Hello faithful readers!

We saw the Women’s Beach Volleyball Bronze, Silver, and Gold last night!

Raking the sand before and in between comps

I was beginning to worry the first event we watched we would lose, but Kerri and April pulled it off in the end and took bronze. The stadium was a lot more intimate than I had expected, and even though we were pretty far back the view was still amazing.

DENIED!

Secret signals from behind

We both missed a lot, but we won last anyway!

(I hadn’t noticed until halfway through the Gold game that I had taken pictures of secret teammate communication. I typically don’t look at women volleyball player butts, but once I saw they held the key to strategy I was able to glean some serious trade secrets).The whole event was filled with lots of music, dancing, and of course camera phone blackouts.

Blackout!

The stadiums are a feat of last minute scaffolding, and although completely safe feel completely life threatening once you know you’re being support by a bunch of skinny pipes. Heavy cheers for Brasil during the second match should have taken down the entire stadium but somehow it stayed standing. Secretly I was Germany fan but I was not going to let anyone around me know it – the people of Brasil are firece in defending their teams… whether they lose or lose. (Technically one team ended up with Silver but neither team won their competeition of the night. It was sad to see most of the fans so defeated. Their teams seemed to take it fairly hard as well).

Something something balls to the face before something

Germnay fighting hard to lose a point

Overall the night was really great and as tired as we were we had a great time. We ended up staying for the medal ceremony so we didn’t leave the stadium until 1am. But when we got back the magic food room was open and I had my first taste of pasteis. They were so good, even though we were eating them at 2am. Needless to say – full of Olympic Volleyball, Caprihanas, and Pasteis, we crashed hard last night by 2:30am so we could get up for our 8:30am trip the next day….

Copacabana Palace, our home away from home

(Or in English, a Pastel)