It's the World Cup, Baby!!!

It's World Cup time and we are seeing some real English patriotism for the first time since we've lived in the UK. We didn't realize how much English "football" meant to everyone until we started seeing St. George's Cross flags being hung all throughout our neighborhood. People have little England flags hanging out of their house windows, their cars, and loads of England touting clothes all throughout the stores. They have meal deals at the front of the grocery stores promoting Stella beer and pizza. I also heard that Perkins has an official "World Cup" policy in place with one rule being you are not aloud to listen to games on company computers but you are aloud to listen on the radio. I have overheard neighbors talk about missing weddings because they didn't want to miss a game....how crazy.

















For fun we wanted to hang up an American flag on our house to show some American patriotism since we've never done that before (we've never been around for the 4th of July while we've lived here). Funny thing is that we had to borrow an American flag from our neighbors because we didn't have one. We did get a little nervous about hanging it up as England and the US are due to play their first round games against each other. We did get it up a few hours before the game and got into lots of fun banter with the neighbors.

We got invited to the Duffy's for a BBQ with Brits and Americans alike from Kevin's work and it was so much fun. The Duffy's had an amazing spread for us all and most everyone gathered in their living room to watch the game with ended with a draw 1-1. In the first rounds there are four teams in a round robin and each team gains points based on if they win, lose or draw (no pun intended). So the US and England each get one point for drawing. Slovania and Uganda are also in our bracket so time will tell if we get to go on.

What an amazing experince to have being Americans over here while our country is competing in a world wide sport that isn't very popular at home but is life to so many people around the world. Go USA!!!!