Norway-Portugal

I just got back from my first men’s national team game; come to think of it, I think first ever any men’s national team game, at least in the last say 15 years. It was so cool!

I live right next to the national stadium that some of the men’s Tippaligaen teams play at and that all the men’s national team games are at. For the last 2 years that I have lived here, I can literally open my window during matches and hear the crowd chanting and singing. That being said, when I heard that Portugal-Norway was playing a qualifying match, I thought it would be pretty cool to be able to check it out, since Portugal is also one of my favourite teams in the world. It was sold out though, so I had sort of given up on the idea, til my Portuguese teammate from Donn, Edite mentioned the other day that she was coming up for the game. She ended up surprising me yesterday with a message saying she managed to snag an extra ticket, so I was super stoked to get to go! I found out that my favourite player from Portugal from the World Cup, actually grew up with her in the small town that she is from, and she knows him really well, but unfortunately he was injured, along with Ronaldo, Deco has retired, and so the only player that I recognized was Carvalho the defender and captain, as well as the goalkeeper who messed up big time to cause the first goal on a kick out that got blocked.

Sasha, one of my Canadian buddies who plays for one of the other teams was with me, cause Edite had an extra ticket, and so we watched the game together in the Portuguese fan section, along with my Donn teammate Sharon, who also lives in Oslo during the week. The atmosphere was electric and the weather was perfect, so it made for a good night. I will post pics later. I am pretty proud of myself since I also managed to get 8 pages of my thesis whipped out today, after my meeting with my advisor. Just really enjoying life and my friends right now, and although I have absolutely no idea what I will be doing next year, I am just soaking up all the cool experiences I am getting to have here.