Stories From The Road: Ole, Ole, Ole, Ole, Monstro! Monstro!

Estadio Ricardo Saprissa Aymá

This is the second installment of our "Stories from the Road" series on Project Serve Costa Rica. 


If you were to ask me the most exciting and most terrifying hour of my life was, I might just say the football game that we took in while we were in San Jose. It wasn't for any real threat to my life or anything, but simply the sheer energy of thousands of people shouting and screaming in a language I didn't understand. But let me back up...


We had a surprise for our Project Serve team late in the week. Even our leaders didn't know what it was until the last minute. Our hosts had arranged for us to go to a professional football game. Aaron and I are not huge soccer fans, especially to the degree of some of our friends back at home, but in our minds it was like watching a Canadian hockey game: something that had to be done in Costa Rica. What was even more ridiculous was that the ticket's were the price of a latte at Starbucks, which is completely unheard of here. 

Miraculously we managed to find 26 seats in the same section. Thankfully, our hosts told us which team to cheer for. We were a few minutes into the game by the time we found seats, but it didn't take long to find out whether or not the ref had made a good or a bad call, based on the reaction of the fans. At one point, the guy in front of me cracked his head off of my knee as he threw his hands and his head back in disbelief at a penalty. Our youth watched wide-eyed at the spectacle of the game and stadium, and then something interesting happened. 

We got into it. As the ball neared the opposing teams goal, all of the fans started to stand up. At first, we stood up because that was the only way we could see what was going on. But then, we started to stand to our feet with a similar excitement as everyone else (keep in mind that we had no idea what the Spanish-speaking announcer was saying). And we cheered. And we groaned when the shot missed. When a player was downed by a hit, we talked about it as if we'd been following the team for a long time. We loved it. 


It wasn't a great game by our host's standards. And to be honest, I didn't know that there could be a scoreless game (didn't there need to be at least ONE goal scored in overtime?). But wow, was it an experience. It was a nice surprise in the middle of our week, and the team buzzed about it all night. And, it may have just turned me into a soccer fan.