I got in at midnight, went to bed a little after two, and my first meeting was at 8am. But all in all a good day. Busy but interesting. I could maybe get into this life.

I wrapped up the day with the france-germany match in a hotel bar.. always one of my favorite things, to watch soccer in an international setting filled with everyone from everywhere. This was mostly soccer-crazed ugandans, but there was a healthy dash of european and american in there too. Everyone gets very drunk and friendly and it turns into the best of sport- bringing people together.

I suddenly realized that I watched this same match - quarterfinals - four years ago with this same manager (he still drives me crazy. i'm still working with him) in ethiopia. It was uruguay ("hand of god", aka "the biter" suarez) vs ghana. I remember that we were in a huge stadium filled mostly with Ethiopians and other Africans. The games were in South Africa that year and Ghana was the last African team still in play. The whole continent, maybe the whole world (except uruguay) - hoping so hard they would continue to the semi-finals. It felt like all of Africa was just pulsing soccer.

And after all the cheating/red card drama, when that last penalty shot was missed, the huge stadium of 10 000 just went so eerily quiet... I pictured the silence spreading from Ethiopia all the way south through every single roadside bar down to Joburg. It just stayed quiet, and then the game went into penalty shoot outs and Ghana lost, and then everyone just went quietly home.

10:24 p.m. - 2014-07-04