Chugga Chugga poot poot

Now that I have less than a month left of Chile, I feel like all the energy has been sucked out of me and leaves me with nothing to write.  "Es Chile" is a phrase that is now etched in my head.  Using glue sticks and paper cutouts in university class?  Es Chile.  The metro is late?  Es Chile.  Can't find an open pharmacy on Sunday? Es Chile.  The pet dogs are dressed in skirts and capes?  Es Chile.  I have become accustomed to the strangeness that is this country and now, even when something exciting or odd happens, I tend to be just "eh".

However, I know that I should appreciate the interesting times because I will miss them when I leave.  Thus, I will share my fun thing of the week: attending two soccer games.

On Wednesday night, I went to the Chile vs. Uruguay friendly match.  The game was at Estadio Monumental close to my university campus, San Joaquin.  I was quite excited for the game. (Shhh this is a secret since I was cheering for the Chilean team, but ever since I watched the World Cup this summer, I have been in love with Diego Forlan from Uruguay, and think he is the most riveting soccer player ever. Plus, what a beautiful blonde mane!  Also, the Uruguay goalie Fernando Muslera is pretty cute too.)

Thus, I was super worried when it was 8:40 pm, and we were still in a massive line to get into the 8:45 pm game.  I had heard to arrive at a soccer game an hour beforehand, but in line, I heard people say that for international games, it was better to leave 2 hours beforehand.  Unfortunately, it was a little too late for that memo.  Consequently, I was afraid of the game starting without us.  Luckily at 8:43 pm, the line started to move very quickly.  In fact, we all started to run into the stadium (I kept asking people in my group "Why are we running?").  I'm not sure why the attendants waited until then to let everyone in, but the good thing was that we made it into the stadium before the game started.

The Chile-Uruguay game was my first soccer game in South America.  In fact, it was my first real soccer game unless one counts a murky memory of a Kixx game.  Thus, to me, it was incredible.  The stadium was filled with more that 41,000 people and almost all of them were in red/blue/white for Chile.  Some of the people were in black to "mourn the death of Chilean soccer" since the coach Marcela Bielsa was going to retire.

Since I come from a school where students attend football games to throw toast the 3rd quarter and then leave, the audience was amazing.  They were involved and excited throughout the game.  Despite the lack of national anthem, the Chileans sang enough patriotic songs during the game to equal ten American sports games.  Man, can the crowd cheer.  And man, do they love fire and flares.  When the Chilean team scored their first goal, four flares lit up in the audience.

A red-carded Uruguayan player and 2 goals later, the Chilean team won, and I couldn't stop grinning.  The game was so fun.

(PS- Alexis Sanchez from Chile is pretty great)

Yesterday, I went to a lackluster Colo Colo vs. Cobresal game.  It was basically a Colo Colo vs. who cares? game.  Colo Colo is the biggest club soccer team within Chile.  Other big teams are Universidad de Chile and Universidad de La Catolica.  If the game was Colo Colo vs. U de Chile or U Catolica, it would have been exciting, but as it was a tiny team called Cobresal with literally 10 fans in the stadium (Colo Colo's colors are black and white.  Cobresal's color is orange.  There were only 10 people wearing orange), no one was really in any fan fraught danger.  A Cobresal player got redcarded, and Colo Colo won by a goal.  The one notable thing about the game was the fan base.  One section of the stadium sang and stood and jumped and waved tirelessly for the entire 90 minutes of the game.  It was incredible.  My favorite chant (the only one I could make out) was Chi Chi Chi Le Le Le, Colo Colo es Chile!  which is a play on the Chi Chi Chi Le Le Le, Viva Chile! chant.