Comemoração

Anderson takes a futsal (indoor soccer) class on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons. He loves it. His coach, Emerson, used to be a professional player for our favorite soccer team.

Emerson is super nice but he's tough on the kids when he needs to be. He is a great coach who laughs and has fun during practice time. He makes the kids bring in their report cards so he can check them. He talks about respect for parents and teachers. If someone fights or swears during practice he kicks them out. He asks them on Tuesdays what vegetables they had for lunch that day. If they didn't eat any they don't get to kick penalty kicks at the end of practice (believe me, it's a big deal). He talks to all the parents and smiles all the time. You get the idea, we like him.

Last Thursday Anderson didn't go to practice because he went to a classmates birthday party instead.

On Friday Emerson called me to why Anderson missed practice.

After hearing my explanation Emerson said he had something else he wanted to tell me.

He told me that Anderson had been giving him a hard time because he had not been invited to play in a tournament in a while (if you know Anderson that would not surprise you that he went to his coach to share this complaint) so he was inviting Anderson to a game on Saturday.

Anderson was thrilled.

It was at a place about 20 minutes from our house and Anderson was super excited because it was an "official" game. Official because he had to take his Brasilian ID to be registered in this tournament.

Anderson played great. His team won 11-4 and he scored 2 goals.

A little side note about Anderson. He LOVES soccer (just like every other boy in Brasil) and he LOVES to think of how he will celebrate after he scores a goal.

This game was no different.

After both times that he scored he lifted up his shirt sleeve and kissed his upper arm.

We didn't get any game time pictures or video so I asked him to recreate it after we got home.

Why did he do that? Because he had written this on his arm.

That's right, it's my girlfriends name.

Tattoo's are big in Brasil. Really big and especially with players. They usually have their wives names, girlfriends names or kids names on their arms and sometimes they kiss the names after they score. So, since he's a player in a soccer game and his celebrations are always well thought out before, he was ready with his tattoo.

If he does become a pro player some day it would not surprise me at all if he put a real tattoo on his arm  to celebrate. And it also would not surprise me if he had a tattoo of my girlfriends name. And we'd like that just fine.

Especially this girl.