Ist das du?

Highlights from the Last Week

1.       The 2011 Women’s World Cup started on June 26, and two of my Drake teammates came to Berlin to hang out and watch the game. We went to the stadium before the match started because we didn’t have tickets, but there were 76,000 people there. It was crazy. So much fun though. We then went to this place that had a big viewing party with lawn chairs and sand everywhere to watch the game. It was a neat atmosphere.

Outside the Stadium of the Germany game with Jar and Egg

2.       I joined a tutor group to learn German, which I really enjoy. It was going well except the other girl and I were talking about what we do and she said that she is a nanny. So I was trying to ask her if she watches the children during the day or at night, and start out by saying “Gochst du die Kinder…” which means do you watch the children. But they gave me horrified looks because they thought I said, “Kochst du die Kinder…” which is do you cook the kids. It was pretty humorous, but embarrassing.

3.       Jar (Drake teammate) brought over a pack of Double Stuff Oreos, Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups and Reese’s Pieces, which were a huge treat. I have missed them and you can’t buy Reese’s here. Also, a new pack of White Tee’s. Booyah! We sat and enjoyed them at the game. I mean the food not the White Tee’s.

4.       On Tuesday we went to Dresden, Germany for the USA vs. North Korea game. We got there a little early and got to walk around. Dresden is a beautiful city and there is so much history there. I wish I liked history more; it makes you wish you would have listened in high school and college classes. I never did well in history classes. Bummer. The game was sweet though. There were 25,000 people there and that is quite a lot for a women’s game of two foreign countries. If you don’t care about women’s soccer, just so you know they won 2-0. We stayed in a hotel/hostel thing not really sure.

At the USA game in Dresden

5.       A man was biking in Dresden and totally just started going sideways and tipped over onto a grass hill. It was so humorous. I think he might have drunk too much at the game, but still quite funny. He just got up and acted like it was totally normal to tip over. Speaking of biking, Egg and I confirmed the fact that riding double on a bike is not meant for us. We did it home from the train station and literally I thought I was going to tip over. I almost peed my pants too because I was laughing so hard, and couldn’t breathe. It was worth not walking though. So I can relate to the man. Biking is tough at times.

6.       As we were heading back to our hotel in Dresden at around midnight, I had a Nike USA colored jacket on and Jar and her sister had jerseys on, but I noticed that Hope Solo was walking at us. She is the USA starting goalkeeper and she kind of smiled at us, but since I was like 10 steps ahead, I quickly in my head decided to just play it cool rather than be the fan. She clearly was trying to keep a low profile and go meet her family. So Jarvis sees her after a few seconds and goes, “Hope Solo?” like so casual and Hope says yes obviously and then Jar pauses for a second and goes, “Good game.” And says see ya. It was the most casual exchange as if they went back to second grade or something. Jar being a goalie herself obviously has an appreciation for them. Kinda like if I saw Abby Wambach, I would probably say, “Ist das du Frau Wambach?” Haha that’s for you Egg and Jar. But yeah it was funny, maybe you had to be there.

7.       Also while I was at the game, I was walking back to my seat after half time and I saw a couple girls with UNC soccer stuff on. I knew the Charlotte Eagles, which are a semi-pro Christian soccer team were going to be there and I kind of was trying to find them so I figured I was just going to ask. I did and sure enough they weren’t, instead the whole UNC soccer team was here for the World Cup. It happened to be though that we got to talking and these two girls were handing out tracks and was involved with AIA in the states. One had gone to UTC and we knew a lot of the same people. As we are talking another woman walks up and asks if we are part of something or other and she was part of the Charlotte Eagles. So we talked to her and knew a bunch of the same people, which was neat and then we all got to pray together in the middle of the stadium for our teams. It was really cool. It is always great when you meet people who share the same passions as you.

Drake Soccer Represent. Boom baby!

8.       The other thing that has been super busy is an American tour arrived on Monday. It is 7 sixteen year old girls that are here for two weeks. I am kind of in charge of organizing them and bringing them places, etc. There is also a cool female coach that I have got to spend a lot of time with, which is a small world she is best friends with one of my college teammate’s sisters. If you can follow that. Anyway they have three games this week. I got to play on Monday and last night with them against some women’s teams and we had some other German girls play. The purpose is to just get some quality time with German soccer girls and hopefully build relationships. Playing was a lot of fun and we won both games. I won’t play Friday because season starts Sunday and I need to rest and get ready for that. It has been really enjoyable, but at the same time crazy busy.

9.       On the train ride home last night there was a man that was sagging his pants and usually that is totally normal. Might I add that he was roughly 65 years old. But usually when you sag your pants you have boxers on underneath. Well this man decided that he didn’t need boxers or maybe forgot them because his entire bare butt was hanging out. I mean how do you not feel that gust of air with every step. It was shocking. I saw more than I EVER wanted to see that’s for sure.

