World Cup groups

… have been drawn. Gratifyingly, there are no weak groups: all are groups “of death.” Literal death.

Just kidding. These are not the groups. (Besides, the tournament has been expanded from 32 to 48 teams.)

(I should acknowledge that I didn’t create this image; I found it on the Internet.)

The actual groups are these:

Group A

Mexico

South Africa

South Korea

TBD: Czechia, Denmark, Ireland, or North Macedonia

Group B

Canada

TBD: Bosnia & Herzegovina, Italy, Northern Ireland, or Wales

Qatar

Switzerland

Group C

Brazil

Morocco

Haiti

Scotland

Group D

USA

Paraguay

Australia

TBD: Kosovo, Romania, Slovakia, or Turkey

Group E

Germany

Curaçao

Ivory Coast

ECUADOR

Group F

The Netherlands

Japan

TBD: Albania, Poland, Sweden, or Ukraine

Tunisia

Group G

Belgium

Egypt

Iran

New Zealand

Group H

Spain

Cape Verde

Saudi Arabia

Uruguay

Group I

France

Senegal

TBD: Bolivia, Iraq, or Suriname

Norway

Group J

Argentina

Algeria

Austria

Jordan

Group K

Portugal

TBD: DR Congo, Jamaica, or New Caledonia

Uzbekistan

Colombia

Group L

England

Croatia

Ghana

Panama

Locations and times have been decided, too. Ecuador will play in: Philadelphia, against the Ivory Coast; then, Kansas City, against Curaçao; and lastly, East Rutherford, New Jersey, against Germany (in what will be Ecuador’s first World Cup rematch; the countries first played in 2006).

Our Aunt Linda in K.C. is keen to host any relations who’ll attend the Curaçao game. But tickets are rapaciously expensive. I can’t imagine I’ll attend unless I win a sweepstakes out of a cereal box.

Besides, if I travel to K.C., I’ll have to spend precious hours away from the television. I’ll miss Japan vs. Tunisia or some other partidazo.

A note on Curaçao, the smallest nation ever to qualify for a World Cup. This hardly ever happens, but … I didn’t know Curaçao’s location on the map. I knew that Curaçao is one of the Dutch Antilles, but, mentally, I grouped it with islands southeast of Puerto Rico. Actually, it’s off the coast of Venezuela – practically in South America.

I’m ashamed not to have known this. In my defense, Curaçao became a sovereign nation only in 2010.

A day-trip to Wheaton

Yesterday, I traveled with my parents to Wheaton, Illinois. Brian was graduating from college. He is my youngest cousin. I hadn’t seen him since he was a year old; he grew up in Indonesia.

He was very pleased to meet me, and we were immediately photographed together (I don’t have the picture). Then, we hardly spoke to one another. He is a pleasant young man, but very quiet. I am unpleasant, and also rather quiet.

Here Brian is with his parents, my Uncle Tim and Aunt Aphing (Ah-PING).

(My Uncle Tim is my mom’s brother.)

My Aunt Linda and her daughter, my cousin Tanya, visited from Kansas City.

Aunt Aphing served lots of good Indonesian food. But there weren’t enough seats at the table.

“Where will Brian sit?”

Aunt Aphing: “In his room.”

“But this meal is to honor him!”

Aunt Aphing: “But you are the guests.”

Brian and Aunt Aphing ended up eating in the kitchen, on barstools.

Not all of us went to the ceremony. Tanya and I stayed at home and read detective stories. Later, we livestreamed the ceremony, and my dad joined us. The greatest applause was for the ROTC graduates – which my dad thought bizarre (“at Wheaton, of all places,” he said); I thought it perverse but typical.

Watching this ceremony – and the baccalaureate religious service, earlier in the day – I was strongly reminded of Quito’s English Fellowship Church, in which North American missionaries would gather to use their mother-tongue. Wheaton’s organ music surely helped to remind me of the EFC. But the whole vibe of the place was familiar.

Wheaton’s evangelicals are more straitlaced, more prim, than those with whom I now associate in the United States.

Billy Graham was mentioned during the ceremony, of course, as were the famous missionary martyrs of 1956.

R.I.P. Grandma

My mother’s mother died today in a suburb of Kansas City. Because it is almost midnight, I’ll wait until next time to say a few things about my grandma.

My mother has traveled to Kansas City.

I don’t know what sort of funeral will be held – the pandemic complicates everything, of course – but it is not out of the question that I should travel.