The First Few Days in Rio

Day 1: I finally arrived in Rio de Janeiro! And I got my bags!! (For those of you who know my history that's a big deal) Our manager picked me up and drove me to the hotel I will be staying at until my apartment is ready. Rio is an unbelievably beautiful city! I promise to post random pictures of the city from time to time.

Now on to the obvious problem, language -- I learned Spanish while I was in Argentina and had gotten pretty comfortable with it. I knew Portuguese was similar to Spanish but I still bought some Portuguese tapes and started studying away. By the time I arrived, I felt pretty confident with my Portuguese. I felt that with the Portuguese I was studying and the Spanish I already knew, I would be able to communicate a little. Wrong. Instead I felt the same way I did my first year in Argentina, like fish out of water. And the feeling this time was actually worse because I was so confident and then fell so hard. Le Sigh.

Anyways, I was ok because my agent was with me and he spoke English. We walked along the beach Copacabana and I stopped and took a few pictures.

Lunch on the lake

Chillin with the pope on the beach

After a short nap I went to a random restaurant and had the best steak I've ever had in my life. Afterwards I checked out the night life for a little bit; I'll just say I'll have as much fun in Brazil as I did in Argentina.

Day 2: Nothing. It was Sunday and I was dead tired.

Day 3: I knew today would be a long day. I woke up at 6 am to take a physical (The dreaded treadmill for the people who know what that test is), then had lunch with team officials. Later that day, there was a press conference with the two foreign players including myself. It was my first press conference that I was asked questions and got a chance to respond as a professional and you know what, it was about time; people need to know what I think haha. (That was a joke, I'm not that arrogant).

We'll be like Dwight Howard and Steve Nash should have been.

Now this was an interesting press conference because my first language is English, my teammate's is Spanish and everyone else's is Portuguese. It was a trilingual press conference. Questions were asked in Portuguese (some of which I understood. Go me!); and the answers were given in English, Spanish, or Portuguese depending on who was asked. Needless to say after the press conference I had a headache!

After an aspirin, I hung out at the mall and toured the city a little bit more and then I went to sleep. Tuesday was to be my first day of practice!

The whole team is not here yet because numerous players are playing for the national team. Therefore I practiced with the under 22 team. Towards the end of the practice, the coach came up to me and said that since it was my first practice my teammates were going to beat me up. I thought to myself, "Hmm all of these guys are younger than me and this is not my first year of professional basketball." I said to the coach, "Ok. That's fine. But I will fight back." I then put up my fists and smiled. After the practice, he said to them (in Portuguese), "Well this is Jerome's first practice, you all know what to do." I didn't understand what he said when he said it but I could tell by all the scared faces around me that he had told them it was time to beat me up. I raised my fists and gestured to them to bring it on. And of course, I smiled. There was only one brave soul who hesitantly slapped me on the wrist. Kudos to him haha.

I mean, can you really blame them?