My First Experience with Uruguayan Soccer

Before I get into the soccer thing I'm going to give a little run down on my first experience with Uruguayan Nightlife. At least half of the exchange students(There are maybe...35 of us) went out to a bar in my neighborhood called "La Primata" last night. I'm fairly sure this means "The Primate", which is cool-the Silverback Gorilla being one of my favorite animals(right SouthernStunna?). La Primata is fairly small, and without a roof in some places, I believe this is design feature as there were trees growing out of these holes. If not, big ups to the trees for being heads up. Everything was fun, fairly unremarkable. There were, however, two Uruguayans that were pretty funny. The two of them were a year or two younger than me and had incredible mullets. I'd put the mullets somewhere in this range, but more of the South American variety:

So these two young Uruguyans are getting very animated. Each is trying to sway me into pledging my allegiance to their soccer teams. Like most Uruguayans, these cabelleros fell into two camps. Nacional y Penarol. The two biggest soccer teams in Uruguay. Mullet one is in my left ear telling me that his club is "The King of the Cups", and the other mullet really didn't have an argument but that didn't phase him in the least.

Out of the blue another Uruguayan, no mullet here-more along the lines of Cory from Boy Meets World-butts into the conversation. "Soccer is not about violence! Penarol and Nacional, they don't get it. This is a game of peace, it brings people together. Look. " At this point he pulls up his sweater to reveal a Bob Marley T-Shirt. He then starts saying that he is a fan of Defensor, a more peaceful team. This is where I make my mistake. Fredy, Gustavo's father and my soccer coach, played soccer at Defensor. I mention this, claiming that I like Defensor-mostly just to get a rise from the two young mullets-"Cory" goes crazy. He starts off saying that he was a goalie like Fredy but wasn't tall enough, and ends up putting his forehead against mine and telling me he knows he will see me playing for Defensor in the future. How he got to that conclusion..your guess is as good as mine.

Now, back to the subject of this blog. I was sitting in my casa a few hours ago and what I really wanted to do was play guitar. Apparently the guitar is missing some strings or something, so I decide to go for a walk. The 500 blocks I walk to school every day just aren't catabolic for me today.

I'm walking, and it's dark so I act like I know where I'm going. Pocitos is safe, but I figure it's best not to look too much like a tourist when you're walking alone in the city at night. So I'm walking, still quite close to my house, and I hear a ball bouncing and I see a crack of light through these doors a bit off the road. It's a highschool(I think, I later tried to clarify this with mixed results. It may have highschool and college classes) Unfortunately, there is a metal fence between what seems to be soccer and my current location. I look around, not sure how to get in...not seeing much except some old guy, looks a bit like Oscar the Grouch

I go over to him, "Yo Oscar, they playing soccer in there?"
"Sha Sha Sha. Sha Sha Sha. Sha." Thankfully, Oscar gesticulates while mumbling. I figure that I can go around the corner and find my way in. I eagerly press the door open lightly...VOLLEYBALL! Volleyball!?! practice? really guys? No wonder the door was closed, I wouldn't want anyone seeing me either. I feel like men practicing volleyball inside is on roughly the same level as someone taking steroids to enhance their badmitton performance. Volleyball is undoubtedly a sport best enjoyed in the summer...in the company of the opposite sex? Even better. These guys were practicing tactics and shit, in the winter, in the gym. Bad.

I walk back to my boy Oscar. He mumbles some more, no gesticulating this time so I'm out of luck. I walk a little more, as far as I dare before I might get too lost, and head back. Walking back I pass Oscar again. He calls me out! Oscar really is a nice guy, he actually gesticulates this time too. I'm supposed to go inside, talk to another guy. Let's call him Jabba. Jabba is also very helpful, and mumbles slightly less than Oscar. Jabba is kind enough to tell me that there is indeed soccer going on, I can't play as it is a private team, but I can watch.
"What is the team Jabba?"
"ORT Universitario"
ORT(Universidad de La Republica-I guess someone just likes the letter T) is the public school in Uruguay. I'm not sure how many students go to ORT, but it's a lot, a whole lot. It is the national school that students can go to for free somehow and I pass their architecture building on the way home. It's probablly twice the size of my school-which I am told has 5,000 students. These Universitario teams are the equivalent of college soccer I guess, I'm not too sure of the regulations because some of the teams are parts of professional organizations(Nacional Universitario for example) and some of the players are in the mid-late twenties. So I go to watch, they are just getting started and haven't actually begun playing yet. They look friendly enough, and I really want to play, so I approach the guy who looks like the coach.

