Like March Madness

But for the rest of the world.

That's what the World Cup is sort of like when you don't live in the US. Similar to March Madness, but without the last second shots, endless office pools, and One Shining Moment.

Example: Last week one day in class, one of our classmates suggested to our teacher that instead of vocabulary, dictation, phonetics, written comprehension, and our other normal routines, we take the afternoon and go watch the World Cup game that was on that afternoon. I smiled at the attempt but sort of brushed it off. Our teacher is much too serious of a language professor for anything like that. Just for fun I tossed in my two cents and offered to have everyone over to our apartment to watch it. I woke up from my mid-morning day dream when our teacher said, "Yes, that's a good idea... that way we won't disturb the other classes." What?! Skip class to watch soccer? Ok, I'm awake and with you now, how can I help?
Turns out the game that afternoon was our teacher's favorite team, and just the slightest bit of pleading our case set him firmly with the idea. Thus, just as everyone skips work in March to watch the opening round of afternoon games, we did the same here.

Today I was driving through Paris during France's final bow-out game. At one point traffic was clogged and I reached the blockade, a woman in a car stopped talking to a "circulation officer" (which I think is like a traffic cop... maybe supposed to be helping the traffic move? If that's right, then they clearly don't do much). In front of her car was the "Circulation" vehicle, a truck/van with 5 other officers inside huddled over a phone/tv. While one dealt with the problem, the other 5 watched the game, in the middle of a massive traffic jam!