Nothing says American Pride like making sure to watch the Super Bowl even while abroad. It took us a whole week and some serious planning via facebook, but we eventually had a group of over forty Americans (and a couple Europeans awkwardly mixed in) taking over a whole chunk of the bar where they had set up multiple projectors to show the game. Even the ride on the Tube to get to the bar was somewhat of an adventure, simply because of our numbers. I’ve almost grown accustomed to immediately being marked as American in the first seconds of opening my mouth, but there’s absolutely no way to not seem obnoxious and out of place like being a bunch of Americans on our way to watch American football.
To be fair, I’m not a big American football fan. I honestly get bored with all of the tackling and running. I feel there’s also a lot of standing. That doesn’t mean I’m not a Cleveland Browns fan (even though they seem to lose more than anything else, but oh well), and so therefore was rooting for the Packers. I knew I would at least want a team though, because it’s definitely more fun when you have times to cheer.
The whole bar was packed of Americans, so much so that the British people actually seemed awkward in our midst. We also had so much pride for our own sport, that if we found British people (some were in all-out American football padding and uniform… go figure), we looked at them with disdain. We have been surrounded by the British culture for quite a while now, which I believe has made us a little protective of our own culture.
I enjoyed watching the game immensely, mostly because I was among friends. We cheered and groaned as one; a heaving mass of energy and empty Heinekens squished together, the only light reflecting from the projector right in front of us. It had been a good plan to reserve a space, because it made it really easy for us to have a space. Otherwise, we might have been all over the entire building, and where would have been the fun in that?
There was one moment when some creepy old guy suddenly appeared in the middle of our blob of college kiddos. He shifted his way in stealthily, and I watched him behind a safety barrier of my friends. I mostly only saw him from the back, but by the amount of gray hairs on his head, I honestly could tell you no reason for why he appeared between our tables, smack dab in the middle of our group. He tried flirting (or at least chatting) with one of our girls, who then grabbed the arm of the closest guy to her as a buffer. There were a lot of suspicious glances in his direction, and a lot of mouthing inquiry within our group. The buffer guy ended up saying something to him, and fortunately he eventually receded. He also never returned, probably because he found another group of poor unfortunate souls.
Instead of the fantastically expensive commercials (which after watching them today online, did not impress me), we watched a group of three gentlemen from BBC chat about the game. It was too loud to really hear what they were talking about, but what I gathered from the conversation, they didn’t really know much about American football. Granted, they probably knew more than most British people (I mean, it says something when before they start showing the game, they put up a link on the projectors for the rules of the game), but they weren’t very good at taking up the airtime. My friend and I literally noticed a moment when they ran out of things to say. Each man looked at the others awkwardly for a few moments of silence before breaking out in strangled chuckles. We watched them laugh at each other for probably another half minute until finally returning to the game.
We left after the half time show mainly because by then it was already two in the morning. The game had started at 11:30 in the evening, and most of our group could barely stand with exhaustion. From my perspective, I would say it was a successful night, and the next day wasn’t bad at all, seeing as it didn’t even take us a terribly long time to get home. For once, the night buses liked us (*note: night buses are not the Knight Bus from Harry Potter. They’re not nearly that cool, but man, are they handy after the Tube closes at midnight*). It was refreshing to be connected to the States again, because on other occasions, it feels like I’m wading in a pool just barely deep enough to make it too hard to stand, and the water’s a murky brown color, just like the Thames…
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