While the world slept...

The bobcats told me they were getting up at 5am. "Doesn't the game start at seven?" I asked, "Yeah but the inauguration is at five, Shakira's going to sing" they informed me.

I slept in my Tri shirt and got up a little after seven. I had to pee. Suddenly, I heard screaming coming from the house next door. "Alec!" I yelled, ripping open the bathroom door, "What happened!?" I busted down the stairs to see Alec sitting in his Tri shirt in the early morning light. "Mexico scored, they're not counting it" he answered.

I remember walking through the sun-baked streets of Madrid in summer, 2002. They were empty. Not a person in sight. As I wandered around, all I could hear were television sets playing soccer games from inside houses. "If you go outside during a game in Mexico, you are not going to see one person" Roberto informed me during our break. I told him about what happened to me during my first World Cup experience in Spain. "I think they may be even more fanatic than us," he informed me "are Americans fanatics for American football?". "I don't think it compares. I don't know, I had a roommate that didn't go out for a whole weekend once because the Packers lost..." I told him. "Was he Mexican?" Roberto asked. Actually, weirdly, my old roommate's mother was Mexican. "Así es" Rafa responded, smiling.

Alec darted up the stairs about a half an hour before the game should end to start getting ready for work. "Alec, no one is going to get a head start on getting to work here, they're going to watch the end of the game" I said, in a voice I'm sure he associates with a scolding mother. Around the end of the game, we started hearing the first signs of motion outside. I went to the dirt track for a run. I was met by a sea of green. Even a passing dog was wearing a Mexican jersey. "Goooooollllll!" the flip flop wearing kids on my street screamed, kicking soccer balls between trash cans.

Oh, my poor students. It was like trying to teach people that were hung over. Tijuana is experiencing something called "June gloom". The ordinarily full sun city opens each day with a cloudy haze that lasts until about ten. It is actually a little chilly. Friday, the gloom stayed all day. It seemed to match the tired mood of my students and co-workers. The only thing that would get them going was game talk. "Dulce, what time did you get up?". "Five am" she answered, putting her head on her desk. "My dad started blaring the TV at 5:30!" another announced. "What do you guys think about that noise they make in the stadium?" I asked. "La vuvuzela!" they announced with delight. "I read that they don't think the Mexican team will be as affected by the noise, because Azteca is already so noisy" I told them. They looked at me blankly. Noise? Who in the world could be bothered by noise?

We got to go home early. First, they sent all of the female students to a bicentennial celebration. When the teachers were left with half empty classrooms, they decided to go ahead and send the boys. It was only later that I found out that they students were given the day off from school in exchange for an obligatory presence at a political rally for a mayoral contender and not to participate in a patriotic display of Mexican history. Attractive young girls and later, a few lurking boys, championing the prospective mayor of Tijuana with sleepy, World Cup eyes, all at the behest of their school.

"That's what's wrong with Mexico" Roberto told me quietly.