Allllrighty!
Finally gonna do a Moir-style writeup on the crazy amazy time that was the South American Championships!
I was gone for 12 days, 5 days in Medellin (pronounced me-de-JHEEN) and 7 days in Bogota, the capital.
Because 12 days worth of stuff is an ABSURD amount to cover in one post, I'll do what I've done in the past which is make a
50 Most Memorable Moments of Colombia and the South American Championships (in no particular order)
By Jorden Moir
1 - realizing by the end of the trip that half the spanish words I was taught related to alcohol.
2 - getting somewhere around 100 pictures taken with all the players. talk about celebrity treatment!
3 - signing shoes, shirts, DVDs, backpacks, footbags and stuff I can't even remember
4 - seeing the villages in the mountains surrounding Medellin 360 degrees light up at night. It looked like a breathtaking sea of low-lying stars!
5 - discovering that the general public in Colombia is way more receptive/attentive to footbag because of their futbol culture
6 - trying Juan Valdez coffee at the Bogota airport just after arrival. Colombians really do have the best coffee! It's like Tim Hortons of Colombia
7 - the 14 hour nightmare busride to Medellin. The roads connecting the two cities are really insane. They zigzag like crazy up and around the tops of mountains with really low barriers that would barely prevent you from falling off the cliff if you ran into them! Yikes.
8 - during the bus ride, being completely stopped for 2 HOURS straight because of a LANDSLIDE ahead of us. What the hell?
9 - realizing that very few people in Colombia actually wear seatbelts.
When inside a taxi you really need to search for them deep underneath the seat (lol)
10 - having an epic game of fuchi (what they call Hacky slacking/circle kicking) with Lily, Hernan, Alvaro and Gabriel at a tourtis-y lookout point in the center of Medellin. Oh, and the view was unbelievable!
11 - Getting to kick with Jon Schneider on another continent. Fun times and great seshes. You were rippin it bro!
12 - Going to the party district one night in Medellin. It was huge! A few square blocks of bars and nightclubs on a 2-tiered landscape.
13 - at the disctrict getting served a 'pitcher' of beer in the form of a large glass pole with a tap at the bottom, and getting cups a fraction filled with lemon juice and salt around the rim. It was Jon and I's first time trying lemony salty beer from a glass pole -- I think we both really enjoyed it!
14 - that same night Alejo taught me some 'useful' Spanish words. I'll never forget how to say the basic colours after that lesson. I also learned that aguardiente (licorice-flavoured liqueur) = bailler (dancing). Don't ask, hehe.
15 - having a huge say in the judging/scoring format of all the freestyle events at a continental Championships! It was great because I'd never really had so much power coordinating and planning judging formats before. I used a logical method for tallying up and ranking using the scores of the 3 judges and I'm glad to say it totally worked! What a boost of confidence setting that up.
16 - learning that Colombia is one of the few places where Coca Cola has some serious competition in the soft drink sector. Postobon fucking owns the place, and it's pretty damn tasty to boot!
17 - eating a lot of strange cheese (pretty random I know). There were 2 main kinds; one was called double cream cheese and other I can't remember but was similar. They were both were kind of gross.
18 - the shred! seeing some crazy tricks from up and comers like Alvaro and Pedro, like torch-r rack and nuclear torque. hot shit!
19 - the Gatorade sponsorship! We had free Gatorade at the event site the entire weekend of the comp. Way to pull that one off guys! I think one of the Gatorade ladies had a thing for me.
20 - the party in Bogota that Alvaro, his best friend and I went to. We got lost about 5 times, so it ended up taking 3 hours to arrive.
the party was kinda cool. It was at a wealthy man's ranch inside the horse stable! They had sound equipment and a bar set up (whiskey open bar! hehe). the problem was all the ladies were at least 5 years older than us. got no game that night.
21 - getting an earful of broken english stories from Habito (sp?) the entire bus ride to Medellin. I did learn a fair bit though.
22 - getting a huge american-sized meal that all the Bogota players gawked at when the bus made a rest stop. Are you gonna eat all that?
