cooooolo, colo colo colo

Today I became a true South American and attended my first soccer game! All the AU kids in my program and I went to the Stadium Estado Nacional to watch Colo-Colo play against Universidad Católica. From my very limited understanding of Chilean soccer, there are three popular teams in Santiago: Colo-Colo, Universidad Católica, and Universidad de Chile. Since we have been in Chile for a week and don't have any strong team allegiances yet, we randomly decided to buy tickets for the Colo-Colo section and root for them.

It was a good choice (even though Colo-Colo lost 2-1) because the fans were crazy. They easily outnumbered and out-chanted the Católica fans. We couldn't understand all of the words to the chants, but we did join in on the "Cooooolo, Colo Colo Colo!" ones. When Colo-Colo made its first (and only) goal of the game, I thought a riot was going to break out. It was really a crazy kind of energy that I've never experienced in the US -- which is a shame, because if our sports games were more like that I would probably care about them more.

Unfortunately, I have no pictures to share with you because the police guards told us not to use our cameras in the stadium -- apparently, the fact that we're gringos combined with the blatant use of expensive technology would put us at a higher risk for getting mugged. Awesome. But luckily we all survived and decided to be Colo-Colo fans until we die. Now we have to work at learning the chants and appropriate swear words so we're ready for our next game...