‘Merca Day

7/4/14

Happy 4^th of July people! Not sure how your celebrations went in the U.S. but ours was fairly lackluster. We spent the morning at the beach – or tried to – after driving through more hellish traffic and getting frustrated that four different ATMs wouldn’t take our debit card. [Nick: The worst part is that it took forever to find out an ATM would not work because people ahead of us were paying utility bills at the ATM. Cool that they can do that, but it creates long, slowly moving lines at each ATM.] Then getting charged an arm and a leg to rent chairs and an umbrella at a public beach, (it sucks to be ripped off just because you’re a tourist who doesn’t speak the language; I mean, come on!) only to have to leave about an hour later to try and find a restaurant that had a tv so we could watch the France v. Germany semi-final (sadly, Germany won). Which you would think would be easy but sadly was not, but we finally found a good spot at a churrasqueria just before tip-off. [Nick: I think we were the only tourists at the pretty fancy restaurant, and we were obviously there to see the game. The Brazilians were wearing yellow since they were going to play later in the day, but only paid glancing attention to the game. Surprising to me since they would face the winner.]

Atlantic Coast

So after a day of stressful and exhausted driving, we spent the rest of the day in the hotel room sulking and watching tv. Oh well, bound to happen when traveling this long together. We watched the Brazil v. Colombia game and while I’m sad to see Colombia leave (they’ve been doing so well this year!), I’m relieved that Brazil won and will move on to the next round. And I have to say, I was awed and inspired by David Luis’ consoling of Colombia’s young star, James Rodriguez, after his loss. It was profound and genuine sportsmanship – the kind of thing that can really show the beauty of soccer!