It's been a little while.

As everyone most likely knows, the World Cup will be held in South Africa this summer. To build some hype around the event, FIFA has given money to surrounding countries for marketing. With a portion of its share, Swaziland's 2010 Committee decided to host a mini World Cup of sorts. In total, 13 countries were represented, only two of which non-African: USA(!) and Portugal. The players are all ex-pats who are living in Swaziland.

Before I proceed, I need to personally apologize to all of my countrymen--it was not our proudest day. In the first match, we played Nigeria; for 30 minutes, we fought tirelessly and lost 0-6. We were down, but not out. With our first loss under our belts, we were ready to face the Democratic Republic of Congo. We clearly improved in our performance: this time we only lost 0-5. All-in-all, it went about as well as we expected.


Swaziland is different from the States. Since being here, I've had a number of mis-communications with people, as one may expect. Completing the most mundane tasks can sometimes prove difficult. Apart from obvious differences in accent, Americans and Swazis simply use different words for a lot of things; it often feels like when I speak, I have to hunt for a password. Let me give some examples.

1. If you're at a restaurant and you want a pitcher of water, you cannot say, "pitcher." You must refer to it as a "Jug."
2. If you're filling up your car with gas, you cannot say "fill it up"; instead, you have to say "full tank."
3. If you're at restaurant, you can't say "please bring me the check"; instead, you have to say "please bring the bill."
4. Ketchup is known only as Tomato Sauce.
5. Ground beef is mince.
6. Car trunks are boots.
7. Street lights are robots.

There are a lot more that I can't think of right now, but suffice it to say that I have had some communication issues.