When In Enemy Territory, Wear Your Colors Timidly OR ELSE...

After a few naughty fingers, evil stares, and a threat to beat us up after the game, we're ALIVE!! And all this maliciousness brought on by wearing a USA jersey at the game. We had some hesitation, er, fear, that wearing a USA jersey in a sea of Mexican green might bring on some undesired attention, but our Brooklyn-blooded-I-have-NO-fear friends were expecting us to bleed red, white, and blue along with them. So we compromised and stashed our jerseys in my bag until we reached our seats. You know, 'cuz if there was ever a time to be low-profile, this day was it.

Once we reached our **UH-MAZING** seats (thanks to super fan, Dwight, who vigilently stood in line at Ticketmaster for us), we donned our jerseys and Dwight proudly hung up the American flag. It just so happened that we were fortified by a large cement wall -- aka the beer retaining wall -- and barbed wire, and the people in our section seemed somewhat more civilized than the average beer-throwing, taunting young gun. All turned out to be very good things once we realized that we were not in good company.

One day we will show this to our children and advise them that branding your colors on enemy territory might get you beaten up.

There were taunts like, "Yankee go home" and "America sucks," and every time the Mexican team scored a goal, people physically turned their bodies and launched all their anger and pent-up George Bush hatred towards us to suck up. The odds were 6 to 120,000.

Well, the game didn't go well (now we know why: Donovan has AH1N1) , and when Mexico made the second goal in the final minutes of the match, we quickly untied the flag, took off our jerseys, and filed out of the stadium as fast as we could. One young 'un in particular really wanted to fight us, and at that point, we decided to lay down our American pride and walk out with lowered heads. Disappointing. Exhilirating. A once in a lifetime experience.

Here are a few more pictures of the game:

Estadio Azteca seats nearly 120,000 riled up Mexican fans.

The starting line-up

Per Mexican machismo, the pretty girl parade during half-time

This bad boy enjoyed turning around and flinging the finger at us.