I’m talking about the kind you actually play with your foot – soccer. Xela (our city) was playing Municipal – a team from Guatemala City. Xela is one of the worst rated teams and Guate City is one of the best. We were expecting a blow out.

I’m not even sure how to begin writing this. I’ve decided I just need to film it because there are no words to express…..

The game started at 8pm. It was raining of course. The stadium was sort of an enhanced version of a high school stadium (mind you, this is the second largest city in the country with 200,000 people). The tickets were $6.75. Lemme tell you – it’s so refreshing to actually be able to afford to GO to a pro sports game. It made a fan out of me before the game even started.

The same guys with AK47’s who guard everything in the city were out in droves. We got searched going in because apparently you can’t take water or pop bottles in because all the fans throw them on the field!

So we all bought ponchos and grabbed a seat on the far end of the field right above the goal. Great seats. There are no assigned seating – if you wanted to pay $2 more, you could sit in the covered section, but we didn’t know that. The door you enter in, is the section you sit in.

As the game was about to start, people started playing trumpets, drums, horns, other instruments. And we realized we were sitting in front of Those Guys. You know what I’m talking about – the guys who paint their faces, scream the entire game, rally up the crowd. There was no band. No cheerleaders. The crowd was more than enough.

So imagine me in a red poncho, dripping with cold and rain in the Guatemalan night next to 5 other Americans, excited with anticipation….. And then some dudes start to climb the fence. Now, I can’t imagine what these security guards with guns would do in the USA if the fans started climbing and sitting atop the fence around the field, getting their fireworks ready, but no one took notice. And thus, the game started.

The entire stadium lit up with fireworks, sparklers, flares, blinking flares, colored flares….. The field was awash in smoke and fumes and sparks. A guy on the fence hung a devil pinata from the fence and put a firework in it’s mouth, which it dutifully smoked until it caught on fire.  Now, mind you, this is a place where you can’t bring a water bottle in. But pyrotechnics? No problem. 

The entire game these guys behind us were singing with their trumpet and drum – some of the songs we caught onto, some of them were too complex but we sang and clapped along all the same. Wish I could repeat some of them here, but let’s just say, um, well, my mom reads this blog….

We all learned every curse word in Spanish last night – 100 times over. Ok, one of my favorite chants was this one:

Aqui, no hay gringos
Solo Super Chivos!

“There are no Americans here
Only super rams!” (repeat with trumpet)

Their mascot is a super ram. lol! They asked where we were from and when we said the US, they put thumbs up and started chanting about Obama. They love that guy here.

Then, they asked what the meaning of doing that ninja turtle thing with your hand – you know, the one where you stick out your thumb and pinky and say “RAD” or something like that…. We told them it means cool, which they translated into “Excellente!” We didn’t know how to tell them otherwise. So there were all these Guatemalan guys behind us shouting “Excellent” and doing that hand motion. I decided to ask them a question of my own.

I said what does *&#%& mean? (a curse word that seemed to be everyone’s favorite). They all laughed and told me it means “the ball.” As often as they were using it, you could almost believe it.

Well, Xela ended up winning (1-0) and at the end of the game the whole stadium erupted again. They got an iron-plated swat team to escort the refs off the field while the fans lit fireworks again.

The guys behind us had a stash of their own. Nate got a hot spark on his neck and the rest of us got plastered with this pink stuff in one of the pink streaming flares. It was all over our clothes, our faces, our hands….I was hiding under my thin, little poncho.

We said goodbye and walked home in a celebratory mood, dripping wet, and singing our newly learned songs all the way….