Boca

First of all, I have to tell you all something pretty funny: Tova and I update our website at the internet cafe around the corner from our hostel. At this internet cafe they have an anti-porn mechanism that prevents porn from popping up on the screen, and for some reason, whenever we try to go to the website to update it, the anti porn thing comes up and closes the internet. Everytime we want to update the blog we have to go up to the woman at the desk and try and explain in Spanish that this anti porn thing is blocking us so she can come and disable it. It was kind of embarrasing at first because we thought she would think we were trying to get porn but I think she knows now that we are not...

Anyways, now for the real story of the weekend. We went to a musum and a few parties, but the real event was the soccer game we attended yesterday (Sunday). Boca is the local Buenos Aires soccer team that plays in a league with other Argentinian teams. We went to the game with a friend of ours from the hostel (Mavi) and her friend, Clara, who is a regular at these games. Mavi had never been. So we went to the game, and the first thing Clara said when she saw us was "take off your earings, put your purses in my backpack and don't speak English!" So we were a little confused and, to be honest, unsure if all this was really necessary, but we went along with it. We bought our tickets from a scalper and then we had to get in line to get into the stadium. The line was insane. There were hundreds of people, many stinking of alcohol, screaming, singing, chanting and pushing to get past the gates. There really weren't any actual gates, just rows of policeman with riot gear on, and the crowd was screaming at the police, calling them really awful names. There were chldren on the shoulders of men who were in the crowd. It was hard just to stay together! And then finally we got past the policeman. The first thing we saw was a young guy on a stretcher with his face covered in blood. He loocked unconscious and the ambulance was taking him away. Our friend, Mavi, from the hostel decided that she had had enough and she jumped the fence and ran into the street to get out of there and go home, leaving us with her friend (who we had just met)!!!! Also, she had the backpack that contained our keys and our wallets and my jacket, so all we had on us was our cash in our pockets. So Tova and I decided to continue, because we reall wanted to see the game. We finally got into the stadium and had to walk up endless flights of stairs to get to the "popular" section, which our tickets were for. The stairs stank of urine and there were people running up, sliding under railings and screaming. We could see people trying to climb up other ways, like through cracks in the walls... it looked pretty scary. So we got up to the popular section to find that it was standing room only. In order to see we had to duck under railings and practically crawl through crowds of people to pop out in a place were we had a view. I ended up standing, perched on the edge of one level, leaning on a man standing on the level in front of me because this child, who was perched on the railing behind, had his feet resting on my butt, pushing me off the level. It was reall hot and sweaty and smelly. But the view was amazing: we could see the entire field, as well as thousands of specators. There were guys leading chants and songs, which everybody knew and which never seemed to end. When we scored the crowd went crazy. Then at halftime, we changed levels and finally had a bit more room. However, then the sun disappeared and it got really cold, and Mavi had left with my jacket. I was freezing. And then when the game finally ended (we won 2-0), the police didn't let us out of the stands for almost half an hour. They had to let the sections out in shifts to avoid the rush. And the opposing team's section, just to rile us, weren't leaving and were taunting us from across the field. But the police came and made them leave and then we finally got out and came home. What an experience!