World Cup Brazil

This is Drew.  Megan has been badgering for the last few months to share a little bit about my trip to Brazil for the World Cup.  To preface this, attending the World Cup has been a dream of mine since I was a lad.  It happens only once every 4 years, and although it took a little convincing to make it happen, Megan let me go because she knows how much soccer means to me.  

I was able to go down for about 2 weeks.  And while the main reason I went down there was for the matches, I was able to experience a whole lot more.  The very first day I arrived was the USA v Ghana game with a friend I met up with down there.  By some miracle we were in the second row so I got to see a lot of players up close and at one point yelled some names to see them look back.  That was by far the best game I went to because we won 2-1 and the game winning goal happened right in front of me.  Everybody went nuts.

The next day my friend had to fly down south and my other friend wasn't going to arrive for about a week so I had a week on my own in Brazil.  I really wanted to just relax and surf so I found a tiny little village with some excellent waves and just posted up there for about a week.  Luckily the place I stayed was with a family and the son was my age and lived for surfing.  He had a shack full of boards that I could take my pick of.  I don't recall many specific details of that week but my days looked something like this: wake up at some time in the morning and walk down to the village to get a little morsel and some sugar cane drink, take a board out to either a fantastic high tide point break, low tide point break, or walk down a beautiful 20 minute jungle path for exposed beach break, surf until it got darkish and then head back in burnt and tired, then I would take a nice cold shower and head out for some dinner and watch the games at the same place every night.  It was an incredible week and the family I stayed with were some of the nicest people I have ever met.  The one particular experience I will share is when I watched the USA v Portugal game with them.  She made some delicious sort of soup and it was unreal, and hot.  And right around the 3rd spoonful of soup Jermaine Jones curled in the most beautiful goal, and I jumped up with excitement and knocked the soup over onto Diego.  Sorry dude but sometimes you just gotta celebrate.

After this week of bliss I met back up with my friends and we went to a couple more games, surfed, ate endless amounts of unreal meats, and enjoyed Brazil.  The reason World Cup is such an exciting event is because it lasts 1 month and is played in a dozen or so different cities.  So you meet people from all over the world who are there supporting their team just like you.  When Uruguay is playing in that town you get a little glimpse of Uruguayan life and how they act.  When Germany plays you mingle and make friends with Germans.  And when English lads are around you learn a bunch of chants and songs.  Everyone is there united by soccer but separated by country.  But the passion for both is what allows you to connect.  All in all it was a good experience which I hope to do again someday.