Nederlands v. Macedonie

On April 1, our program took us all to a national soccer game- a qualifying match for the 2010 world cup. It wasn't going to be a great game because we were all almost 100% sure that the Netherlands was going to beat Macedonia. Our program directors were very clear about what we were supposed to wear- orange, who we were supposed to be routing for- The Netherlands, and how we were supposed to behave ourselves- like a bunch of football hooligans. We all arrived orange-clad to Amsterdam Centraal Station to board the metro to get to the stadium. Half of the students were a little drunk, but they fit in with all of the rest of the people on the metro who were also all wearing orange and singing songs in Dutch while beating on their drums and even smoking a cigarette inside the metro... Many of them were old men in their orange work jumpsuits banging on the walls of the metro. Once we finally got to the stadium we all entered with ease and watched the Netherlands flawlesssly beat Macedonia... NOT. April fools.
When we finally got to the stadium it turned out that our tickets had been blacklisted- which means they weren't valid anymore. Fortunately (or unfortunately) I had accidentally gotten into the stadium by foloowing a group of people with valid tickets. All of my friends were locked out of the stadium and I was all alone inside. I wandered about aimlessly waiting to hear news form my friends- they had bought new tickets and were sitting in a restricted area I could not access. So I decided to just look for my seat even though I wasn't even sure if there was a seat for me. Luckily, there were a large group of other ciee students who also had been mistakenly let in so I sat with them and watched the 4-0 victory of the Macedonians.
Besides the fear that the Dutch security guards were going to find me and kick me out of the stadium, the game was pretty fun. Some young boys behind us kept throwing paper planes made out of the pages of a magazine down at us, trying to get them onto the field. At half-time one of the program coordinators found our group and apologized about the whole ticket mix-up, she had absolutely no idea why it had happened. All that matters is that Nederland won, we wouldn't want a bunch of sad dutch on our hands. The weekend before, Scotland played in Amsterdam which obviously meant that thousands of scottish men paraded through Amsterdam in kilts, duh! They lost though, which then clearly meant that there were going to be thousands of Scottish men in kilts sitting solemnly in the great variety of bars throughout Amsterdam.
Tot Ziens (see you, bye!)