Brazil World Cup 2014 - Day 8

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I forgot to mention Maria in yesterday's blog: she's a maid who apparently comes by here once a week and cleans everything. As we had gone out and come back she cleaned our room, made our beds and even ironed all our clothes that we had left out to dry from the earlier laundry. In the bathroom sink it seemed as though there was not enough space to put all my stuff but she somehow magically arranged everything to leave plenty of space. I thanked her in my best broken Portuguese.

This morning we went to the mall for a little bit of shopping. Then one of our co-hosts Giordano took us out for lunch, ice cream and then on to a restaurant/bar to watch the games. We were joined later by our other co-host Luis and about 6 of their friends. Had some interesting (and tasty) Brazilian snack foods being passed around and enjoyed two games back to back. It was fairly muted for Germany v France, but as you can imagine the place was incredibly loud and bouncing for Brazil's game against Colombia. And surprisingly it seemed as more than half the place was women watching the game, and they seemed to be cheering more passionately than the men!

And of course keeping with the tradition of Brazil there was plenty of DJ music and dancing at half-time and long after the game after Brazil won (and of course i took no part in the dancing!). I spoke quite a bit with Giordano and his friends. They all know each other from going to the same school to study international diplomacy. Some of them are lawyers who are studying part time. They were all very interested in India and all of them said they really want to visit. Giordano especially has visited a lot of countries and says his big wish is to finally visit India - first stop Goa! He is also planning to do his PhD thesis on diplomatic relations between India and Brazil.

Anyway, nothing much else to report from today; most of it was taken by the blessed return of football. Tomorrow is our last full day, and the main event of watching Argentina live in the stadium!

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