Cuenca vs. Barcelona (Guayaquil)

This weekend has flown by, as they usually do. But it seems like I've been squeezing a lot more into the weekends lately, which has helped them pass faster. This is good, because I'd rather be out with friends doing things, but it also means that Monday comes that much quicker. Yesterday was a beautiful day so a few of us went down to Parque Paraiso and played Frisbee. I ran down to the park to get the blood flowing after a night out, and the sun helped me sweat out some of the remaining hangover.

We played for a few hours and finished up just as the weather changed and it got colder. A thunderstorm in the distance played out a show for us as Jamie, Jake, a visiting friend on his way up to Colombia, and I walked around the park. A party at a bar in the city was put on later last night by a teacher from one of the language schools here. The theme was 90s Hip Hop and Funk music. On the invitation it said to dress funky, and though a few of us tried our best, most people were just dressed up normally. We danced up a storm last night, and it was a really nice change of pace to hear different music besides the standard Salsa, Merengue, Bachata, Cumbia, and Reggaeton.

We'd also heard that Barcelona, a soccer team from Guayaquil was playing in Cuenca at 11:30 am, and since they're one of the best and most popular teams in the country, we wanted to go. That meant waking up after another long night and getting busy, but it was worth it. With another powerfully sunny day, we headed down to the stadium and got tickets off of a scalper for $5. Trying hard to keep up with sunscreen so that I didn't burn too badly, we had to walk nearly the distance of the general seating to find three seats. It was packed, with almost half of the stadium wearing Barcelona's yellow jerseys, and the other half wearing Cuenca's red jerseys. It was only 11:30 am, but people were already plastered and throwing trash at the few people who walked through the Cuenca section wearing yellow.

Cuenca played well and came close to scoring a few times in the first half, but at halftime it was still 0-0. Barcelona has traditionally been a good team, and people all over the country like them, even though they are one of the teams from Guayaquil. In my experience I've also seen that many people in Cuenca either root for Barcelona or Liga, a team from Quito. The second half passed along and slowly the clouds started to roll in, but the heat was still oppressing. Of course, Cuenca now going on the opposite end of the field, and while I was looking somewhere else, they scored the only goal of the game. With much excitement the stadium went wild, or half of it did anyway. So once again, I saw Cuenca beat a superior team on their homefield. The final score of the game was Cuenca 1- Barcelona 0. And now I just need to fill the time between now and when I have to get back to work tomorrow.