azzurri love.

The World Cup is kinda a big deal in Italy. Last time when Italy won, apparently our friend Davide swam in the Trevi fountain and people were running around naked and policemen were driving around waving flags out their windows instead of doing anything. All true stories. So you can imagine that they all got pretty excited for the first game Italy played this year, and we got to see it firsthand. I mentioned earlier that there is a huge screen playing the games at a park called Villa Borghese and that’s where we watched the game with probably about 20,000 other people. We got there about an hour and a half early so we got some pretty good seats on the ground in front of the stage. What was really great was that everything except the food there was free! We got free paper clapper/fans/Go Italia signs and there were places to play soccer or shoot on a goal. Since we were there before it was too crazy we got to wander around for a little bit and have fun. They were blasting music from the stage, and when it got closer to the match they played a game of Fifa on the big screen to simulate the game (Italy won 2-0 in that scenario). Some of our friends from La Sapienza all came to watch with us, and so by the time the game started we were packed in like sardines. It was absolutely incredible; I wish so badly that soccer games in America were like this because it was a blast. It's a little hard to explain in words, so here are some pictures and I'll just narrate along the way. :]

This was off to our right just after they played the national anthem. Yeah, those are flares. Now imagine this off to the left also and in front of us with about twenty giant flags waving around. Then behind us looked a little something like this:


But there was something a little different than sporting events in America; they sat down the entire time! It was a little strange for me, and since we were so packed in I would have rather stood up the entire time. But what can you do... Anyways, like I mentioned before, we had some awesome Italian friends with us to show us the ropes when it comes to cheering for Italian soccer. I learned two new Roman slang phrases from my friend Pietro to be used in cheering for soccer: daje (pronounce something like dai-yeh! I apparently couldn't say it correctly because I didn't sound mean enough) which means something like Come on! So... if anyone watched the Italia Paraguay game, you can imagine that Pietro was yelling Daje! a lot. The other word was li mortacci tua which in the context of cheering means something a little like Screw you. You yell it when someone messes up, but I never got the hang of yelling it during the game. He has since told me that I probably should never say it to other people. So I guess I sort of know how to cuss in Roman Italian? Super. Anyways, everyone stood up at half time, and then when Italia scored their goal. When they scored it was incredible. The entire place just blew up. More flares, lots of hugging and lots of screaming and jumping up and down. Also, apparently the beat to Seven Nation Army was the song of Italy for the last world cup, so we sang that when they scored too.



This was the craziest guy I saw there. Hilarious.



And here are my friends! We got to hang out with them after the game, dancing with the rest of the crowd for awhile and then going to get food at Piazza Bologna. It was suuuch a blast and I'm so glad we got the opportunity to go! I might go back and add a little more detail to this post, but for now I have to go to Bible study. :] Ciaoo.