Brazil II - The Tourist Days

My first few days in Maceió were amazing and really touristy. After raging the buffet and getting settled into our rooms, Sunya and I went back to meet up with Trevor and Tyler. We met up around 10:00 am and spent the rest of the morning tossing on the beach and swimming in the warm ocean water (it was my first time being around warm ocean water, and it was amazing). After finally accepting we were in brazil, we decided to get lunch and a nap before evening pick-up (yeah, there was international beach pickup, under lights, on the arena fields. Well, some teams didn't participate and instead just practiced, but we all know that's lame).

So, we hit up the local fare (burger/sandwich-y things with mayo) and parted ways for some (barely)afternoon napping. Well, I hit the bed around 11:45 and read maybe 10 pages of my book before passing out hard. So, how the hotel we were in worked was, you had to slide the key into this port thing in the room for the electricity in your room to work (well, luckily, the mini-fridge was exempt from this rule). Anyway, I wanted the electricity for the air-conditioner while I was napping, so I had the key in the room. Apparently, at some point in the afternoon my roommate wanted to get some things, but couldn't because I slept through him banging on the door for like 15 minutes. My plan was to be woken up for some beach chillin' before evening pickup, but that never materialized. Luckily, I woke up just as one of my teammates (with a bike) was leaving for the pickup/scrmmages. It was on the way there that I realized there are lights all along the beach-front at night. Also along the beach there is a bike/skate park, volleyball courts, basketball courts, and three soccer pitches (two of which had sand trucked into them so they could become beach ultimate pitches).

We got to the fields just as Switzerland was wrapping up beating GB for the second time (apparently Switzerland, GB, and us were playing a round robin with games to three and a three wins and your out rule). Well, after Switzerland beat GB we were up to play them. I jumped in on the first point (a D point) rocking a sunburn and some sweet DTB shorts. We wound up getting the turn and I went deep and caught a sweet huck from Kenbrah. We didn't get the second break in a row, but we managed to score our O point without turns, then get a break to win the game. This brought us to what our leadership (who was present at the time) built up as the important game of the night. Apparently us loosing to them with our skeleton squad was unacceptable, and we needed to lay the hammer down. Well, we didn't quite shut them out, but we did get one break so we won 3-1 having started on O (I'd like to think my showing up made the difference, but I actually think it was just our team respecting them and deciding to really play). After beating the Swiss we took care of GB again then called it a night (in terms of ultimate).

After playing we headed across the street to one of those all you can eat meat places and gorged ourselves on some delicious food. Brazilian all you can eat restaurants are super sweet. How it goes down is you hit up the buffet for some appetizers, then the waiters start coming around with different cuts of meat on these huge skewers and you just say if you want some. When you do they cut you some meat and there you have it. It was also at this dinner that I was introduced to the Brazilian national drink, the Caipirinha (fermented sugar cane with limes and lots of sugar). After dinner I was once again exhausted, and didn't make it out the the clubs that night, instead retiring early with my book for a good night's sleep.

The next day was awesome. We got up at a reasonable hour, hit up the breakfast then made our way out to the reef on a sweet $7.50 a person boat tour. What happens is you head out to the reef area where all these boar tour boats park and snorkel around with the option of ordering food and drinks from the kitchen boat. Now, these boats aren't motorized, actually there really rickety little sailboats, and the experience is awesome. Our boat tour lasted al morning and involved a lot of waist deep tossing with Grant from L&C. One of the best parts of doing the reef thing was spending time together as a team. I think hanging out together was more valuable than playing together could be. We acted like a team all week, it didn't matter how much we had played together, just that we all got along and gelled well socially.

After the boat tour we had a really low key day hanging out at the hotel, going to the grocery store, and the flea market thing. After lazing about all day we hit up the little burger place next to the hotel for dinner before going to the opening ceremony. The opening ceremony was really nice, all the different countries marched through with their flags and formed a huge circle. The TD then gave a speech, and finally it turned into a party. There were frisbee drinking games being played on the beach stadium pitches, and Michele (of Paganello fame) played songs for the crowd. I think the music played until around 1:00, then got some food with J9 (this was probably the best food I had the whole trip, and only because we just asked for the same thing as what the locals just got). Well, we got back to the hotel around 1:45 to get some sleep before our 10:00 am game with Ireland.

Well, that does it for the pre tournament festivities and posts, I'll get to posting about the games soon, and by soon, I definitely mean there will be less time between this post and the next.