23 - HIT! Hit is this awesome fruit drink that comes in many flavours and is delicious! It's not the artificial sugar-water you find in North America. The strawberry and the mango were my 2 favourites.
24 - On the topic of beverages -- Maracuja!! Maracuja means passion fruit, and is probaby the tastiest juice ever. I'm sure you've all had passionfruit juice, but never a full litre bottle by itself! Amaaazing.
25 - Alvaro's Mom! haha. She's one of the friendliest and most hospitable human beings I've ever met (I stayed at their house for 6(?) nights). The problem is she couldn't speak a word of english! That was always kind of a struggle. She makes some wicked food though. Salut to your familia Alvaro!
26 - Alvaro's sister made me this WICKED crazy custom toque/hat thing -- for FREE. It's super funky orange/green striped -- just what I wanted. She makes custom sweaters and other clothing with her huge sewing machine as a freelance job. Thanks Aleja -- you rule!!
27 - the performance I did as a promotion-thing for Gatorade. they totally filmed it to use for future advertising or something. I completely BOMBED it and dropped constantly -- plus a lot of the South American players were standing and watching. lol
28 - performing an exhibition at the Universidad de San Bienaventura. It went great! a lot of people sat/stopped and watched. One of my best performances to date. and for payment we got free got free lunch tickets! I totally pigged out at the cafeteria. This wasn't such a good idea because I got really feverish and stomach-achey which lasted a couple days.
29 - Colombia's VH1 Channel. Picture all your favourite fun, quirky american music videos from the 80s, 90s and 00s spewed out randomly on a TV channel. Fucking awesome!
30 - the Gran hotel where we stayed in Medellin! Really nice, big clean rooms with free internet in the lobby downstairs. And crazy cheap too! (3-bed room split 4 ways over 5 days = about $30 total each. WHAT??!!)
31 - seeing all the cool and uniquely designed parks in Bogota. we went to one and all it was was a really fancy pavillion with nice chairs and lighting on one half, and the other half was a large sandbox. How bout that. hehe
32 - the emissions that cars spew out in Bogota are deadly! That stuff is way more regulated in Canada. If you like the smell of gasoline fumes Bogota is the perfect city for you.
33 - they sure love store-bought snack cakes and brownies over there/ One of the cakes was called Bimbo (haha -- Bimbo). I totally gave one to my Mom as a souvenir/joke.
34 - they fruit they have over there is CRAZY! Like, weird alien fruit. My favourite was the gajawa (sp?). It's so weird I can barely explain it. Like an orange but with a hard, thick "egg-shell" and seeds surrounded with jelly-goop inside that looked like eyeballs.
One of the fruits was an orange-coloured grape that's sweet and sour at the same time. It was the funkiest-tasting fruit ever! Way too intense for me.
35 - THE RED BULL FREESTYLE FUTBOL event. For me this was the definite highlight of Bogota. Two teams of players from separate freestyle futbol schools (that's right - -SCHOOLS) battled one-on-one in a round robin match of 3 mins. The skill level was astonishing!!
36 - performing a paid footbag exhibition before the Semifinals of the Red Bull event. Pedro went out and fucking rocked it, warming the crowd up, then I laid it down for like, 12 minutes!! haha. I think the crowd really dug it. It was a really cool underground style colisseum building downtown.
37 - there were some seeeriosuly Red Bull models at this event. OH MY GOD. One was the most beautiful girl I've ever seen. I got my picture taken with her! Yessss!! I'll show you it in my blog sometime soon. She was smokin' hot. Mmmmmm.
38 - heh that party that all the players went to in Medellin on the outskirts of town where there were 3 TIERS of parties in the same joint, and each had their own separate STYLE of music!! Whoooa. I think everyone was really digging it. Did I mention the girls of Medellin are super attractive?
39 - listening to ragatone music for the first time ever. It's like trendy south american reggae hip-hop. Seriously, that's the best description I can give. Didn't like it at aaall. :p
40 - checking out a local flea market with Alvaro and Alvaro Sr. Picked up some really nice Adidas athletic shirts for really cheap (you can see the black one in the Cornall video). Thanks for taking us Papa!
