Tales from the North

Apparently my readers(thank you both) want to hear about my recent trip to Brazil, the land of soccer, sun and samba. I'm now able to comment on two of the three, unfortunately there was far too much rain in the weekend to get a good sampling of the local sun or beaches-a shame.

We departed from the school in normal Uruguayan fashion-which is to say an hour and a half behind schedule. After 12 hours in a bus, much of them spent trying to drown out the Cumbia music and Reese Witherspoon movies that were seeping from the speakers into my defenseless brain, we arrived in Brazil.

As we got off the bus I looked at my watch. 10 a.m. I looked at my teammates. Destroyed. Our first game for the day...scheduled for 11 a.m. This was not going to be good. Ambling towards the field I felt like I was in a scene from the Mighty Ducks, or The Big Green, or some other Disney Sports movie. The rag tag Uruguayans, cresting the hill to see their Brazilian counterparts mid warmup, looking like a well oiled machine. I now know how it feels when Trinidad and Tobago shows up at the World Cup.

We were, to put things in perspective, the only non-Brazilian team. Not only that, we were the only under 20 team. That means we are drawing our players from a 2-3 year age range. The other teams were comprised mostly of players in the 23-30 year range. Atleast one team received a pretty decent salary.

Our first game, which kicked off so soon after our arrival, took us off guard. 2 Goals conceded in the first few minutes, they almost scored on their first play. To give us some credit we rallied after waking up to keep it at a pretty respectable 3-0 loss.

The next game was against a better team. We did however, have the power of sleep on our sides, and actually took the lead at one point. We knew what to expect now, and we knew what we had to do-play Uruguayan soccer. That is to say, play hard, play dirty, be that dog that doesn't lie down when you kick it but fights back(or whatever Mike Katz says). So we took the lead 1-0 on a penalty kick and go into halftime. Shortly into the second half one of their players is sent off with a red card. Things are looking good. With about 10 minutes to play they equalise off of a corner kick. Then, a few minutes later, another goal from the corner. I'm not going to point fingers, but that's a pretty lame way to go out.

After this game, with 2 losses, there was no chance of advancing. Thus, a lot of the guys who hadn't played much played in the last game(which was against the eventual champs) where we were spanked a solid 6 or 7 to 2. There wasn't much to play for at this point though, and the Uruguayans were more interested in sampling the Brazilian nightlife.

As for the tournament itself, it was much more than I expected, which makes up a bit for the fact that we didn't get to see much of Brazil itself. It was very similar to a small scale Olympics. 1600 athletes, Judo, Volleyball(2 man and 5 man), Basketball, Handball, Soccer, Track, Futsal(indoor soccer), men and women, etc. Everyone was staying in a certain sector of the school, which I will call "The Olympic Village", which shared an open aired hallway sort of deal. This led to a lot of mingling and playing of Samba music at night.

In other news, I got my first haircut since May today. It is worth noting that it is a very Uruguayan haircut, whatever that means(read:mullet), but I kind of like it. I have had my U.S. Citizenship questioned a few times already but I hope for a bit more of that now.