Just to clarify for a moment, this is futbol de sala, not regular soccer. Think soccer on a basketball court with a small ball that's much heavier than a normal ball, it doesn't really bounce. It's a bit strange to hit, you can't put the same sorts of movement on the ball as you can't wrap your foot around it the same way. A lot of players seemed to almost shoot with their toes a lot of the time.

After a bit of talking, I understand this guy, I ask if I can play. This isn't a formal training session so he says sure. I held my own. There were two badasses, I would say another 2 were probablly a bit better than me(at futbol de sala atleast) but I definately held my own in the field of 8-10 players. I figure this is a good sign. There are tons of trophies and photos of the equipo universitario(our team in this league) in my school, but we can't be much better than these guys given the size of their school I am thinking. The coach and I talked for a bit, which went smoothly, although he either had a bad memory or I wasn't speaking as clearly as I hoped because he asked me the same questions a couple times. He joked that I should drop out of Catolica and go to ORT so I could play with them though so I take that as a good sign.

I didn't have many highlights, it took a little while to get used to the feel of the ball for sure, but I had huevos(literally:eggs, I'll let you guess at the meaning) and definately won a lot of balls. I did have one nice goal from about half field(again, think basketball court, not soccer field) and scored four all together, a respectable tally. Oh, and I almost had a nasty little chip off the volley, they went nuts when it missed by an inch or two.

That's about it though. I left a little early because my toes were killing me. I think I am going to need to buy some indoor shoes because these cross trainers aren't working. Pulling off my shoe when I got home, my hopes were confirmed. I've got a black toe nail again, or I will in a few days. They invited me to come play in this game, they usually play Tuesdays at 10:15 so I think I am going to try and start doing that. I need to send an email to some of the Catolica people too and get into the actual team at my school.

First day of classes is Monday, we do a bus tour of the city and a placement test for Spanish tomorrow.
Ciao

Orientation

Ok, I've got a bit of time around the house at the moment so I'm going to try and write a little bit about my first day of school.

Classes don't start until the 4th but today was the first of a three day orientation. As we arrive at the school this morning I was quickly introduced to a few other exchange students. I think three of them were Austrian and an American girl, one of the Austrian girls may have been German though. Austria, Germany-what's the difference anyway?

So upon being ushered into the classroom I slide(literally) into a seat that was not built for my American body. For visual reference:


we are introduced to a few members of the staff. They proceeded to speak rapidly in a foreign language, I missed most of that part. After the staff came Nacho, a Uruguayan student, and perhaps a part time comedian. Nacho gave us a short speech and began leading us through all sorts of introduction excercises/games. Thankfully none of these were especially awkward or embarrassing, as they tend to be in America.

I should also note, that the only two games that were winnable, I won. Setting the standard for US olympic athletes, I brought home the gold for Uncle Sam. The first of these games was a team game fairly similar to Simon Says, without requiring knowledge of the body parts, thankfully. The other, seemed to be a test of reflexes. In retrospect, I'm not entirely sure what it had to do with getting to know your classmates at all. That said, I had to run to the middle of the (small) room and grab something from Nacho's hand and return to my seat. For maximum dominance you had to avoid being tagged on the way back to your seat. In true American fashion, I used my athletic superiority to obtain the prize and then deftly dodged a Mexican girl on the way back to my seat. I was, might I add, the only one who accomplished this feat.



I came to an interesting revelation during these introductions as well. Foreign people still have the same accents in Spanish, and French guys still sound stupid. I honestly thought the French guy(who has been here a semester already) was speaking "Ubby-Dubby"-you know what I'm talking about.

After classes I was supposed to call the house mother for a ride home. Because of some sort of phone complications, this didn't work out. So, I set out on foot. There was one caveat to this plan. Having been here for under 24 hours at this point, I don't know exactly where we live. So...I walk with another exchange student, a Spanish girl named...Lauria, Lewria, I still don't really have clue, who is living with the sister of my house mother. Using my inherent problem-solving skills, I try talking to Lucas, a member of this woman's family. Now I imagine Lucas, if he lived in New York, would have an accent that put Pauli from the Sopranos to shame. Talking to Lucas sounded something like this: "sha-do sha-deh shashasha shan". What I did gather, was some semblance of a way home.

