Brazil Blog: Wednesday, May 14
It was a special day in Brazil touching two different aspects of life.

Under sunny skies, we started the day with a light training session on the beach at Santos. After loosening up the team played a little beach soccer. Once again Dr. Rosenbaum showed his skill and like all Brazilian greats is asking to be called by just one name. Rosenbauminho. We'll see if it sticks. Most importantly, the team met to review the previous match vs. Santos. What did we learn? It was a very important and useful conversation about "the game within the game" that only Brazilians know and will go a long way towards making our team better. I can speak for the group when I say that being in this culture seeing, playing and talking about the game is changing how we all see and think about the game.

After a quick lunch we boarded Jose's bus and headed back to Sao Paulo for a social support trip to a local after-school program called, Gol de Letra. Gol de Letra was started by two former Brazil team members, Leonardo and Rai, to provide a safe environment for underprivileged children to be exposed to programs furthering their development. As Brazilian kids only attend school part-time, the program is designed to compliment what they learn in school and includes programs such as: art, theatre, dance, sport and many others to enhance their development. The end goal is to improve the social standing of the local neighborhood and beyond. We are truly thankful for them to open their doors to us and let our players interact with the children. Some of the guys played basketball with the kids while others joined in on the soccer field. Austin da Luz was quick to make friends after showing some soccer tricks to the kids. In fact, I think he picked up some new material from the young Brazilians. Others spent time speaking with kids taking in new Portuguese phrases while passing out some English phrases of there own. There were a lot of smiles and laughs from our attempts at the Portuguese language. Meeting with the program director to the tour of the school and interacting with the kids was a very special experience. We look forward to maintaining a relationship with our new friends at Gol de Letra and will be sure to see that the soccer gear and school supplies donated become just the first step in our program assisting them from a far.

Well we will soon be arriving at Sao Paulo FC for our next match.

More later-

Jon

Day 4 Blog Entry and Photo Gallery