Brazilians Passion for Soccer

When you first meet a Brazilian, one of the first questions they ask you is "what soccer team are you a fan of?" And the past three weeks since being here I had no answer. Upon learning this, all the Brazilians than attempt to convince you that their team is the best and that you shouldn’t listen to people who are fans of other teams. After going to a soccer game this past Sunday at Maracana Stadium in Rio, we were converted into fans of Fluminense, a club from Rio. (mostly because they beat the other team 3-0 and they are currently in first place) A friend from the university named Lucio drove us to Rio for the day which is about a 2 hour drive from our city of Juiz de Fora. Being a Sunday afternoon, I expected that the stadium would have a number of fans present but nothing that exciting.....I was wrong. By the time the game started there were 58,000 people in the stadium! Practically the entire game the fans are chanting the various cheers for Fluminese and everyone is on their feet the entire time. It was TRULY a Brazilian experience. In a country that is predominantly catholic I think that soccer is secretly the number one religion.

The same kid, Lucio, that took us to the soccer match had invited me a few days earlier to go mountain biking. I was not sure what to expect and half assumed that it would be a mellow ride but we ended riding 60 kilometers and had to finish the last 20 in the dark. After spending nearly three straight weeks within the city limits of Juiz de Fora it felt amazing to escape it. The ride passed through various farms and down through a lush valley before dropping us out on the highway 20k from town.

The next day, Lucio invited me to go play soccer at a field about 20 minutes outside the city. The field was down in this valley off the main highway in farm land similar to what we had passed through on our bike ride the day before. The field that most Brazilians play on is a lot smaller than the a normal sized field and is usually played with 6 players on each side. There also are really no leagues that people play in (besides the Professional league), instead people just meet up with friends several times a week to play pick up matches. This was my second time playing since being down here and its been great to play soccer more consistently again since I stopped playing soccer in high school.

Tomorrow will mark the end of our second week of classes. With a limited understanding of Portuguese, I have still been able to understand about 60% of the material that the professors are lecturing about it. It also helps that many of the words are similar to Spanish, and a few, especially in science classes, are very similar to English. For example, the word for "reptile" in Portuguese is "reptil". What the professor says about these "reptils" is a little more difficult to understand.

I have ecology in a few hours so I will end here because we are going to grab lunch at the university cafeteria which is about 90 cents per meal (rice, beans, salad, a meat dish, and fruit) A great deal!