As many of you may already know Chile played España yesterday and lost. That did not change the mood too much around here, although I have a feeling that had they won, the festivities would've been a little more celebratory with good reason rather than just becoming inebriated for the sake of it. Here's a brief record of my descriptions yesterday:
SANTIAGO, CHILE "Being the responsible student she is, Kelsey Kaufman, a third-year international studies major at UW-Madison, was taking a test for her class, Asia, una Megarregión Emergente in the San Joaquin campus of la Universidad Católica de Chile at 11:30 a.m. on Friday, July 25th. She was excited yet nervous because she had heard rumors that people literally go crazy when Chile plays in the world cup, even more so when they play big-name teams such as Spain. That just so happened to be the case this very day.
She finished up her test and noticed the different vibe that was present on campus. Everybody was a little more relaxed, albeit during a period of exams and stress for many students. She was the last to finish her exam and as she exited the classroom she was greeted by a group of young gentlemen kicking a soccer ball back and forth and people running around with chelas, face paint and just buen ánimo, as they say in Chile.
As she made her way to the subway, cars were flying by on Avenida Vicuña McKenna honking their horns, waving Chilean flags out the windows and stirring up general pandemonium among fellow fans. The vendors that normally station themselves outside the metro station at San Joaquin were all packing up shop early, getting ready to go watch the game. She passed by groups of students helping one another add more paint to their faces, practice using their vuvuzelas and starting some of Chile's national songs and cheers. Not only that, but she also took note of all of the pengüinos, which are the uniformed school children, who had all gotten the rest of the day off.
"I was shocked!" Kaufman commented. "I have never seen a country react this way for a sporting event. It was like a national holiday seeing all the schools getting let out and everyone getting off work early. We don't even do that for the Super Bowl!"
She approached the metro, not knowing what volume of people to expect on the coming train. Being 1:30 on a Friday afternoon, the metro is usually pretty empty but she had a feeling that today would be a different story. She was right. The train came, the doors opened and there was hardly any room at all. She managed to squeeze on between some excited fans and decided to keep a low profile being the stereotypical gringa that she is. With each station, more people continued boarding the train, even though space was tight. Within only a few minutes she began to hear the popular cheer, "C-H-I, CHI, L-E , LE, CHI, CHI, CHI, LE, LE, LE, VIVA CHILE!" taking place on the car directly behind hers, as well as at every station as more fans began to recognize one another.
She somehow made it to metro stop Baquedano to switch to the red line and witnessed even more commotion. The level of excitement was high and she was starting to get excited for the quickly approaching kick-off. She eventually made it to Mosai Cafe and met her friend Ellie Thomas, a third-year sociology major at UW-Madison, and the two had to get creative to find some seats. Luckily a nice couple offered to move so they could sit together, so the two girls took advantage of being there with such an atmosphere and ordered a couple of Stella Artois' to go along with the game. The "cafe" was more of a bar and the waiters were running around like chickens with their heads cut off. The middle- to upper-class crowd that was present was ordering food, beer, drinks, coffee and making those waiters earn their 10% tip.
The game started off and people hadn't had very much to drink yet, so there was still a pretty good air in the atmosphere, minus the heavy cloud of cigarette smoke. After Spain scored the first goal that many would consider a big mistake, the table of middle-aged muchachos in front of the two girls ordered another round of piscolas, with a much higher quantity of pisco than cola. They finished those off in no time and ordered another and then another, until Kelsey realized that she should re-focus on the game.
The game eventually ended and rather than finding a bunch of very upset Chileans, the crowd still cheered because the result of the Honduras game allowed for Chile to qualify to the next round. The two girls were confused yet surprised to hear people cheering, "Honduras, Honduras!" instead of "Chile, Chile!" They left the bar and walked home and after splitting ways Kelsey continued hearing the cheers and general chaos in her neighborhood all day long and even well into the evening hours. When she left the house at close to midnight to meet another friend she saw many people still celebrating, walking along with champagne and beer bottles, and trying to stumble their way onto buses without success.
All in all it was a great experience for Kelsey to be in Santiago when Chile played Honduras, Switzerland and now Spain, and she hopes that they can pull out a win in the next round!
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