But, more than the world cup (gasp, could that be possible?!?) this blog is about our travels this summer. And yes, I mean 'our', as I'm travelling with my ever so beautiful wife, Erika, as we venture out into world-cup mad Germany, emerald-green Ireland, cheap-beer Czech Republic and the dear ol' sceptered isle that some corner of my heart still calls home....England.
We were initially drawn into making this trip by a fellow football-crazy friend nearly two years ago, who convinced me to go. Despite the fact that Rich begged me to make sure I didn't get Erika preggers and thus prevent us from going, he got his wife, Jenny, preggers and now they aren't going.....slackers. But seriously, they recently gave birth to another beautiful daugther. Welcome to our world, Mariella.
Several other friends did pledge themselves to the trip, and pulled out on grounds of finances, or because they never got a ticket to a game. Oh we tried, we had it planned out, there were three or four seperate applications including subgroups of us at different games, but nope, we never got drawn in the lottery. I persisted, and finally, I was randomnly assigned, through the conditional tickets program, two tickets!!! To the game of Ukraine vs Tunisia, ranked 45th and 21st in the world respectively, in Berlin on June 23rd! Yeeehaaaw!
Our initial trip was meant to be for 2-3 weeks, but then a different kind of discussion had us extending our trip. Last October, a visiting professor from Oxford University came to give a talk on his work at Northwestern. To sum up, he mathematically and computationally models the collective behaviour of different animals, ranging from locusts to fish. I ended up having a decent discussion with him about my own work, and other research topics such as the evolution of cooperation, the end product of which he invited me to Oxford to do some collaborative research with him. Man, did I take him up on that! First I really wasn't sure, money, time etc. etc. but somehow, it made sense, and when we bought our transatlantic tickets, they were for a 7 week roundtrip journey, instead of 3.
So, that's the background, a little soccer, a little beer, and a little research. On top of that Erika is going to make some side trips across England and Europe while I work in Oxford, so she'll have her experiences to write too. We fly out in less than two weeks, but to get me started on the blogging, I'll be writing on my own experiences of the World Cup as the games unfold this week.
And how they will unfold.....hmmmm.
Let The Games Begin!
posted by SamErika @ 9:23 PM
3 Comments:
Ahem ... Nobody invited *me* to go Europe and the World Cup. It's becuase I'm not married, isn't it? ISN'T IT??? And you didn't think a single girl would be able to trek through Europe with a bunch of couples. Well, I've done it before and I could've done it again! j/k
Though I guess I do have a job these days and I couldn't just spend another summer backpacking through Europe -- even if I were invited ;) But oh how envious I am and how excited I am to read your blog! Let the vicarious living begin. (And bring back cheap beer).
Wanchope will have his way!
even though leaving the house is a major project for me at this oint, I still wish desperately that we were going along on Seaver travels...now that we can be with you vicariously through this blog, I feel slightly better. slightly.
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