tl;dr
- Marta is the futebol queen of Brazil.
- I went to Avenida Paulista and saw tons of artists, craftspeople, musicians, and a magician.
- Click here for Day 3 photos and videos.
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As many of you know, soccer (or futebol here in Brazil) is HUGE. On Sunday, June 10, 2019 the female Brazilian futebol played the Jamaican team in the FIFA women’s world cup. Now, you may be thinking to yourself Woah, I think this is the most Talia has ever spoken about sports before! Is she okay? Why does she care about this? Well, friends, read on.
In Brazil, the most famous soccer player is named Neymar (boooo!). The 3rd highest paid athlete in the world, Neymar is known not only for dishonest plays on the field, but also off the field. He is currently being accused of rape by a Brazilian model. As far as I could tell from all of the Brazilians I talked to, nobody really likes Neymar (even his coaches and fellow players… yikes).
Marta, on the other hand, is the top female soccer player in Brazil. Marta won the FIFA award for best player in the world SIX TIMES. Neymar has won this award zero times. Still, Neymar earns 175 times more than Marta. Because everyone is finally realizing that Marta is the superior futebol idol/role model, Brazil’s national television services decided to broadcast the women’s FIFA World Cup games for the first time. In order to show the broadcasters that women’s soccer can get good viewership, like men’s soccer does, as many people as possible tried to tune into the game (including me!). You could hear cheering on the streets as Brazil beat Jamaica 3-0. Yay!!!
Next on the docket was something a little more my speed – a nice walk down Avenida Paulista. Avenida Paulista is really close to Maria’s apartment, and I had been there before, but this time was different. Every Sunday they close the street so that street performers, craftspeople, and other Paulistas (people who live in São Paulo) can buy and sell goods, and take nice walks with their dogs.
On Avenida Paulista, I saw tons of bands, a magician, and even a man trying to make money by showing off his math skills to a young boy and his father. The two groups that particularly stood out to me were Ágora (a group comprised of musicians from Centro Musical Santa Cruz in São Paulo) and Bolero Freak (see the video I took of them here). After walking around for a few hours (and spending too much time watching a magician who ate a balloon and then made water disappear and reappear from inside of a newspaper), I wandered into the Casa das Rosas. They had a cafe there, so I sat down and ordered some food. Soon, however, I realized that PlantMade, where I had left my coat the night before, was about to close (according to Google…). I quickly finished my food and Ubered over to PlantMade. I had a lovely conversation in broken Portuguese with the driver and when we passed a Salsa group practicing their drumming, we both said legal (which means ‘cool’) at the same time 💃🏻. When I got to PlantMade, I realized it wasn’t actually closing and I hadn’t really needed to rush, but I was already there, so I just got my jacket and headed home.
On my walk home, I passed by some beautiful trees (and a ton of cute dogs!) and wandered into the Parque Buenos Aires. It was lush and beautiful, and full of children playing, millennials picnicking, and dogs running. A woman was reading on a bench in the park and I thought she looked really peaceful – what a nice place to have in the middle of the city!
When I got home, I dealt with the technical aspects of this blog (I may be young, but that doesn’t mean I can easily figure out how to get my videos from my camera to my computer and then onto this blog without eating up storage space in all of those locations 😭) so I ate some cookies for dinner and dealt with that. Here are the photos for Day 3: https://flic.kr/s/aHsmEaWkNu 🙂
Adventures of Talia 