Traveling to Portugal from the United States puts all of us in a different cultural setting. Peanut butter becomes a chocolate spread (similar to Nutella), "thank you" becomes "obrigada/o", and football becomes futebol.
I had gone to my internship for the day and now I was beginning to read "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" by Robert M. Pirsig so I went to the study lounge. It was the perfect afternoon to start reading such an interesting book, I thought. I was on the third page and all of a sudden I heard people yelling. It bothered me but I kept reading. Ten seconds later I heard people yelling again but this time it sounded like a fight.
As I walked downstairs, the noise lessened but I was still curious to see what was happening. When I opened the door of the second "study"lounge downstairs, all I saw from behind was three heads on a couch and a TV. Guess what the students from the University of the Azores were watching? Twenty-two guys running behind a ball. There are two TVs in the lounge and both were on the same channel.
That was the day of the Portugal vs. Brazil futebol game.
A bit later that day we went out to have dinner. We watched the end of the game and lived part of their celebration. Portugal won 1-0. Not long after the game ended, a multitude of cars honked on the streets; we were in the middle of a traditional Azorean futebol frenzy. I remembered the passion of futbol in Colombia and smiled--I could feel the passion of futebol once again, this time in the middle Atlantic Ocean.
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