GOALLLL

Hi there, Face here,
I think I may have used that opening line once, but I liked it so I’ll use it again. Plus it will be a test to see if anyone actually reads this Pulitzer Prize winner. So day 2, off to Rio.
      Got up at 8:30, got some breakfast, and headed to the airport to catch a noon flight. Got a milkshake, learned to play Sudoku (and got pretty freaking good), and caught a cab to the hotel; besides that the day until 2:30 was pretty uneventful. From 2:30 to four we got situated, went to an ATM, and really didn’t do much. 4 o’clock the fun starts. We get tickets to that nights soccer game—tickets were expensive, but seeing Brazilian soccer in the world’s largest stadium is priceless. Or so we thought. As we strolled around we went into a tourist agency to inquire about a day tour for the next day; there prices seemed reasonable so we asked them about the soccer game and they told us they could give it to us for $40 dollars less. They told us that we could get our money back from the other place, we just had to threaten to call the cops. So, I strolled back to my hotel, demanded that they lower the price, and after a while, they agreed to drop the price by $30 and upgrade us to a better section. GOOOOOAL. We went to a beach front shack for a quick dinner, at 7 met up with our friends to go to the game.
          The game was seriously one of the coolest things I have ever been to. It was at Maracana Stadium. The stadium was, for a long time, the biggest in the world with a record crowd that eclipsed 200,000. Now, in an effort to make it look nicer and less like it was built in the 50’s (which it was) they are reducing capacity by half, and when construction is done it will hold just 80,000 (it’s going from two Big Houses to one Camp Randall—sounds like a pretty amazing trade off to me). There were about 15,000 at the game because it wasn’t of that much importance. If, however, you were to judge by how loud it was, you would probably assume there were 100,000 people squeezed into Camp Randall for a game against Michigan in which the winner goes to the Rose Bowl. AND Wisco won.
       The game began with us quietly sitting in our own section; it ended with me in the middle of the cheering section, think student section, shirt off leading cheers in a language I don’t know. I remained up top in the expensive seats (higher up=more expensive in Brazil because you avoid stampedes), but got really into it. Like, more into it than I get at Maccabiah. Only one of my friends joined me, the others were afraid a riot may break out, but none did and it was well worth it. I did not do much today, but what I did will probably go down as my greatest memory of SAS. Andalay!!