A month later and I'm still upset

Alright you get to once again read about Nina being here! Aren’t you excited?

This time, I’d like to tell you about an event we did not plan for…the World Cup finale.  You all know that I officially caught World Cup fever and seeing as I wasn’t in one of the countries to get booted out immediately, nor were we eliminated in the first round thus negating all social responsibility to give a damn about who won, it was safe to say that WK fever was on a steady rise in the land of Orange.

So let’s take a journey shall we?

First there was the very first game of the series…Win over Denmark!

Then there was the impromptu sports bar in Barcelona…Japan goes down and we’re still surrounded by Orange.

Then there was stupidly cheering for Spain to win a game…this was before they were against us.

Then we missed the third of the series, plus the first elimination round due to not finding it on the TV and being passed out from having stayed up all night to catch a plane in that order respectively.

But then…it was time to get serious.  First, we hit Noordwijk to watch Holland come from behind to beat BRAZIL!  The team that was rumored to win it all.  After being absolutely ecstatic…

We came home to enjoy all the facebook and twitter stati claiming unrecognizable absurdity in the past two hours’ happenings...then we went and got poffertjes.

For the next game, we got dressed up…

And headed out again to Noordwijk.  And in a bar surrounded by large groups of red nosed Dutchmen and stumbling sixteen year olds, we watched Holland take the semi finals by storm…and by storm I mean something frightening, intense, and not knowing when it would be over, but only hoping for good (and that a cow doesn’t land in a tree.)  But we did it.  And we enjoyed celebrating.  Of course so did the rest of Noordwijk…

We had a little break before our next game.  So we took that time to rest and teach Fien the art of making a loud distracting noise with a piece of Orange plastic…

Of course these events meant only one thing…we had to go to Amsterdam for the Final.  Upon arriving to a sea of Orange…

We met up with Lily and headed over to Museumplein where there were screens set up, and free stuff galore.  We scored shirts, vuvuzelas, a large lion tooter, and some flags.  We were good to go.  And boy was it insane.  There were over 100,000 people there…in one square.  We were happy to be a part of the festivities…

There were DJs encouraging Dutch singalongs (Nina and I attempted it), boys jumping into canals, and even helicopters that dropped thousands of flower petals onto the crowd.

Of course once the game actually began we realized that there was no way I would be able to see a thing…and I got very sad…

I caught the occasional glimpse, and a play by play was offered by whoever happened to be squished next to me at the moment, but I still didn’t get to see everything.  And then…in the final moments of over time…Spain scored.  And Holland was once again…not the champions.  We walked towards the train station (a mile walk since the trams weren’t running,) Nina hurt her knee in the process, squished onto a packed train, caught a taxi home and around 4:30 in the morning snuggled into bed with broken hearts. 

And…the Dutch team helicoptered into NOORDWIJK after the series where they stayed in a super boojie hotel on the beach before heading into Amsterdam for a canal parade a few days later.  It was good to welcome the boys home.

And I know it means nothing because we still lost the important one…but did you know that Holland actually won more games than Spain in the entirety of the series? Oh well, there’s always the next one boys.

Word of the day: teleurstelling - disappointment