GOAL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Well as you may have guessed from the title we went to our first soccer game tonight. We went with the two families (who are adopting the older children from the summer magic program) still here from New York and the Kuligowski's (Mark and Susan) who are also still here but signed sentencia today. That's wonderful news for the Kuligowski's who have been here since early January. They can now finish up a few paperwork things and then they will be heading back to New York with their two beautiful girls. But back to the soccer game. Jorge picked us up about 6:30 and then we all headed over to Betty's place to pick up Susan and Mark and drop Luke off with Alicia. Then we were off to the game. (Lynn, a good friend of mine who actually introduced us to FANA, a great soccer player and Luke's future private soccer coach, you would have loved it here.) The two teams playing, Santa Fe and Equidad, are both from Bogota. It was interesting to see the many similarities and differences of professional sports here vs. back at home. It started with security. You get the old pat down at games at home, but we've never been patted down like this before. Kenny even looked over at me and said "I feel safer here than at the Linc (Philadelphia Eagles stadium)." Which is quite a strange statement to say in the middle Colombia. The concession stands, which is what I look to first, were also quite different. Take for instance the pig, with it's head still on, being served. We of course had to try it and it was surprisingly good. The soda here is not sold in the form of a fountain soda or bottle of soda, but in a plastic cup right from the two liter. There were also beverages being served from coolers, but I don't know what kind of beverage was in there. There were no nachos or cheese steaks, but they did have empanadas and chicken chips (they really are potato chips that taste like chicken). The fans here are really into supporting their team. If you could even imagine it to be possible, but there was even more energy in these fans than the energy felt in rival football teams back at home. These fans jumped up and down and sang songs to drums and chanted and cheered for their team for 90 minutes straight. And I mean they really jumped up and down without taking a break. We learned a lot about the game and about Colombian soccer in general. It was neat to be surrounded by screaming fans, and you have no idea what they are even yelling. The game itself was scoreless until 89 minutes and 50 seconds into the game, (they play for 90 minutes) the Santa Fe team scored, twice actually. So we had a great time and headed back to Betty's Place to pick up Luke. It was about 10:30 by this time and we thought for sure Luke would be fast asleep. But no. There he was, fully awake, just waiting for us. He again went wild with the jumping up and down in his brace, which we just love. So it was a late night out for all of us, but a fun night. Well, the boys are fast asleep, so I'm off to bed too.