¿Fútbol or football?

The school arranged an event for us to go to a fútbol (soccer) game and meet the team afterwards. I originally had no interest in going, but my friends were going, and since Europeans pretty much breathe and dream fútbol, I figured it was only appropriate to attend in order to have a true Spanish experience. The game was really fun...for the first few minutes, but I'm pretty sure I'm just not cut out for watching sporting events. My attention span is much, much shorter than it would need to be to watch a sporting event in its entirety.

From what I understand, sporting events tend to have different periods. For example, hockey has 3 of them. Sometimes more if there's a tie at the end of the 3rd period. Football has two halves. And when the clock runs out, if one score is higher than the other, the higher score wins. However, in soccer, (maybe this only occurs here) this is not the case. When the clock runs out

at the end, they just add more time. The way I understand it is that its an arbitrary amount of time and they keep adding more until they feel like they're done for the night. And when you're sitting in the "vomitorio" and it's cold and windy, it's not exactly paradise.

Some people went to the game with their intercambios. (An intercambio is basically a friend the school sets you up with who wants to practice English and speaks Spanish, so you hang out and you take turns speaking Spanish and English) After the game, we waited around to meet the team, but it was taking forever, so we opted to goof around outside the stadium. I got to meet people from Spain, Poland, and Italy. ¡Que guay! (How cool!)

Another round of pictures...