do so very quietly.
posted by Scott @ 6/09/2006 10:18:00 PM || 0 comments