Now it's a bad sign when you ask someone for directions to el Ombu, a landmark near my house, after losing my way, and they say "you're walking?!" This happened several times, as I zig zagged my way around looking for Boulevard Espana for a while, "It's almost 20 blocks!" They warned me. Thankfully, I have graduated from the Tim Malenfant School of City Travel which includes hiking from Central Park to Ground Zero, going back up to Times Square then swimming to the Statue of Liberty, etc.

I gladly hoofed it, and saw a decent bit of Pocitos(my neighborhood) in the process. Montevideo seems like a pretty cool city. You see a fair ammount of horses on the road, I probablly saw 4 today. I was told they were the poor people, but I think they are also the garbage people, or maybe they just take the garbage to find food..again, language barrier. The architecture is interesting, I saw a bank today with a pool, I'm thinking that getting a membership there would be a clutch move. None of the buildings seem to fit together in any sort of style really though and grafitti is rampant.

Shortly after finishing my trek Laura, Lorna(the English girl whose computer I am using at the moment :) )and Jose, her boyfriend from Peru, got home. Apparently they had gone to look for me, aware that something had gone wrong in the rendezvous process. They were surprised I made it home and impressed with my directional skills because "Lucas gave you terrible directions." Oh well, I kind of winged it anyway haha. I've included a few pictures from my little walk below(Edit:I'm apparently adding one picture because that is all that will work.):

I'm going to be running here shortly so I'm going to wrap this up. We are supposed to be going to some bar tonight with a bunch of the other intercambio students, whether this happens or not I can't say because without a phone life is difficult. And Mom-I actually have a phone down here already, I haven't sorted out if it works yet or anything though.

Mi Viaje

First things first, I'm here. I am safe and sound in Uruguay, so you guys can breathe easy for the time being. I will recount the tales of my voyage below. I have not explored the city outside of my drive home, so I am going to hold off on details on that front for the time being. My family is really cool though. So far I have met Eduardo-the dad, who is walking around the house in a Jaques Clousteau beanie at the moment. That alone wins a few badass points.

Eduardo is apparently a former lawyer, minister in the government and quite well educated. He is also a big joker. He refers to Mississippi as 'The Jungle' and has a thing for Paris and French. This has quickly established my name in the house as "Mal Enfant." As a result I have also been thebsubject of interogation in no only Spanish, but French. I may end up coming home tri-lingual. Laura is the mother and is very nice and helpful. THe youngest son, Pedro(25) has been around but I haven't really met him yet. Oh, and we have a dog. A black lab named Marito that is "casi humano"-almost human. That's it for the family thus far, an English girl from last semester is here for another week or two and here Peruvian boyfriend, but on to the flights:

As an avid reader of 'Going Down South:Mal in Argentina" I've got my fingers crossed while boarding my first flight. This mantra is going cycling through my head, something along the lines of "Please not 'bitch'seat', Please not bitch seat." My concerns however, are apparently unfounded. Suffice it to say, American Airlines may be struggling. Seriously-don't invest. There are 20 people on the flight, I have an entire row to myself. When I say an entire row here I'm not talking three seats either. The whole row, six seats to sprawl out across if I so pleased. This was a good thing, like Vince Vaughan in MADE-"I'm a tall drink of water, I need to stretch my shit out."

This first flight went quite smooth until the very end. I should have recognized the foreshadowing when I glimpsed the familiar pulse of heat lightning outside the window. Now I'm not entirely sure what heat lightning is per se, but in my book nothing with the word 'lightning' in it bodes well for a flying metal coffin, I mean airplane. So I should not have been surprised when several minuted later we start hitting some turbulence. No, not 'turbulence'-TURBULENCE.
The pilot, apparently experiencing a moment of reverence for the japanese Kamikaze pilot, decided to rush headlong into some of the stoutest clouds I've ever seen. This was thick stuff. To give you a reference point, its consistency was somewhere between quicksand and a brick wall. I lost sight of the wing's tips from my vantage point, my only solace was that I could see the wings still attached to the fuselage. For how long things would remain that way I wasn't sure given the fact the wings were shaking as if a '400 pound black woman' was jumping on them.

After touching down my first thought is that the lightning storm somehow transported us back in time, The Boeing had somehow gained Delorian-like powers! I was, obviously, incorrect. I'm just going to say that I don't think Miami airport has renovated since the Miami Vice days and leave it at that.

