An American Victory

The last two days have been the most smog-filled yet here in Beijing. When we returned from spring break on Sunday, the skies were beautiful and clear...we found out that it was because the factories had been shut down over the break and the permanent cloud had lifted from over the city.

The smog gets worse at night. When I walked out of the coffee shop at 10:30pm after doing some work the other night, it was like hitting a wall. "No, that's just fog, just weather," our professor tried to tell us, but I'm pretty sure that water vapor does not induce black boogers.

On Thursday afternoon, I went with 8 other guys from the program to the nice turf soccer field across campus to play some soccer with the $9 soccer ball I'd bought the other day. We played a little 4-on-4 for about 20 minutes, but then were approached by a Korean kid, about our age. Somehow the point got across that he and his 9 friends wanted to play us, full field. They were wearing soccer cleats and shinguards and were all wearing matching warm-up pants, so they appeared to be some sort of club team. We were wearing sweatpants and running shoes (or, in Zach's case, rubber turf shoes that had just been purchased from WuMei for $4 and may or may not have said "Fonverse" on the side). After some internal debate, we decided to play them.

It took about 5 minutes to get absolutely winded in the smog (granted, I'm not in as good a shape as I was in my best BC Track days), but everyone seemed to get over it soon enough. The game was a lot of fun... lots of end-to-end action and passing. I got to relive my glory days and command the central midfield (glory days weren't that glorious at all). We went down 1-0 early, then José the Venezuelan equalized for Team America(s). The Koreans scored on a nice header in front of our net, and then Tim the Canadian scored to equalize again. Steve Cho, our Korean-American, notified us that they had requested a 'next-goal-wins' scenario, and an American finally got on the board when Zach headed home Andrew's cross to win the game. The Koreans were very friendly and shook all of our hands and hugged us afterwards. It was a good bonding experience for us foreigners, and was worth the golf-ball sized bruise and lump that I have on my shin from colliding with a Korean.

Whenever I'd foul someone or knock someone down, I didn't know how to say "I'm sorry" in Korean. I resorted to the international soccer apology sign that I see executed in international professional games all the time: the awkward caressing of the back of your injured opponent's head. It seemed to get the point across.

Also, that Michael Matosic is a solid right back.