kicking off the world cup in style

The World Cup is just around the corner, y'all! For sensible folks in the know (and thus not for most Americans or Canadians) this is a BIG DEAL. Everywhere else around the world, football (PROPER football, played with FEET) is the glue that holds society together. Or, I guess you could say it is the glue that holds particular geographical segments of society together, and that the force and friction that erupts when those glued-together bits rub up against each other creates a kind of global net of passion, excitement and epic failures and spectacular glories that end up enveloping the WHOLE WORLD (except for North America)!!! Yes, World Cup season is upon us! And if all my hyperbole and excessive use of both brackets and exclmation marks haven't convinced you, this should:

I actually asked my Dad to get proper TV connections for the countryside house so that we can watch World Cup games there and he won't have to, like, drive off to the one Spanish-owned juke joint on the Bruce penninsula to get his fix of the beautiful game.

Ha!

In super cool news about the World Cup, Knaan's song "Wavin' Flag" is the official tune of the games. Dad introduced me to Knaan at Christmas and he is amazing. Somalia-born, then moved to Canada, spent time in the US, and is an insanely great hip hop poet slash superstar. His songs are the best I've heard all year for sure. And Wavin' Flag is not only an incredible football song, it is, like, completely happiness- and pride-inspiring.

Anyways, the whole point of this post was to tell you about how we rang in the beginning of World Cup season. First, though, let me diverge on one of my I've-been-so-busy rants, ok? So, I've been so busy! OMG I haven't had a moment of downtime in forever. It has been b-a-n-a-n-a-s bananas around here. The end of the school year is always nuts for me because I run the yearbook (and I'm an obsessive compulsive freak about the layout and I spend hour after hour making sure every single border is exactly perfect), but then I have also had 3 drama projects on the go: we did a massive integrated arts evening a few weeks ago and I had my kids performing a Romeo and Juliet mash-up that they had written (and what made that crazy was that I had two classes performing together who never actually got to rehearse together); last week I presented an hour-long one act play starring two kids that I directed with two other kids (awesome play - written by a Canadian playwright, it's called Legoland, for sure go to see it if it's every produced near you - totally hilarious and heart-touching); and then I am also in the thick of trying to have a team of kids finish writing our play for next fall. CUCKOO! CUCKOO! In the meantime, of course, I've been sorting out all the usual stuff: eating, writing report card comments, planning for next year, shopping, putting together a poster of all 340 students in our school (lovely idea: have each kid draw their own picture, then we scan them, colour them, and put them together on a poster...CRAZY IDEA because it took about eight billion years to finish...but it looks super), talking to my son for at least 10 minutes a day, etc etc. Oh, and speaking of family, I have also had the blessing / curse of having Phet and Seung Yi out of town. Blessing because I haven't had to feel guilty about working till 8 pm every night, curse because I've been letting myself work till 8 pm every night, and of course because I miss them. Alot. Apparently, back in Toronto, Seung Yi has been having a great time and only had to go to emerg once. Smart little tyke stuffed a piece of pussy willow up her nose. Hey! We don't have those here in India. She probably thought it was some kind of cheap Q-tip. Phet's busy busy with meetings in Ottawa, but managed to make it to Toronto for some quality time with the fam and with Sunil for one weekend. He's got one last week in the Ott Dott and then he's off to the Philippines for some more meetings and hopefully some tasty fried chicken.

But back to the World Cup...

Ok, so I have one student who went to KL with me this year who is South African. And as you know, OR YOU SHOULD KNOW, South Africa is hosting the world cup this year. There are only 28 days until the competition begins, this is the first time an African country is hosting, and you can find the match schedules here. Anyways, my colleague mentioned last year that she had happened to get invited to the South African embassy's annual fiesta, and that it was the best party she'd been to all year. I put two and two together and had very little wheedling to do in order to get an invitation using my high level connections. The only problem was getting the kid to remember to take it out of his locker and pass it over to me. Eventually I had to hunt him down outside the lockers and wait for him to find it amidst the piles of papers and shoes and give it to me. Happily, we were able to bring guests, so in the end Patricia and Phet decided to go as well. We only had two days to get things sorted out, and I took a careful look at the invite. Dress code? Football shirts! Yay! No need to dress up. Since I was so busy (see above) Phet took on shirt-buying duty and came back with a Brazil shirt for him and an Argentina shirt for me. After a very long day at work - the celebration of Nelson Mandela's release from prison fell on a Tuesday this year - we put on our shirts and some clean jeans, picked up an exhausted Patricia and had John drive us way far away in the suburbs of forever-to-get-theres-ville to the official residence of the SA ambassador.

We knew we were on the right track after 45 minutes when we saw giant signs of an animated lion in a football jersey. We passed by the overflow parking lot, and came to a place literally covered in sparkly strings of lights. We hopped out, walked in, and passed more giant lions, and made our way to the party in the park-sized backyard. As we were passing the front of the house, a huge limo pulled up and several men in very fancy traditional clothes stepped out. Cool! In the backyard, Wavin' Flag was playing and there were hundreds of embassy types all casualed-out in jerseys from their nation-of-choice. Our students came by and made fun of our non-South African shirts, but they were happy to see us of course. We got some delcious cold beers, and stood around checking out the scene. A few minutes later, the same fancy dudes from the front of the house stepped out onto the very fancy patio - turned out they were the guests of honour, one of whom was Nelson Mandela's grandson! He had a long speech that began with a pretty funny anecdote about Mandela, and then everyone just kept chatting while he spoke. It was kind of odd, but it seemed like that was what everyone expected. He kept reading, people kept chatting and drinking, everyone was having a fine time. After the speechifying, everyone chilled out some more, and the speaker went around hobbing and nobbing, and even got his photo taken with Phet. Later on, a terrific SA band played for a couple of hours and everyone - yes, even me - ended up dancing on the lawn. It was a pretty great evening. Super duper music, cold drinks, good friends, comfy clothes, oh, and SUCH GOOD food. There was a huge buffet, and there was an unbelievable array of meats. It was meat-tastic. The best thing I ate was kind of a pulled-meat stew type of dish that was salty and spectacular. The second best thing I ate was amazing kind of spongy but incredibly delicious white bread. It was AMAZING. Then, after we ate we danced some more, and then there was a very odd Delhi moment when there was a sudden wild wind, and 10 minutes later there was the first rain shower in over 4 months, and everyone kept dancing in the rain, and then the rain passed, and everyone kept dancing, happy and damp and cool. The next day, there were photos of my student, Patricia and our other two colleagues in the society page of the newspaper, and best of all I woke up well-rested and full of energy.

And that, my friends, is how you kick off the world cup in style!

[Delhi-13-May-2010]