10.   I got a package of letters from my mom from different people. It was great and I sure do miss my parents. A LOT. I get to see them soon though.

Alles Gut zum Vatertag!

First and foremost I want to start out by saying, “Alles Gut zum Vatertag” to my dad! I wish I could be home today to spend time with him and hang out, but we just had a Skype date so that will have to do. The last few days have been pretty busy and definitely have seen and had some interesting experiences. I had physio this week and have been trying to hit the workouts pretty hard since season starts in two weeks. EEK. I am trying not to be nervous, but it is hard not to be. It is going to start getting really busy as of Friday because Mama Egg and Jar come to visit! Boom baby! I can’t wait. Then the World Cup starts Sunday and a tour of 16 year old girls come on a soccer tour to Berlin that I will spend a lot of time with for the two weeks that they are here.

Ritter Sport Museum!! Chocolate!

With that being said I have been doing some planning and getting ready. Thursday I was busy with studying some German since I had my first tutor appointment this week. On Friday after physio, Ryan and I went to the Ritter Sport Museum and it was so great. Seriously chocolate everywhere and I just wanted to eat it all. Plus you can create your own and they make it for you. I didn’t do that this time, but I tried the new Cookies n’ Cream flavor and it is up there on my list of favorites. Seriously between German chocolate and ice cream it is bad news bears. I use to prefer fruity things, but now I always want chocolate. I need to remember that I am here for a year and a half so I can pace myself. I always get overwhelmed and just want to try everything and find my favorites. I know what a stupid thing to get overwhelmed about, but oh well.

I needed more people.

Now Saturday was the interesting day. I decided to go to Super Saturday it is called. The students that work on University campuses that are here with Campus for Crusade put it on once a month. Pretty much students come and hang out, eat, and there is a worship and a short message. It takes place at this really nice house that people can stay in. I forget what the purpose is but I think it’s similar to a Church home that hosts people. Not sure, regardless it was a lot of fun. In the backyard we played soccer and volleyball after. The volleyball went into the neighbor’s yard once and Ryan retrieved it. But then I threw the Frisbee into the yard again so Elaine and I went to retrieve it. As we were going Ryan yelled, “Beware of the angry man.” Seeing that Ryan is NEVER serious, we thought he was joking. We went to the gate and didn’t see a buzzer for them to let us in. So we just figured out how to open the gate ourselves. Then we went to the door, but didn’t see a buzzer there so we decide to quick just get the Frisbee. Well Elaine went and I kept watch. And let me tell you what I ended up watching was the TV screen in the window, until the man was ferociously staring at me. At this point, Elaine is taking FOREVER and so I decide to run towards the gate. My mind is spinning so fast, because it was like do I run and leave Elaine or do I stay and wait for this man to come outside. As you all know, TP’ing rule #1 is you NEVER leave your partner in crime behind. Kelsey this is for you, it reminded me of when we went and TP’ed the guys and EVERYONE left us. Funny, NOT! Regardless, I tried yelling for Elaine, but she didn’t come so I stopped and stood at the gate just in time for Mr. Angry Man to come outside and start screaming at me in German. Before he could get words out, I started just shouting words that he might know like “Frisbee in your Garden!” and “Entschuldigung”, but I found out soon enough that his English was quite good. He started ranting and raving about how we shouldn’t just come in and people in Germany don’t just do that. And how we should have went ten meters further and rang the buzzer and how rude we are, yada, yada, yada. We attempted to explain that we tried, and apologized, but he kept saying, “I have no interest in your sorry! And next time I am calling the police!” So then his wife came out and they walked inside with their panties in bunch.

I come to find out after all this Elaine still doesn’t have the Frisbee.  So we are annoyed because how can you get angry that we threw our Frisbee over. Like put up a steal wall around your yard for goodness sake. We tried the next neighbor’s yard, who gladly let us in. Granted we learned our lesson and “RANG” the bell. The Frisbee wasn’t there either, and as we were walking towards the gate, the wife of Mr. Angry Man came out the other side of the house and said she threw the Frisbee back over already. I mean good to know, couldn’t she have told us that an hour ago. Sheesh. I was like this has got to be a joke. As we are coming out of the gate, we see Mr. Angry Man halfway up the steps to the house we were hanging out at and talking to another one of the staff people. As we went up the walk way he stomped past us again and just glared. I guess he told our staff woman that we could have broken the gate and that you can’t just get those gates anywhere. Must be from the dinosaur times or something, who knows. I mean we opened it. It wasn’t like I was seesawing on it and jumping over it. I mean yeah I am big that could have been a problem, but we used it for its common use. Walking through. All in all, one of those times that I was just like for real. How can you really be mad about this? 