41 - Alvaro's crazy front body anchor trick that I requested (see the vid in the Video section). That shit was naaastay. Props again man.
42 - just seeing and metting all the huge number of super stoked and enthusiastic players with great potential all come together in one place. I had never met so many new freestylers in one place before. Keep mastering those basics guys. Let's step it up! I wanna see some big-time improvements for next year.
43 - getting interviewed, like 5 times? by different local and international(!!) TV stations regarding the championships and sometimes just because I was visiting. :p
The Spanish CNN (no jokes) was supposed to come and interview/film us during our group session on the Saturday in Bogota. Unfortunately they never showed.
44 - my name got mentioned in a small sports newspaper for performing at the Red Bull event!
45 - teaching a great deal of players some little insights of mine. I really enjoy teaching. I figured out a new style of ankle stretch and I think most players really dug it. Also gave some advice on barraging and slicing sets which I think helped a few people.
46 - people in Colombia say "Whoosh" whenever they see something impressive, just like we say "Wow". Needless to say, I got whooshed several times. Many inside jokes were later developed based on this fact.
47 - not footbag related, but people will actually walk up to your car and try to sell you individual items when you're at a red light or in traffic. It's kinda weird, but at the same time it's cool because there aren't really any beggars in Colombia. Everyone tries to contribute to society by offering SOMETHING, whether it be fruit, gum, chocolate or whatever in a display case or food cart. I think this is a great system and we should relax our regulations on vendors a little bit over here. Let's work together and solve the homeless problem.
48 - Alvaro toootally scratched his Dad's car when we were backing out of the apartment complex's driveway. Shiiit! He was really shaken up about it (well, freaking out actually) and told me his Dad would kill him. He was having a terrible month to begin with. Luckily we went to Hernan's house and his Dad Miguel(?) did a touch up on it. It did the trick and Alvaro is still alive I think
.
49 - hehe, trying to go to the bathroom on the bus on the way back to Bogota. The busdrivers drive like maniacs and the roads are all like, sharp U-turn squigglies throughout the mountains. There was nothing to grab onto so I had to push my knees against the walls and aim at the same time. It...could've gone better.
50 - the policemen and security guards down there are armed to the teeth! A couple times at the bus stop I saw a security guard holding a shotgun (yikes!). Billy clubs were like the standard, even for the young-teenager security guards like, wherever you went. On the busride to Medellin when we stopped we could see all these guerillas with machine guns investagating the forests and stuff. Veeery intimidating.
glad they didn't come on baord the bus, I would have probably shit myself. :p
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Well um, that's it. Hopefully you learned some things about Colombia and footbag in South America by reading this. Or for a select few this will bring back some good memories. At the very least I hope you found it entertaining -- cuz it was a bitch to write (my head hurts from typing.
)!
For everyone hoping to maybe go to Colombia someday I definitely full-out recommend checking it out. It's much safer than I could have imagined, way safer than the news makes it out to be. Try to drink bottled water as much as possible though cuz you and your tummy won't be used to it.
Colombia is absolutely beautiful and mountainous and green and everyone is super friendly. Hell, even just go for vacation and don't play footbag! :p Nah, but you'll want to play footbag because all the players over there are super keen and stoked. So yeah, everyone go to COLOMBIA.
And for all the players I met at the Championships and who helped get me there, I know I've said this way to much but HUGE thanks to all of you. You helped make my stay extremely enjoyable and something I will surely remember for the rest of my life. Thanks for being super hospitable and friendly and throwing me some pesos when I was low.
Maybe I can return the favour someday. All of you are welcome to stay at my house in Canada at any time. I wish you good karma in the visa-obtaining process.
In conclusion, everyone should not hesitate for a second to go to the 2nd Annual IFPA South American Championships next year. You shant be disappointed.
Oh yeah, and help support these people if they end up bidding for the 2009 Worlds.
Fuck Berlin.
Cheers everbody!!!!!!! Hope you enjoyed the writeup.
See ya,
Jorden M
