Sunday: Brazilian futebol in Uberlandia!

After staying up until 2 a.m. watching the LSU vs. BAMA game (GO TIGERS!), Jonathan and I slept in until 11 o'clock. We were scheduled to go to lunch with two of Jonathan's coworkers at 1 p.m., but Jonathan had a lot of work to do. So, he stayed at the apartment, and I went by myself (poor thing, he works so hard!).

I am going to have to start taking pictures of the names of the places we eat so that I can remember them! In Brazil, the culture is to eat huge lunch portions during the day, and then have small appetizer-like dishes and drinks for supper. So, this is the whopping serving I received at lunch:

This was a meat similar to filet mignon, but obviously cooked differently, and it is stuffed with CREAM CHEESE and GARLIC between two pieces of meat -- served with a cheese rice (arroz, pronounced ah-hose... this particular rice reminded me of risotto) and veggies. The flavors were INSANE! Unfortunately, I couldn't even put a dent into the dish, and the restaurants here don't really do to-go boxes for leftovers. Drats! I was able to bring a chicken alfredo pasta dish home to Jonathan, which he raved about.

After lunch, Jaedino, one of the men Jonathan will be working with here in Uberlandia, invited us to a professional soccer game. We, of course, jumped at the opportunity!

We later found out that we are pretty lucky to be able to catch a soccer game while we are in Brazil, especially in this area. The game locations always change, and it just-so-happened that a game between the Corinthians (#1 team in Brazil) and Americano/MG (coincidentally, the last place team in Brazil, HA!) were playing at the stadium in Uberlandia today.

We arrived at the game and immediately saw the huge crowds rumored to surround Brazilian soccer:

As we walked into the stadium, people were screaming and chanting words that we, of course, can't pronounce YET ;). We found a place to sit with a pretty good view of the field:

Once the game was about to begin, you could feel the anticipation, craziness and excitement in the stadium. It was pretty obvious that clothing was optional, especially shirts, which you will see in the next picture and videos below. The crowd started chanting to a beat over and over again, and Jonathan said, "Ha! That's 'When the Saints Go Marching In'," and sure enough, it was (in Portuguese, of course)!



We totally look super-imposed in this picture.



Jonathan, Jaedino and Enio (co-workers)

It was pretty hot with the sun directly on us, and I was terrified of getting sunburned again, so we bought a hat from a merchant who was walking through the stands. Jonathan says I have to wear it on the plane home when Danyel and Rick pick me up from the airport in January. It SCREAMS Brazilian tourist:

As the game started, a crowd-sized banner suddenly started covering the stands from the bottom of the seating area and moved its way across the crowd, covering us! Here is a picture of the banner, and the video of it traveling across us in the stands. You will see that when the banner begins to retract back to the bottom of the stands, Jonathan and I get knocked around a bit (I almost lost my hat! Jonathan would have been pretty upset about that one ;)) -- I apologize for the poor quality and shakiness of the video; you may need to turn your volume up:


The banner as it began to travel up the stands.

Crazy stuff, huh!? It gets even better. Throughout the game, you could tell that the Corinthians had a much larger fan presence than Americano. I say this because a large group of them set off fireworks and smoke bombs in the stands! Jonathan looked at Jaedino and Enio and said, "In America, you would be arrested!" Smoke eventually covered the field, and we couldn't really see anything for a few minutes. We have no idea how the players continued to play through it:

At the end of the day, the underdogs won -- Americano beat the Corinthians 2 - 1. This was a great thing for them, too, because if Americano would have lost, the team would have been dropped out of the professional league and sent back to the minors.

Yet another great day :).... thinking of you at home!