A very very important day for Brazilians

The first game of the World Cup!  Let me tell you a little of my first experience in a true soccer country.  

The days that Brazil plays in the World Cup are actually like pseudo holidays.  Everything closes during game time, at least 1 hour prior to.  We're talking banks, grocery stores, businesses... Everyone gets to leave work at lunch time for afternoon games and come in late during morning games.

But because everyone was rushing to the busses and the metro it made for a lot of traffic and because Brazilians have no clue difficulties driving on a normal day, this understandably caused a catastrophe on the roads.  

Let me be a little less harsh on the Brazilian driving thing.  Just understand this: the rules of the road are optional in Brazil and with so many people pushing and shoving, everyone gets very impatient. 

So where was I?  Oh yeah, it was complete and utter mayhem.  

Lately I have started paying more money to take the 'metro' bus (its a faster subway/bus) which normally takes half the time to get to Flamengo (where I teach.)  This means my usual 3 hour bus ride has been taking only 1.5 hours.  Today however took the usual 3 hours AND I had to stand the whole time.

It was literally standstill traffic for more than half of the way so I was a little late getting home for the start of things.  I was actually still on the road at 3:30 when the game started when all of a sudden the road became almost completely deserted!  Like, nobody on the street whatsoever minus a few busses, and some people who were waiting for a bus to pick them up to take them to the game.  It was so weird.

So, as I was walking home, I could hear EVERYONE'S TV's turned to the game.  Sounds of the game were coming from all directions!  Clearly it was the only thing anyone in Brazil was doing today between 3:30 and 5:10 pm. 

When Brazil scored their first goal, the whole neighborhood went wild!  Even normally calm, cool, collected Ro went out and shook the netting that surrounds our balcony, yelling like a lunatic. Haha, it was pretty mental patient/just got a life sentence-y looking to me.  Pretty funny stuff.

So yeah, today was a very very important day for Brazilians.

P.S. HAPPY HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO MY DEAR FRIEND ANNA BANANA.  xx