Augie: A loss, but a learning experience

HuddleThe Augustana basketball teams are in Brazil this week and are blogging on the trip. Ben Ryan is blogging for the men’s team and you can catch their blog posts on the D3hoops.com Daily Dose. Chaney Tambling is blogging for the women’s team.

Today we spend our last day in Jundiai. We ate breakfast as a team in the hotel. Then we had time to relax poolside and try not to get burnt in the hot winter morning sun or spend time in our rooms. Or we could take another adventurous trip to the market near the hotel.

Every trip to the market is a great experience to learn about the Brazilian culture from trying to communicate with the workers there by confused stares, hand signals and the narrow vocabulary of Portuguese we have learned (which for some just includes “obrigado” – “Thank you”).

We checked out of our hotel in the afternoon and drove from one side of São Paulo to the other which took two hours, which is about average to drive through the largest metropolitan area in the world that is home to 29 million people.

It is truly amazing to see how the people of São Paulo live.

Our third and last game in São Paulo was played in the Santo Andre sports club which housed a basketball and soccer stadium, it’s very easy to tell that these are the main sports and attractions here.

We lost hard fought game against the Santo Andre club team. With Nic and Kevin Schlitter not playing tonight we had some guys step up and contribute more.

We then traveled another two hours to Frango Assado, a restaurant chain that is attached to a roadside gas station. A local man helped us translate and order our food and in return we thanked him with an Augustana basketball T-shirt. After dinner we traveled a half-hour to São Jose dos Campos where we will rest up and leave for Rio de Janeiro in the morning.