LIGA LIGA LIGA!!

After only 18 days in Quito the entire Ohio State group took their first finals, completing the first of three Spanish courses on the docket.  Not only that, immediately following the exams they were introduced to their new professors and literally began new material minutes later!  My first class was a heavy grammar review, which was a real buzz kill.  The class I am in now is all speaking in class and reading stories at night.  I already enjoy this style much more because, well first of all, grammar stinks a big one (as if you didn’t already notice that this sentence is my attempt at mocking proper grammar…I digress)…because when one speaks and translates text it is much easier to catch the idioms and common phrases of the culture rather than focus on which order words go in or how to conjugate verbs.  When written that way I guess both have some relevance…I digress once again.

 The point of this story is that after a long morning my friend Suzanne, my brother Jorge, and I went to the final soccer match in the tournament of the Americas!  Not only that but a team from Quito was in the final so the entire city was practically shutting down for the game.  The game started at 8pm so naturally we needed to leave at 3pm to get there on time.  After traveling to the stadium, legally drinking a beer on the street, and Suzanne purchasing a knock off jersey for 5 bucks (which is actually really nice), we entered the stadium a 4pm. 

You maybe wondering, as I was, what could we being doing at the stadium four hours prior to kickoff.  Well…

            1. Seating is general admission and even arriving four hours early meant we sat pretty high up.

            2.  One needs ample time to rip up newspapers into confetti to throw when the team comes out (remember this…its important later).

            3. The fan section needs to practice unraveling the giant flag that covers up one side of the stadium…four times.  Being under the flag was extremely cool. 

            4.  Often old men will wait for you to stand up for a minute or two, try to steal your seat, and then make you feel like a horrible person when you politely remove them through a heated argument in Spanish sending them 20 rows higher.  Hehe...ya snooze you lose! There is no mercy in a South American soccer stadium!

These four things made the time pass much more quickly than I had expected and before I knew it was game time!  The team ran out onto the field and the stadium erupted.  It is amazing that 50,000 people can sing long chants in unison and it had to be unbelievably intimidating to the Brazilians who were playing La Liga De Quito (the Ecuadorian team).  When the team rushed onto the field everyone threw their newspaper confetti and then lit objects similar to sparklers.  The order of these events is very important because the sparks from the sparkler-like objects set off a series of small fires all around us.  No biggie…just stomp ‘em out.

La Liga won the game 3-0 and it was so much fun to be their for a win.  After watching the trophy presentation, nearly all of the people in the stadium traveled to a fountain in downtown Quito.  It is tradition that any time La Liga wins a championship, the fans jump around in freezing cold water while singing and splashing each other. 

Jumping around the fountain chanting words that I didn’t fully understand yet while freezing my butt off was one of the coolest things I have ever done.  After about 20 minutes I was introduced to their “conquering juice.”  To this day I don’t know if it was just hot juice or some crazy alcoholic beverage…all I know is that it was so hot it burned going down and warmed me up very quickly from the inside out. 

We reentered the water for another 15 minutes or so. Went to the car. Changed. Drove home. Then I completed two hours of homework due just hours later and slept for two hours.  When I awoke I packed a bag quickly for the weekend trip I was about to leave on and went to school.  Immediately following school I got in a bus to spend the weekend in Otavalo and visit the largest indigenous market in South America! Read the next post to find out more…I promise it will not disappoint!