Yesterday after an early 4:30 am yoga with Kylie and school we left at 12:00 pm for San Pedro Sula, which according to most newspapers in the US is one of the deadliest cities in the world......We were heading to watch the USA men face Honduras in the first of many coming up world cup qualifying games. I have never been to a national futbol (soccer) match before and was not sure what I would be in for.
I will try and paint a picture for you.....Our van piled with ten of us, approached the city and we were bombarded with people on the street selling t-shirts, flags and tickets along the road. They approach your car and if your window is down, they will go as far to lean in to show you the merchandise they have for sale. The streets as we approached the stadium were full of people, all dressed in blue and white. There is no parking lot, no man charging to park, no twenty dollar lot. You park where you find a space. We jumped out of the van, at what seemed like a good spot to try and find the entrance to the game. We held seats in "sol" meaning sun. We did not have assigned seats, it was merely concrete steps that was on a first come first seat kind of basis. We found an empty row sat down and soaked it all in. Including the sun. The game was scheduled by Honduras on purpose at 3pm during the warmest part of the day and most humid. It was nearly 90 degrees F yesterday.
The stadium is nothing fancy, it looks in some parts that it may fall down, the scoreboard did not work and there were no concessions. The vendors walking through the stands were selling everything from fried chicken, to bubble gum, to mangoes, to beer, to coca cola out of a two liter from a guy that had a stack of cups. All of these all people simply bought tickets to the game and brought along with them food and drinks to sell. You could buy just about anything you could think of. People smoke in the stands. If you have ever watched world cup soccer on TV you notice the rather annoying sound of the horns/ noise maker/ something that some genius created long ago. You could buy those too and people did.
All in all the game reminded me why I love sports and as well why sometimes I care too much. In my list of favorite sports i will admit soccer is not far up on my list. If it were not for my dear roommate in college playing and then being the statistician for the men and women's teams during my undergraduate years... I cant say I would even know that much about the game. I can only name a few players on the USA National team and outside of that, my soccer knowledge is often limited to those players that have taken their fame to model for fashion designers (AKA David Beckham or Christiano Ronaldo)
But despite my small appreciation for futbol, the atmosphere and the loyalty to the Honduran national team is something that I was proud to be apart of. I was disappointed the USA did not win but being in the stadium when Honduras scored is something that even some of my most favorite sports memories would rival against. Beer flying/ spraying/ people taking shirts off/ horns blowing/ dancing/ loud music. They truly celebrate and as they should. They won outright and it was really great to be there. Here are some pictures below.
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| waiting in the line to go in... |
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| bathrooms. seriously. no doors. no toilet paper. no soap. |
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| pick a seat any seat |
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| GOAL |
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| after the game. chaos. |
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| waiting on our pickup |
We got home around 9 and I was more than ready to curl up in bed for todays early wakeup call.
Here are a few highlights from my week with my kids. Yesterday they started singing our Christmas song "Deck the Halls", mid class. This is the song we sang for the Christmas concert. They all sang, sitting in their seats and I stood at the board and smiled. Nearly cried. Not sure how I am going to ever say goodbye. For no reason at all they just sang. I loved every second of it.
As well we did board races in math. Meaning, two people go up front and race for who can do a math problem the quickest. We played boys vs. girls. It was great. The boys won.
For now I am off to bed. Long day and could not be more pleased tomorrow is Friday. I have a lot of planning to do, final grade reports, and getting together for a Valentines Dinner that I am having for my roommates Wednesday night before I leave.
Warmest from Honduras.
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