Anecdotes from a Brazilian grad student (5 of 6): World Cup.

In chit-chatting with the Brazilian grad student, a grad student from Iceland (!) joined the conversation, and automatically the Brazilian grad student was like, "Oh, your soccer team was a favorite in Brazil, everyone rooted for them and watched their games."

As it turns out, Iceland doesn't really have a good team, but they were a total underdog who got pretty far in the World Cup, even beating the el primo British team.

"I don't like soccer, but that was a good game," the Icelandic grad student was like.  He also said that they just built an indoor stadium in the capitol to make practicing soccer easier year-round, since there really wasn't a place that you could do that before.

In any case, I found the whole factoid very endearing about Brazil, that the country fell in love with this ragtag team.  Very endearing!