dale dale dale LOBO

First of all...it's starting to hit me how little time I have left here. With my WM friends headed home for summer and friends in other study abroad programs heading back stateside the reality of the time slipping by is starting to sink in. The other night I had a dream that I suddenly had to fly home because Kevin and Lauryn decided to get married and I was really upset to leave prematurely and kept thinking of all of the things that I hadn't done and seen here. SO this weekend I accomplished one of the things I was upset about not doing in my carpe diem dreams- seeing 'our' team CLUB GIMNASIA ESGRIMA de LA PLATA play a live soccer game!

Michelle and I went to the Gimnasia headquarters yesterday evening to buy tickets for the game today. They have special rates for "dama" girl tickets...35 pesos compared to 50. My feminist side was unsettled whereas my cheapskate side was pleased...asi es la vida. Afterwards we went to see a really interesting documentary playing at the art school called "La Guerra Por Otros Medios" (The War through other modes). It was a great perspective on the indigenous perspective of La Ley de Medios. La Ley de medios is a media law that's being introduced that would basically give the government some of the same censorship rights it had during the dictatorship.

Today after a delicious lunch of Pizza Bacci we headed out to the field to meet up with Alex, his host mom's son Simon and his friends. This was apparently a "calm" game as it wasn't important for the league standings and there was a HUGE crowd of people dressed in navy blue with drums, trumpets, UMBRELLAS, flags and whatever else you could possibly make noise with filling the streets. There were a striking amount of cops with RIOT gear which made me a little anxious about the crazyness that was about to ensue. Soccer is more than diversion here...it's almost a political/social statement. There are two main clubs here in La Plata- Gimnasia and Estudiantes (Pincha RATA...andate de la plata!) and Gimnasia branched off from Estudiantes a while back. Neither of them are as good, or well funded...as the Buenos Aires teams and historically Gimnasia has been more of the underdogs which makes me love them even more. Anyhow, Gimnasia (el LOBO) is associated with the working class and there was even a huge flag in the stadium with Eva Peron's face painted in gimnasia colors to strengthen that association.

In size, the stadium itsself wasn't that impressive. Then again, that is coming from a member of a DIEHARD hokie family who grew up in the sea of orange and marroon (largery?) also known as lane stadium. The energy of the stadium was CERTAINLY on par however. Banners were tied from the bottom of the stadium to the top and loud Argentines were standing on railings holding onto the banner to keep from falling. They swayed back and forth and chanted the whole time and there were times I was afraid that young children were going to get accidentally clotheslined. The boys next to us had firecracker things that gave off blue and white smoke which was alot of fun but probably not so great for our lungs. There was constant jumping, a repotoire (sp?) of at least 15 songs accompanied by this hand motion we refer to as the limp wrist.

Both teams fought hard the whole time though mi querido LOBO fell a little flat near the end, so Tucuman was able to come back and tie 3-3. Overall we had an absolute blast being such a part of something that they are all so passionate about. We hope to go back next Sunday which will apparently be a way more important and CRAZY game!

Love and miss you all!