Vamos Vamos Argentina: National Soccer Team Against Ecuador!!

Not my picture; but it gives a good feel to just how big the stadium is

Showing off my Argentina blue and white

On Sunday I was fortunate enough to watch a soccer game that pitted the Argentina National Team against Ecuador.  It was an experience I will not soon forget!  The week before several of my roommates had gone together to buy tickets for the game.  At the time they went I was in class, so they were kind enough to buy a ticket for me.  We were all planning on going together, but often times when you are trying to plan anything with a large group you end up lacking organization.  Come game day, we were all sitting around waiting for everybody else to make decisions.  One strange thing was that none of us could find out what time the game actually started.  It wasn’t printed on the tickets everybody we asked didn’t know for sure.   All of the estimates that we were given fell between 5:30 and 7:00.  When we looked online the only info we could find was for what time the game started on T.V.  so we guessed 6:00 and planned to leave early enough to get there early, because things were bound to go wrong. 

On Sunday, I was resting in my room since I knew the game would be high energy and would probably drain me.  My roommates had left for lunch, but I had already eaten lunch for a friend and they assured me that they would come back and wake me up before they left for the game.  At this point I didn’t even have my ticket because the roommates who had bought them were still hanging on to all of them.

At 4:30 I started to get nervous because I thought we should have already left (I was right)  At 5:00 they all finally showed back up gave one of my other roommates our tickets and left to get in a taxi.  This made my roommate Madie and I pretty nervous.  This meant that the two of us had to go alone to the game…great they had to pick the two blondes in the house.  It is a good thing that I’ve gotten pretty confident with my Spanish lately, because I knew this was going to be an adventure. For starters I didn’t have any knowledge of what the stadium set up was like and to add to the confusion we were going to be cutting in close on time.  It turns out that the game started at 6:30…so we were o.k. but barely! 

First of all we had a hard time finding a Taxi.  I knew the general direction of the stadium…plus I figured any taxi driver would know exactly where to take us.  This wasn’t a problem but finding an available taxi was.  The first taxi we got into told us he wouldn’t take us there and sent us back out onto the street.  Next we waiting for 20 minutes to find an available taxi although we watched about a million drive by. 

When we finally got into a taxi and told the taxi driver where we were going we were really relieved.  At first he kept trying to tell me something that I wasn’t understanding because he was sort of mumbling (that is sooo annoying!)  At least he started to enunciate and I understood.  He explained that the streets surrounding the stadium were closed to traffic and then told us how to get to the appropriate entrance.  This was incredibly helpful.  After we got out of the taxi and walked the remaining 5 blocks to the stadium we were feeling especially overwhelmed.  We ran into a whole bunch of other American students we knew who were wandering around lost trying to find the right entrance!  (Thank god for that taxi driver)  We got patted down in a security line, walked to the right entrance and were right in the middle of the huge crowd making its way into the stadium.  At this point Madie pulled out the tickets and I got nervous because she only had what looked like two scraps of torn paper. We made our way into the stadium and I went to show a guard our tickets to find out where our seats were.   When I handed him my ticket he asked me for the  “ubicación”   I turned to ask Madie if there was anything else that the other roommate had given her.  She turned white and explained that there had been but she had left them back at our homestay!!  Yikes!  The guard shrugged his shoulders and sent us wandering off to the right and said to look for seats in the next section up.  I was slightly confused, I knew we could still sit down and watch the game, but I had no idea what the other part of the ticket was for. I assumed he was sending us up one section to sit in cheaper seats that weren’t assigned so we had to find two open seats.  I was mostly right.  We obviously stuck out at this point because we were two confused blondes looking lost and speaking to each other in English.  A security guard stopped us and asked if we needed help.  I explained as best as I could our current situation and he was very helpful.  Turns out that nobody pays attention to the assigned seats…everybody just gets there early and sits wherever they want to in their assigned section.  So, it didn’t matter at all that Madie had forgotten the other part of the ticket somebody was already sitting in our spots for sure!  The guard then pointed to a section with some open seats.  We sat as far up as we could in our section with our backs to a wall that separated our section from some private viewing areas.  This made us both feel safer as there was no one sitting behind us to throw things and also because there would be nothing going on behind us that we wouldn’t be able to see. 

The game was awesome and there was sooo much energy from the Argentina fans and even from the small section that was cheering on Ecuador.  Even though neither Madie nor I are soccer  experts we could tell that Argentina was not playing well.  We were supposed to beat them handedly.  We could tell that we were doing better because Argentina had possession for more time and attempted more shots.  However, with 20 minutes left the score was still 0-0.  Soon there after Ecuador scored a goal and their section went nuts.  The rest of the crowd got very agitated and upset.  At this point you could cut the tension with a knife.  Madie and I were having a blast cheering along with the cheers we understood.  Some of the more obvious ones were chanting Argentina, Punto, or general noise making.  There were a couple of songs that we couldn’t make out the words to until later in the game including this one:

Vamos, vamos Argentina,

vamos, vamos a ganar,

que esta barra quilombera,

no te deja, no te deja de alentar.

 

English translation:

Come on, come on Argentina,

Come on, come on, let’s win,

that these raucous supporters,

don’t give up, don’t give up cheering for you.

 

We were only guessing how much time was left because we couldn’t really see the monitors and there was no large time clock.  A few people had started wandering off so we could tell that time was starting to run out.  Argentina picked up the pace of the play and at last scored a goal.  Everybody went nuts.  You could feel the stadium vibrate with the noise and the jumping up and down.  People were banging on the aluminum wall at our backs.  Then, everybody stood up; there was an announcement that we couldn’t hear.  The lady next to me explained that time had run out.  The goal had happened with only 5 seconds to spare.  Thus, Argentina pulled off a tie at the very last second.   We left the stadium with the huge crowd.   At this point we really became aware of how much we stood out.  Good thing we were Argentina Jerseys! 

