Day 3 in South Africa England v. USA

Saturday, June 12th - First on the agenda was getting the other tickets from Jeramaih (John's ticket guy).  His office is in Mandella Square in a suburb called Sandton.  We were able to do that and shop for some items that friends have asked us to pick up.  John bought US Flag mirror covers and other accessories for the games.  We now have a Vuvusela (South African horn blown by spectators at the games).  With all our new accessories, we headed to Rustenburg.  The drive there was pleasant and we scouted out the stadium area for later in the day.  We has some extra time so we went to the Fan Fest to watch the 2nd Match of the Day that was in progress.  We watched the first half of the game (Argentina v. Nigeria) and then headed to our much anticipated match with England.  The atmosphere in the stadiun was electric.  There was alot of friendly discussion amongst fans. England scored a goal within the first five minutes and the USA fans were a little worried.  But there was no need to worry.  Dempsy scored an equalizer before the end of the first half.  Our goalie (Tim Howard) had a rough run in with a player in the first half but had many saves and ended the night as the player of the game.  We felt as if we had a win, even though it was only a draw.  Getting back to our car and to Joberg was a different adventure.  The Rustenburg folks while very friendly seemed to be very unorganized and not prepared for such a large group of people.  There were only a few vans available to transport people back to the parking area, so many of us began the long hike to the parking lot.  Luckily about half way there  (4 km) we were able to get an empty van to stop for us and take us to the parking lot.  The parking lot remained that (there was no organized way to exit that many cars).  Even the South Africans were talking about the lack of organization on the radio.  When we finally go to the road, we had a line of traffic almost all the way to Petoria.  It was a very late night/early morning when we finally arrived back in Joberg.  We are hoping that for the other matches in Rustenburg, the organizers will have learned something from this one.  The attittude is very low stress and "manana".