Week 3 - fun times

I am a total slacker! It’s been a while since my last post but there has just been sooooo much going on. First of all…it is HOT! HOT! HOT! We have not felt the heat like this before – it’s about 93 degrees, but feels like 110! You know I like the heat, but this has been pretty miserable.

So where do I even start (this is what I get for waiting so long in posting!). Last week we had two major events – 1) we did our community service day at Caza de Crianca and 2) I got to go to a Brazilian soccer game! Both were equally really great experiences.

Caza de Crianca is an organization that essentially builds schools in under privileged neighborhood to provide a safe and healthy environment for children that cannot afford to pay for schooling. We had a the opportunity to pay a visit to the 7-10 year old kids. The IBM team was broken up into 3 teams of 5-5-4, and each team had a group of about 50 kids or so. We did few activities with them such as teaching them the Old McDonald song, we brought postcards from each of our home countries to share with the kids, and we even got to play some American football and baseball with them (the US team brought footballs and baseballs). The kids just loved it. Their faces were just priceless in showing them such simple things, yet they thought the world of it. The kids definitely made my day, but more importantly, I think we definitely brought many smiles to them as well.

So the soccer game…Ummm, Brazilians definitely LOVE their soccer. You definitely have to experience it believe it – there is just no way I can do justice in describing the experience. We went to a semi-final match for the Brazil Northeast Cup between Sport (the Recife local team) and the Fortaleza local team, which is apparently a pretty big deal.  We were dropped off by the taxi a few blocks from the stadium, and we come to find out the taxi dropped us off on the side of the opposing team. Let’s just say that the atmosphere was definitely tense and not the friendliest. We did not know we were on the opposing team side, so when we got to the Recife team side it was a completely different environment. The fans were pumped up, chanting their team song (no clue what the actual words were), and just all around ‘in the moment.’ Again, not really easy to describe because it’s one of those things you just have to see to believe. 

So this is all before we actually got IN the stadium. In the stadium the atmosphere was just charged and unbelievably LOUD. There are no assigned seats – you buy tickets based on sections, so you basically have to claim a seat/section and defend it at all cost as some people just tend to pile in on the good seats. I am not sure why they even have seats in the stadium – mostly everybody stood the entire game.  Once the game started all I can say is – WOW! Talk about being passionate about a game – the roar of the crowd on good plays was just as loud as the roar of the crowd when a player would mess up. There was definitely nothing lost in translation with understanding how the crowd felt about team players, the plays, and most especially the refs (and I learned a few not so nice Portuguese words). To give you an idea on how serious Brazilians can get with their soccer games, during half time the refs are escorted off the field with a circle of police officers surrounding them with bullet proof shields – eek! My US family, don’t freak out – this is apparently just a precaution and obviously I am back safe and sound :-)