Match tickets.

We successfully survived the flight from caracas to maracaibo and found a hotel room thanks to a tip from some fellow american fans.

We are currently trying to pick up the match tickets we purchased over the internets. The will call area at the stadium is reminiscent of the scenes from Blood Diamond where Dijimon Honsou's character is pounding on the fence of the refugee camp trying to locate his family. I have the sense that most people here, myself included, feel just as passionately about their match tickets.

There appear to be 2 ways to recover tickets. The first is by standing in highly unorthodox lines and walking up to what resembles a traditional box office. The alterntative, albeit more popular system, as it has been explained to me, works as follows: the people without the tickets smash up against the fence and the people with the tickets call out names in alphabetical order. Upon hearing your name called, you pass your confirmation printout through the fence and your tickets are passed over a barbwire fence to you. This "system" has resulted in people openly rooting for letters of the alphabet. The current fan favorite is letter "r". They are on D. I feel like I an embedded reporter right now. The safety of my toes is questionable.

I am very tempted to say this to a security guard: "Si un otro line para los gringos."
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