There was no way we were going to find a cab so we started walking towards the nearest subway station.  About a mile and half later we entered the crowded subway stop and waited 10 minutes for the train that took us home. 

Later on we estimated that there were over 60,000 people at the game.  What an experience! 

Close Call

Today started with another 4 hours of Spanish class.  Studying Spanish in another country is so much easier than at home.  Somehow I managed to incorporate yesterday’s lesson magically over night.  I can already tell that it made a huge difference in how I narrate in the past tenses.  I was tired from going out the night before, but nothing a little coffee couldn’t fix. Ironically, I wasn’t much of a coffee drinker before this semester.  During the last month of school, I started drinking more iced mochas and other sweeter concoctions.  Now I have graduated to regular coffee (nobody can survive a four year college degree without making the switch eventually) to the extent that next fall I’m going to need a coffee pot to get my daily cup of joe.  For the record the coffee is really good here. 

After class I went to the cell phone place and the store clerk fixed the phone I bought from Maria.  I finally feel connected to the world again.  I also stopped at a supermarket on the way home and bought some shampoo and various other things I only brought in travel sizes. 

We decided to forgo the soccer match today because it just seemed like too dangerous of an activity for students who just arrived a week ago.  It is a semi-final match in the more dangerous of the two soccer stadiums.  Also, because it is a special game it is at night.  My gut was telling me not to go so we didn’t.  There will be many more opportunities that will be safer.  The national team has a home game on father’s day against Ecuador. 

Although I eliminated one risk from today’s dangers there was still a moment today that I was really really scared.  This story should be filed under “WOW SOMEBODY SHOULD HAVE TOLD ME!!! “  There are a whole bunch of parking garages along one of the blocks that use to get to school.  I’ve seen a whole bunch of cars go into them, but never one come out.  The doors are usually closed and whenever one is open I look both ways before proceeding.   As I was walking by one today the door started to open and this loud beeping noise really scared me.  I had to run to get out of the way in time.  After that, I noticed that way above the garage doors there are lights sort of like a stop light.  There aren’t very big but the light turns red when a car was leaving.  I had never noticed them before.  I’m just glad that I figured this out now before I got hit by a car!!  Again, why didn’t any of the guide books or my roommates say anything? 

Tonight I am going to stay in and catch up on some sleep, because Steph and Carsten and I are going to go out every night this weekend.  Oh and like every other thing party-related, the porteños go all out.  The weekend bar and dance club scene starts on Thursdays. 

First Day of Class and Mundo Bizarro Again

Yesterday was a great but day but it started out pretty quietly.  I went to class for the first time; my instructor is really fun.  The 4 hours went by really fast.  I can tell this is the class that I need to be in because we are going to be covering all of the grammar points I can handle pretty well in writing, but that never quite seem to make it to my daily speech.  Needless to say, (and I don’t say this lightly as I would prefer to lean towards the modest side) the fluidity of my speaking is way better than the most of the students.  (There is one guy in the class who has lived here for a couple of year…)   Anyway, my classmates in South Dakota  would stack up very well against these students.   At lunch, a Jewish girl from Florida made my day.  She asked me if I am a native speaker or if I just spoke Spanish at home.  Obviously she lacks the trained ear of native speaker who would be able to tell that I am not one, but nonetheless I was very very flattered.  After lunch Carsten and Stephanie (two girls from my program with whom I get along very well) and I went to China town to try and eat lunch.  The restaurant we wanted to go to ended up being closed so we settled for the bar/restaurant on a corner where you could sit outside in these tent-like canopies.  I had a medialuna.  This is a croissant.  They are so good here.  They have this sweet coating on the top and the contents of the sandwich itself are always salty. It is my new favorite dish! 

After lunch I went home and took a nap and just hung around. I did my homework in ten minutes.  (I don’t need as much help with writing and reading so the homework should always be easy J )  For supper we had a meal where you could eat everything with your hands, because we were playing poker!  I stink at poker so it was no surprise that I lost right away.  I was the first one out.  However, the game was still very enjoyable.  Now I really think Luciano and Maria are like my grandparents; they are card=sharks too!

After the poker game I met Carsten and Stephanie to go out for drinks.  They really wanted to go to Mundo Bizarro.  I didn’t really want to go back; but I agreed seeing as it is a place they should see eventually, the drinks were good, and it made me feel more confident to be going someplace I was already familiar with since this was the first time I had gone out with anyone besides my roommate.  This time the video screen featured among other things a scene from planet of the apes that they played over and over again.  For ahile they were playing Christmas music!  I have definitely taken on the role of translator/designated communicator so I need to feel confident that I know where I am going.  I thought this was going to bother me, but it is helping my Spanish to improve very quickly.  My new favorite drink is a Pinarito; I love them!  It is made with rum and grapefruit juice.  The girls and I had one drink alone until we were joined by three other tourists. Two of the guys were from Rio de Janeiro Brazil and the third was from a small town near Paris.  The two Brazilian guys did not speak Spanish but there English was o.k.  The guy from France didn’t speak English but his Spanish was definitely native like, although it was of the Spain variety.   The whole conversation was like an adventure; I found out that I can understand Portuguese enough to get by if necessary; and the two guys from Brazil said that they understood my Spanish very well and that this was a sign that it is pretty good.  Overall a good night.  I went to bed at 3:30 in the morning which is incredibly late for me and ridiculously early by B.A. standards.  Today, I am going to go to class, fit in a nap and then maybe on to a my first soccer game…