Aug. 18, 2003
August 16th, 2003
After a year of preparation and fundraising, Missouri Soccer is finally off to Brazil. The team volunteered to spend their summer at the U of Missouri training together each day to prepare for their games in Brazil, and now that the day has arrived the team and staff seems very excited.
Missouri Soccer departed for Kansas City Airport today. We took a flight from KC to Dallas and then a 10-hour flight from Dallas to Sao Paulo, Brazil. The flight to Sao Paulo was delayed by two hours. Despite the setback, the team gets to sit together on the plane, and they spend time talking, listening to their headphones and sleeping. Most of the team gets in a few good hours of sleep on the plane. Throwing another kink into the trip, the plane started leaking condensation on Lacy and my heads. We had to tape cups on the leak so that we could sleep during the flight.
August 17th
Our plane arrives in Sao Paulo at 9:15 a.m. and we went through customs and picked up our luggage. Our tour guides met us at the airport along with a security guard and a translator. After meeting everybody, we got on a bus and drove to Campinas where our hotel is located. Our tour guides are so sweet and they are wearing earpieces and microphones.
On our bus ride we drive through Sao Paulo-it has about 18 million people and is the third largest city in the world. While driving we saw dozens of soccer fields randomly right off the highways. There is no grass on any of the fields, they are just big square patches of dirt with goal posts and no nets.
The poverty we saw outside of Sao Paulo was amazing. People live in tents in the center of the highways. There were hundreds of shacks on the hillside. We were told that there is no real middle class in Brazil, only the very rich and the very poor.
After driving through Sao Paulo, we finally arrive at our hotel in Campinas and go for a 20-minute team run to stretch our legs after our long trip. Our hotel is very clean and nice. The area we are in is very high class and there is a gated community around us. We tried to run into one of the gated communities to see the houses, but security guards would not let us.
The weather is great here, cool and sunny, perfect for playing soccer.
We ate a great lunch at the hotel chowing down on really good fruit and chicken. After lunch we all iced our legs in the cold pool. We then headed off to a Brazilian first division soccer game watching Cruzeiro against Ponte Preta. We all wear black and white to support the home team, Ponte Preta, so we don't stick out. Ponte Preta loses 3-1.
game was crazy! Fans were screaming, dancing and cheering. Everyone was very interested in us, and they came up to us to take pictures with our team.
After the game we ate at a restaurant called Churrascaria. Waiters came around with every kind of meat imaginable. I ate rump, filet, salmon, turkey and prime rib. There was a ton of food and the desserts were to die for. The chocolate covered strawberries were my favorite.