"He missed. I can't believe he bloody missed."

So I realized I've completely neglected to talk about this social sporting phenomenon called the World Cup, which is ridiculous considering it's the second most-discussed topic (after all things science) in the lab. Days generally begin with everyone trickling in, talking about the results of the games that happened while we were all still asleep (Pacific Time is not working well with this World Cup thing, the third match of the day comes on at 11:30 am. Problematic.). At 11:30, people begin to pull ESPN3 up on their computer screens to watch the game. And the trash talk begins.

This morning I really noticed how diverse the Diabetes Center is. At my 9:30 am lab meeting, I counted fourteen people in room, not including us three interns. Out of fourteen people, only three (maybe four, I'm not sure) were born in this country. Only one person of these three has parents that were born in the United States. I suppose this is the main reason for the severity of the trash talk. When I looked around the room before the meeting started I saw:

- Ivan (who's Russian) talking to this petite Brazilian woman from our partner lab about how the United States barely won the morning (Ivan just really likes soccer. I'm not exactly sure what team he's rooting for, because Russia...yeah.).

- The petite Brazilian woman telling the Spaniard woman from her lab that Spain is going to lose to Brazil and the Spaniard woman agreeing.

- French man Christian Vaisse (head of our partner lab, aka the Vaisse lab) and a woman from his lab who is also French, telling Allison (head of my lab, incase you forgot), who's Chinese, that they really aren't upset (They were lying). Christian and this woman, but especially Christian, have made me decide that French accents are my favorite. Specifically male French accents. Specifically when Christian speaks to me I kind of melt.

- This other man from the Vaisse lab pouting silently while listening to Christian, Allison, and French woman talk. I suspect he's also French, although his accent isn't as thick.

- James (British) telling Jamila he prefers wrestling to soccer and that Rooney looks like a yob (British slang for thug, I'm learning a lot)

In addition to people talking about soccer all the time, everyones' lab meeting presentations entail propaganda advertising their support of whatever country they're from. It's a lot to take in.

My favorite FIFA/lab moment happened this past Tuesday. At 11:30 I put the Nigeria vs. South Korea game on and Ivan put the Argentina vs. Greece game on. Ivan and I sit back to back across our bay(our computer screens face each other) and it was just a whole mess of us trying to out watch both games with the sound all the way up. Then, Alyssia (pronounced Alicia; she's from South Korea), who's in a different lab but works one bay over, kicked me out of my desk and refused to move. She has quite the mouth, so the trash talk got intense. At one point, it was Ivan, Louise (who's Swedish; Nigeria has a Swedish coach), Alyssia, and I were jumping up and down screaming at the computers, each other, and who knows what else. It was great, even though Nigeria lost and Alyssia, two days later, still reminds me every hour.

In conclusion I've realized two things:

1) I want to work in a lab as culturally diverse as the Diabetes Center. It's refreshing to hear different languages and accents daily.

2) Americans (like Andrew) don't like soccer. They just want to dominate the world.

This video almost convinced me otherwise. Almost.

That's all. Exciting tales to come!

chinwe