She kept chanting, "Go, Gandhi!". I asked her if she understood the United States was playing. She said, "Yes, but I feel like Gandhi is an underdog and also I have heard people quote them before and they seem really nice."
I asked her if she knew any Gandhi quotes off the top of her head. She spouts off, "You must be the change you want to see in the world" like it's rote.
I'm impressed. I ask her where she learned that (thinking that teachers are vastly undervalued and underpaid as I did so).
"Either Dog With a Blog or from a Scooby episode, I guess."
I ask her if she knows that Gandhi was a man, and not a country. Nope. No clue.
Needless to say, we had geography, spiritual and soccer lessons tonight, folks.
The cliff notes:
- I think of Mahatma Gandhi as the Indian version of Martin Luther King, Jr. Born into a Hindu merchant caste family, he led Indian nationalism, inspiring civil rights and freedom around the world. In other words, he was the man. Not a country. The man.
- Ghana is a country on the West Coast of Africa. It is democratic and situated right in the midst of other striving nations. Thus it's often termed, "the island of peace" though it is no island. Ghana holds a special place in my heart because they are farmers. Sexy farmers at that. They harvest cocoa. Loads of it.
- The World Cup: Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) was founded in Paris in 1904. The idea was simply that for the love of the game, a federation should be formed so that it could formally be played. Football (that's soccer, American friends) hit the Olympics. It was wildly popular. FIFA wanted to capitalize on that popularity and create their own tournament. The first FIFA World Cup was held in Montevideo, Uruguay in July 1930.
Oh, and the US beat Gandhi...I mean Ghana tonight. Woot!
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