Aside from the awful decor(trust me, I really tried to find a more masculine way to say that-wasn't happening) something else wasn't quite right in the airport. I had that "I'm not in Kansas anymore" feeling. I expected that...in South America. I should have realized, Miami's International Terminal is not far removed. Needless to say, mullets were abound (generally of the 'soccer rocker' variety vs. the U.S. 'Kentucky Waterfall'. The gates' destinations read something like this: La Paz(glad I'm not going there), Buenos Aires, Montevideo(Why the hell am I not going there?),Santiago(for some reason I AM going there) and oddly... London Heathrow.

There were a few confused looking, pasty Brits holding it down for the English language with me. I wanted to slap the worried look off their faces though, "See-this is how we felt after getting off the Mayflower and rubbing elbows with Pocahantos and crew. Paybacks a bitch."

My seat number on the flight to Chile was forboding. 44E. 44!?!! What is this, a superboeing, there's got to be like 60 rows in this beast, right? right? WRONG. If there was something after business and coach class, let's call it Dungeon class, it would be comprised solely of seat 44E. The very last row (10 feet behind the nearest window), right under the bell summoning the flight attendants, in the middle(read:bitch) seat. My only solace was that I was flanked by two matronly type Chilean women who were very friendly...and very quick to espouse the merits of Chilean 'vino tinto' over its Argentinean brethren.

I can say nothing bad about Chile. I was very impressed with Santiago airport from the time we set foot in it and the sweet sounds of Samba(I was a bit confused by that as well) graced my ears. The whole airport had an oh-so-familiar smell that was quite pleasant but difficult to place. It brought me back to my days in Italy, I'm fairly certain it was the combined odors of unconstitutional quantities of espresso and cigarette smoke.

The flight to Uruguay was short and quite pleasant. As I just got back from my orientation I discovered the girl next to me on the plane is another one of the foreign students. More on Orientation and the school and what not later, still haven't figured out this wireless network-no one knows the password.

Ciao

T-Minus 7

7 days. One week. 168 hours until I leave apple pie, jazz music, and baseball(thank god) far behind me and set foot on South American soil for the first time.

Miguel is in Argentina already so hopefully the continent can handle two Malenfants. My preparations begin today, packing and what not. In an effort to ease into this process I have been in correspondence with my future house mother, Laura Zabala Carzolio. I received a very profound message yesterday. After discussing the logistics of bringing my guitar down to South America and trying to decide if it was worth packing Laura writes back, ...""Guitarra, si es española, tenemos en casa."

Now if you didn't take 8th grade Spanish, this is essentially saying, if it's a classical guitar we have one here.

My first response was, "No it's not a classical guitar. Erejota does not play classical guitar. I also do not sit in Barnes and Noble and write poetry. I'm American, we ROCK baby." However, fearful that something would be lost in this translation, I settled for expressing my gratitude. I am honestly intrigued by this revelation though. Classical guitar is pretty badass and it may offer an avenue to parlay my mediocre musical ability into another asset.

I expect to be something of an anomale over there, somehow I don't think a classical guitar playing soccer badass with a mullet fits in too well with the American stereotype, so that should be fun. That said, I will do my best to be loud and offensive. This one's for you Toby.

Back on track here...so hopefully I will be like this guy in a year:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N_UwyfsJSQg
actually, he looks pretty damn creepy. Let's go with this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LU68qT4T1bE

That's all for now, next time you hear from me I will be in South America.

Prelude: Expectations and the Nature of Blogging

They say the hardest part about rollerblading is telling your parents that you're gay. I've always felt the same way about blogging. It's fun in its own little way-much like I imagine rollerblading would be if for some reason I got that urge-but tends to leave me feeling a little shamed, and quite frankly, a little emasculated.

Not anymore. I've come around on this blog thing. Now don't get me wrong-if you avidly update your comic book blog or whatever other stupid shit some people write about on here, I probablly don't want to talk to you(edit-exhibit a:http://thyhum383.blogspot.com/)- but right now this just feels so right. I can see the furrowed eyebrows and worried looks already, it's cool guys. Really though, I figure this would be the best way to address my many fans, admirers, friends, family, whatever, and let you get your R.J. fix when you will inevitably miss my humor and company and what not.

I intend to write on this thing as often as I can, keeping you sorry saps updated on my exotic new life in strange and faraway lands. I would expect 'blogs' on all sorts of things from food to soccer, etc. I will also probably ridicule people I meet, post some cool pictures, and who knows...maybe even expand your minds a little bit.

So sit back, subscribe if you're into that sort of thing, and get ready because this is going to be epic.

And on a side note, check out Miguelinho's blog if you haven't for a little taste of action across the river.