Misr!
February 07, 2006

As promised here are pictures from Friday�s game. As Infinity rightly pointed out the game was by no means stellar. I mean, the one goal that Congo scored in the 4-1 game? Was actually accidentally scored by the Egyptian team. Haha. Go Africa Cup of Nations. Seriously though, Egypt�s game against the Ivory Coast was MUCH better than the game it played Friday against the less-talented Congo team. I only hope they play that well, and better, tonight when they face Senegal in the semi-final match (which I will be watching from the comfort of a cushy couch while smoking shisha in a Nile-side caf� in Zamalek). Actually, they�re going to need to bring their top game in order to beat Senegal. So Friday�s game was an all-day event. I left the house with my sister at 12:30 pm and we didn�t get back home until about 11 pm. The gates to the stadium closed at 4pm, and all 100,000+ spectators had to be in the stadium before that time. Factor in the hell that was finding a place to park, and then having to walk about 45 minutes to get to the side of the stadium where our third class seats were located, and you can see why we had to leave the house so early. Once we were settled in the stadium�at around 4:30pm�we had 2.5 hours to kill before the game started. Di, my sister, and I were worried that we would be bored, but actually the entire stadium was already cheering loudly, and the guys in our section seemed pretty intent on practicing the wave. At one point during the actual game we got a stadium-wide wave going for five consecutive rounds. That was kind of cool. It�s also probably the only time you�d see Egyptians so dedicated, cooperative, and coordinated. So I guess the pre-game �practice� paid off. pre-game

The flag says: �Victory for Egypt.� Gotta love the �Be fair play� sign. How exactly does one embody fair play? The players arrived at the stadium at around 6pm, at which point the fans began loudly cheering the Egyptian players, and booing the Congo players. I felt bad for them. I also felt bad for the tiny minority that was there supporting the Congo team. Poor guys. Congo fans in a sea of Egyptians Anyway, right before the start of the game we were asked to stand for a moment of silence for the people who died in the ferry incident earlier that day. A lot of us�since we�d been out of the house since early morning�had not yet heard about the incident which, frankly, deserves a lot more coverage and outrage than the whole Danish cartoons debate. So anyway, the game began:

The fans went wild (maybe even a little psychotic?):

And Egypt won:

And we all went home happy: Little boy atop dad�s shoulders

We'll see how we fair tonight.

go west + go east