The very first game we played was on a Monday at 2:30pm. The president called it a national holiday - this meant for me that classes got canceled and I didn't have to go to work. SWEET! (other people still had to be a work, but no one worked once the game started!)
As Paraguay progressed further along, the fever got even stronger! On June 29th, we played Japan at 10am and boy was that an amazing game! I watched the game with my friend Eli and her son. But before that I hit the mall to take photos of all the fun festivities. This first picture is people starting to line up in the food court to watch the game. There were 2 HUGE screens and then like 3-4 other TVs for people to watch. I took this photo about 30-40min before the game, so the place only got fuller once the time got closer!
Outside the mall they put up this huge tent for more people to watch the game inside. It had bleachers and huge TV screens. There had to have been at least a couple hundred people inside there!
that's the TV screen in the back there by the HALLS and Trident posters.
I of course bought the PY jersey. Eli had the flag for me to use for the photo, although I prob should buy one of those too!
Eli, her son Walter and I.
What an exciting and nail-biting game it turned out to be. When the 90 minutes ended, the score was still 0-0. They then played for another 30 minutes and the score remained 0-0. So then it was time for the shootout. One Japanese guy missed a kick and so the final score was 5-3!! UNBELIEVABLE! The city went CRAZY!!! CRAZY CRAZY!!! This was the first time that PY had advanced into the quarterfinals and so everyone was SUPER excited! I had to race out of Eli's house though and get to work - I couldn't stick around to celebrate with them. But the cool part about this though was that I had to take a bus and cross the city to get to my school. Normally it would be like a 20-30 min bus ride. This day it took prob 45 minutes because of all the traffic. As you can see from the photos below, EVERYONE hit the streets. People poured out of their offices to wave flags and cheer. People loaded into cars and drove around, honking horns and waving flags. I just sat in the bus and took photos of it all (i.e. why some of the photos aren't the best quality b/c I was in the bus!). It was soooooooo fun to see all of that!
If you look closely below, you can see that all of these people are standing on the island in the middle of the busy street. There were just people EVERYWHERE!!
These are all my students - most of them wearing their PY jerseys!
I took the photo below 3 hours after the game ended! People were still honking and cheering, just hanging out and having a great time!
On Saturday July 3, we played Spain. Before the game, the city went crazy again! The malls were packed, people were honking their horns, fireworks... They opened up stadiums for people to go watch the game (it was like 90 degrees that day too!). Everyone was so excited! Unfortunately, due to a bad ref call (sound familiar US team?), we didn't get a goal that a player scored and so in the end Spain won 1-0. sooooo sad! Although everyone was clearly disappointed, I could tell that everyone was still super proud of the team for advancing as far as they had! They came back and received medals from the president. I know everyone still loves them! I sure was hoping we would win though. I wanted to see the city erupt in craziness again! haha.
DALE PARAGUAY!!
YEA YEA YEA!! How wonderful it was for us to hear that Paraguay was doing so well and advanced so far in the World Cup. The country will carry this experience with them for a long time with great pride. It's wonderful for the players as well since they obviously put their hearts and the hearts of the whole country into the game. Very cool that you could be a part of this thrilling event while visiting PY. Dale Paraguay!
ReplyDelete