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Published: January 28th 2008
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La Clase
James, Anna, Ana, Me, Anne, and Claudia So the school set up a weekend trip for Plata del Mar, a beach town south of Bs As. It was pretty expensive, 350 pesos, but it included transportation to and from Mar del Plata and a ticket for the biggest game in Argentina, Boca Juniors vs River Plate. I don't know why they are called those names. Rather different I know but try to explain to someone outside of America why we have teams called Mets or Sooners. I decided to go on the trip because, really, what the hell else am I going to do. I started playing football once a week here and really enjoy it. The entire world loves football with the exception of America and they just dont understand why we dont. I really don't either. I would rather watch the Super Bowl than the World Cup. But anyways, I got my ticket and we headed out at 6am on Saturday to get to the beach around 2pm.
My classes start everyday at around 2pm so I never really wake up before 10 or 11am. I had to wake up at 5am yesterday. It really wasnt that hard because I went to bed at 2am.
I never really reached the deep sleep stage. About 40-50 students met at the hostel where the transport was and we climbed aboard the saddest excuse of a bus that I've ever seen. The front windshield was cracked in a few spots, it was orange and purple, the door wouldnt shut properly, and the seats would either recline all the way until youre in the persons lap behind you or not at all. And it smelled like socks. Dirty ones. Once it started to move it was alright because most people fell asleep and there was a nice breeze from the windows. We went to a semi-truckstop/gas station/restraunt after a few hours and bought some lunch. I found some chocolate milk in a 1-liter carton and went to town on some medialunes(croissants). The milk tasted like yoohoo. There was this kitten running around begging for food. Everyone thought it was cute but wouldnt pet it or anything. I walked over and picked it up. I think I have lice now but it was SO worth it. Some girl took a picture of it. I will try to post it on here. We departed after a while and arrived at the
beach around 230. The guide told us to be back by 6 for the game. We made a group of just four guys, Ben, James, Jamie, and me. things usually work out better in small groups. We grabbed a bite to eat and sat on the beach for a few hours. James bought a mini football and we kicked it around for a bit. I think Jamie broke my toe by putting his shin in front of my foot when I was kicking. What an asshole right? These little kids started playing with us and totally schooled me. They mustve been 10. We shouldve played full tackle american football. I wouldve took them out. It started to get a little later and we all headed back to the buses. It only took about 10min to get to the stadium. Not many people were out there yet and I was pretty excited to see how crazy it would get.
We started walking to the front gate and were berated by the vendors. In this case it was ok though. A full size river flag only cost me 20 pesos, $6.50. Imagine how much a Cowboys flag would cost at Texas
Stadium. Everyone thought I was dumb to buy a flag at first but then they started buying hats and flags themselves. The stadium is seperated into halves so that the fans dont kill eachother. We were told not to where the team colors but after what I saw here I really didnt care. As we came closer to the stadium we saw the security. Wow. About 50 cops in riot gear at the front gate alone. Inside there were even more and some with attack dogs too. this was quite a sight. We moved to the seats, no seats actually just stairs, behind the goal and waited for the game to start. We had 2 and a half hours to go. The fans chant songs and just talk to pass the time. It was a very friendly environment, until the game began. As the team took the field the crowd went crazy. I have never seen anything like it. I hear that this is a smaller field and the really big ones are a real sight to see. I was impressed though. The game got going and it was pretty fun to watch. I dont understand all the rules but
I get the jist of things. Kind of like my spanish speaking skills. All was going great until Boca scored two goals on River. Thats the side I was on, River side. Something happened in the center of the crowd and everyone started to scramble for the sides, right where we were. We got pressed all the way up to the sides, right into this huge line of riot cops. I told Jamie to punch one and see what happens but he pussed out. What a chump. They were pretty intimidating looking but they were useless at this point. All the trouble was in the middle of the crowd. Some people ran out of the crowd and were followed by a group, after that everything calmed down. It was towards the end of the game and the directors decided to cut their loses and take everyone out of the game. Our group of 50+ pale foreigners made our way through the compact crowd, out of the stadium. Thankfully everyone made it alive to the buses, a little disappointed but I cant blame the event directors for what they did. If one kid was lost or hurt it could ruin the
entire school. We still had fun and I experienced a real S. American futbol match. We all climbed on the bus for the last leg of the journey.
We took off in the bus and I was glad we were on our way. Everything was cool until we found out that we had to stop and wait for another bus. The other bus was from the Boca side and they had no clue how long the wait was going to be. I decided to run down the street to a cafe called Havana's. Their version of Starbucks. I grabbed a coffee and a pastery and sat next to the bus for an hour. Most of the people fell asleep but I was still wide awake. I talked with a guy from Colorado for sometime until the other bus showed up. It was around 2am now. The bus was completely quiet for most of the trip. We were all sweaty and sandy, no showers for about a day now. My hair looked permanently wet because of all the salt and sweat. I felt so gross. I dozed in and out until we got to BsAs. Everyone looked pretty awful. There werent many goodbyes, we all just pretty much ran out of there for showers and bed. I slept until 4pm today. I felt a little bad about wasting the day but the realized that I had a really great one yesterday. I will include some pictures of my classmates in this entry as well as some of Mar del Plata and the match. the video is pretty good, but a little shakey. tell your friends about the blog! I like the support, it keeps me writing. Chau for now. -Eric
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