Leah in Rio: BO-TO-FO-GO and Drinks at the Palace, Or More MBs Than Any Post Thus Far

UPDATE PART I: Enthusiasm

After a blissful morning at the beach, I went to my first professional soccer (futbol here duh) game Sunday evening. Rio (/the greater Rio de Janeiro state?) has something like 16 teams. My program director is a huge Botofogo fan; he threatened to kick us out of the program if we cheered for anyone else (semi-seriously). Botofogo is the team most middle and upper-class fans cheer for; all my favela kids support Flamengo, the team Botofogo happened to be playing against Sunday. The game was in Maracana stadium, the biggest stadium in the world when it was built and one of Rio's most famous landmarks. It holds 100,000 people, and I think about 36,000 were there Sunday.

Botofogo's colors are white and black can you tell. Felipe is in the bottom right of the picture, he has a lot of hair.

Anyway, I've perhaps never seen so many people as excited as these people were about their team. The teams have sets of cheersongs that literally do not stop from about an hour before the team comes on the field until after the game. (By the end even I could cheer along with them to most, one was to Unchained Melody. There's also a few men on drums the entire time.) They have about six of those GIANT flags and everybody is wearing the team's colors except when they take their shirts off as part of the cheer. People light flares all over the place and hand out confetti that they've made to throw, pick up, and throw again. It was total madness. Felipe had us sit in a particularly enthusiastic section, so we got the full experience. The men around us screamed and jumped and opened their mouths really wide and pointed us out if we weren't screaming or clapping (I don't know what they would have done if we would have sat down or stepped off of our seats). The high-stakes game ended up 0x0, and we were instructed to stay in because the nil game might induce rioting. (There was a riot at one point right after the first half; a HUGE crowd just started running and we ran with them, not knowing what was happening.) The point is, All-Stars, we need fans like these. Next year: flares at every game.

It was hard to remember most of the time that a game was actually being played; some of the men leading cheers didn't turn around once. Felipe told us that we're not there to watch Botofogo, we're there to support Botofogo.

Flares, confetti, and a man we stood by that genuinely looked like he was going to cry at one point because we weren't singing.

This video, which Blogger won't let me center on the page, demonstrates what happened THE ENTIRE GAME. This may even be a down-time.

UPDATE PART II: Elegance

Last night, it was my friend Shauna's (Alex and Aaron, that one) 21st birthday. Everybody had been wanting to dress up and go someplace fancy, so for her birthday celebration we all surprised her with drinks at the Copacabana Palace hotel. I didn't bring heels (I know right what was I thinking!!) but I did bring pearls and managed not to get kicked out for wearing flip-flops. I got a R$20 margarita and drank it in the Piano Bar, then sat by the pool with the other 20-year-old volunteers and tried to flirt with the men walking past in suits. The plan for my 21st birthday as of now includes a three-day bender, a group-rented room in the LoveTimeHotel (which charges by the hour... classy) and meat on a stick, so it's good the classiness is out of everyone's system now.

Da pool.

The group (ironically, sans Shauna) that busted all up in the classiest hotel in Rio.

My friend Max made a comment that the bartenders dressed up more for work each day than he had ever dressed in his entire life. In his defense, he did trim his beard for the occasion.