“Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Victory!” That’s what you will see on the side of the bus transporting the United States World Cup team to their hotel. Along with that slogan, painted on the side is the famous Stars and Stripes.

The American team is staying at the Irene Country Lodge, a luxury hotel with 74-rooms surrounded by stone walls and barbed wire. The hotel is just to the north of Johannesburg and south of Pretoria.

The team arrived on Monday and was given a warm welcome when they arrived. There are 23 players on the team and they brought along with them an equal number of coaches and support staff. They then resumed practice on Tuesday for their opening match against England on the 12th.

Their venue for practice is in Pretoria’s Pilditch Stadium. It is close to their hotel and is a wonderful stadium to behold. World Cup 2010 is the first to be held south of the equator in several years. The latest one was in Argentina in 1978.

The climate would need getting used to for the Americans. Back in the US, it was mostly warm before they left. Now they are faced with a different climate. How will this affect their game? We’ll get to see them test the game conditions on Saturday in their game against Australia. This will be their last warm-up before the actual games.

World cup fever is definitely in South Africa. It is evident in the ads everywhere and jerseys being sold in the middle of the street.