Fight On!

It was gameday yesterday (saturday), which is the day USC had its first homegame in football against Nebraska, and everything went suddenly CRAZY here. It was amazing. I woke up hearing my neighbours out in the street shouting "30$ parking", where people were selling parking spaces in their private parking lots to arriving USC fans (although I live about 2.5km from the stadium!). And even though the game started at 5 pm people arrived already around 11-1pm.... well because of the tailgating parties! The tailgating parties are basicly barbecues or grills where the fans bring their own tents, chairs, food and alot of beer and just enjoy life before the big game. The whole campus was just like one huge festival filled with people dressed in red and yellow, it was amazing. When you walked around campus absolute strangers offered you their own food and beer, I have never ever experienced that in Denmark or Iceland. People whom you've never met were suddenly your best friends just because you happend to be studying at the right school. It was awsome! It was impossible not to get captured by the trojan spirit and join in the whole em.. "celebration"?? Well the game hadn't started yet but people were partying like they had just won the world championship. Some of my european friends even ended up buying USC T-shirts and had instantly become hard-core USC fans! GO TROJANS! (USC students are nicknamed trojans).

Even though the stadium, The Coliseum, takes about 100.000 people it was sold out a long ago, as with almost all homegames this season! Some games are so popular that the black market ticket price is at least 2000-3000$ for crappy seats!!!!! But this is of course the game against the archrivals UCLA bruins. Anyways we didn't get tickets to this game, (although students can get pretty cheap tickets), and we therefore watched in on TV. After the game (which we of course won 28-10) there were houseparties everywhere, it was alot of fun (the picture is taken at one).

A German friend. of mine said this gameday reminded him on the World Cup in Germany this summer. I mean this was big, I've never seen anything like it. I spent almost 7 years in Copenhagen and I never really became a fan of FCK or any other team there, but after only one game here I've suddenly become a USC football fan, although I probably don't know the rules. It's simply impossible to escape the atmosphere surrounding it. Anyways, this is how it's going to be every other weekend for this semester... and that's awsome!

Go Trojans
Bjarni