Thursday night I went to a futból game. Or a soccer game. And despite the fact that I´m not a soccer fan whatsoever, I was pretty much ready to do something besides work, sleep, and stay in my room reading The Hitchiker´s Guide to the Galaxy for the 4th time. Yes. 4 times.
So my colleague Fito invited me to a soccer match between two Bolivian professional teams. Aurora, which is from Cochabamba, and Oriental, from Santa Cruz. The match was at Felix Capriles Stadium, which looks a bit like your average college football stadium in the states extept that there´s only one Jumbotron and it´s a little small. Also, attendance was way down. Fito told me that the stadium´s capacity was 30,000 but it was less than a quarter full, probably due to the fact that it was Thursday night. Fito told me that on Sunday when Aurora played the other Cochabamba team this place was going to be packed. I didn´t find that statement too unreasonable, even though right now the total attendance as a percentage of stadium capacity looked like something out of a Cincinnati Reds game.
Not that that was necessarily a bad thing. For 17 Bolivianos me, Fito, and his young son had perfectly good seats near the field and we weren´t crowded. So I sat, watched the soccer game, and serenely drank my Fanta while other fans around me screamed at the line referees using some choice words which aren´t repeatable in polite company. Like most drunk sports fans somewhere in the world, insulting referees favors volume over originality and soon settled into a pattern of and expletive followed by Abrir tus ojos! Open your eyes!
Even though my ability to appreciate soccer games is limited, it seemed pretty good. Aurora scored towards the end of the first half and was up 1-0 at the half, and then the floodgates just opened. In the second half Aurora scored two more unanswered, then put up a fourth goal towards the end of the game and played defense to close it out 4-2. It was as close to an unchallenged beating as a soccer game gets, I suppose. Since most of the crowd seemed to be Aurora fans, I decided it wouldn´t be bad if I was one too. Go Cocha!
Peace,
Drew
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This is the story of one young, half-baked engineering student who barely speaks Spanish, one family with whom he lives who exclusively speak Spanish, and one foundation doing many poor people a whole lot of good. The half-baked engineer usually contributes nothing except for a few scratches of his english-speaking head.
1 comment:
the interior is EXACTLY the same as the blue one that was wrecked...kinda crazy but very cool since I loved the backward seats and table. Did you get my email? (I can take some of the interior if you want though)
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