Today was an earlier start than I would have liked for a Saturday but it turned out to be well worth it. John and I were ready by 7:15 and headed over to grab a quick breakfast before getting on the bus. Corbin, Matt, Jess, John, and I held down the back of the bus as the designated tailgate crew. After not too long of a ride we were at the so-called stadium; we were actually on a middle school soccer field with no bleachers, but we made it work.
We threw our stuff down on the track around the field and all started with the breakfast club activities. John and I broke out the “riot punch” and from there it was just a great day. After a few warm ups and a coin toss (you have to pick a flower or 1 rather than heads or tails), they were all ready to go. We came out with a bang as the second play of the game Zach threw it all the way down the field and one of our best receivers had an amazing catch just outside of the end zone. That turned into a touchdown pretty quickly and then an extra point, which was all just on the refs since there were no posts.
Super into the game, we were all taking tons of pictures and rooting for the team until we noticed a Purdue logo on a chair across the field. We obviously had to go check it out so we headed over to the other teams bench and found a husband and wife and their two kids all decked out in Purdue gear. Turns out the parents are both alumnae but they have been living in China for the last 10 years. Their kids have grown up here, but naturally were conditioned to be Purdue fans by their parents. The parents were pretty fun to talk to and it was really interesting to hear about their move from Beijing to Shanghai and about how they raised their kids in China. They have kept their kids in private international schools but I guess they are all pretty fluent in Chinese, which is amazing. They told us how impressed with our team they were and we explained how our team is a lot older than theirs considering they are all only high schoolers and our team has guys from 18 to 28. They told us about some of their players including their son and one guy who actually tried to walk on at Purdue, but got weeded out pretty quickly since he was so cocky.
After talking with them for quite a while we decided to let them watch their son play and headed back to the other side of the field. At half time the other team’s coach complained enough about it being an unfair game that all of the white kids came out for the second half except for our QB and center. The game wasn’t as exciting to watch but SJTU still managed to pull out the win over the China Sea Dragons with a score of 34 to 21. After the game was over and the team had had there celebratory speech, we took a quick bathroom break and got back on the bus. We all reminisced over the game until we got back on campus and most of us immediately got in bed for a nap.
I slept for a couple of hours but woke up feeling really sick and like I might throw up. I laid in bed a little longer and even passed on going back to Big Mama Chef’s for dinner. I eventually felt a little better and headed to the dinning courts with Adam and Jess but couldn’t even eat my whole dinner. Once we got back I decided to just take it easy, work on a little thermo, and get some sleep.
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