The twins and I at the 90's dance party.

Last night though was fun. A couple of my friends invited me to come watch the Bundesliga basketball championship with some of the basketball girls and then to go to some 90’s party. That is all I really knew. I didn’t know any details. Luckily I didn’t show up dressed in 90’s clothing because it wasn’t that kind of event. I find out it is like this big dance party they have every year in Berlin at the Velodrome and there are thousands of people. It goes all night and you just dance and there was a German singer, “Luna” there. At first I thought they said “Luda” and I was like weird, but then some blonde chick came on stage and I knew it wasn’t Luda. It was fun though and we just danced. I was laughing though because “Oops I did it Again!” came on and everyone went crazy. Same with Backstreet Boys, NSYNC, and Spice Girls. I felt as if I was in a middle school dance all over again, but it was convenient because I knew all the lyrics. People here stay up all hours of the night though and I just can’t handle that. Since I live way north in Berlin it takes like forever to get home in the night because the train comes not very often. I ended up in the middle of nowhere at one point, but luckily I found these two people to help me find my way. I usually only ride trains now, but I guess come to find out trams just randomly stop and say “Fahrt endet hier.” I was like ok…. Where am i? Oh Virchowstrasse, perfect. Never heard of it. I made it home in about 90 minutes to say the least.

Wasserkuppe ist nicht ein Schwimmbad.

Sometimes I wish there was a pause button in life. It seems like time goes so fast and sometimes it is hard to live at that pace. This last weekend I went to Fulda, Germany for an All Germany Campus für Christus conference. It was good, but extremely tiring at the same time. The entire conference was in German and I mean there were people that could translate, but like I have mentioned before it is so distracting to have someone whispering in your year for a long period of time. Because even if it is being translated, at the same time I am reading the PowerPoint’s in German trying to see what I know and if it matches up to what the person is whispering. Then on top of that I am not even getting to process what the speaker is talking about because it is like a German lesson rather than learning about the topic of choice from the speaker. Not sure if you follow me on that, but all in all it takes double the brain power to listen in German and because of that I get exhausted. There were roughly over 100 staff from all over and it is mostly families that go to the conference. We had an entire hostel in the middle of nowhere in the countryside. It was a beautiful view though and I mean it was fine, other than my bed being too short for me it was manageable.

Didn't get a good picture, but you can kind of see
what we rode down on the slide and the view in the back

I thought I could just go under the radar at the conference, but who was I kidding. Of course first thing they do is have all the “new” people come up front and the speaker starts going on in German about what we are supposed to say. Not to mention my good ole’ director Kevin fed me to the wolves. Right before we were supposed to go up on stage, I say, “Kevin, I am not going to have to speak up there. Right?” well of course he wasn’t telling the truth. I figure out that we are supposed to introduce ourselves and tell who we work for and where. Which honestly I can do all that in German, but let’s be real I don’t even like to speak English in front of people, let alone German in front of 100 people that it is their mother tongue. So when the microphone gets to me I just stare blankly into the crowd and go “Uhhhhhh…I don’t really know German.” Then they told me I could just speak in English. Luckily because otherwise I would have had a minor panic attack. I don’t know why because I know quite a bit of German, but I get terrified to speak it. It was like at the grocery store last week a woman came up to me and started speaking in German and I just kind of looked at her and then said “Noch einmal.” And she said it again, but it seemed as if she literally was not speaking German. All I made out was the word, “Groβ” and pointing to the top shelf. So I started getting down what she pointed to on the top shelf and then she just started yelling and pointing to two things saying “dem” and “den”. Come to find out she wanted the entire case of cat food from under the top one even though the top one was full. Who knows? I just did what I was asked I guess.

Back to the conference though, so most nights we all sat around and drank a couple beers, which is so different from Campus Crusade in the states, but it was fun. Two of the nights we found this huge bonfire pit, which is something I definitely miss being in Berlin because you aren’t allowed to have fires. So we just sat and talked at the fire, etc. It was a good time. During the day we usually had a talk in the morning and then small group time, which was disastrous. I went to my group and one woman offered to translate which was fine until she was literally talking as loud if not louder than the actual person talking. I was embarrassed. We all had to go around and say our strengths and weaknesses in ministry and what not. Then all of a sudden she got up and left, so I assumed she needed the toilet, but then she never came back so I just sat there the rest of the time. I think they were arguing/friendly discussion over something, but I wasn’t sure. I was just hoping they wouldn’t call on me for something. In the afternoon we played soccer, which was fun. Except it was like hole central so I more just walked around. That night was fun we had this game night with everyone and it was a popular German game show. I don’t know the name still and I didn’t help my team much except for the active ones. They had this one relay race that everyone had to run down and spin on a baseball bat five times. I mean some of these people are pretty old and so people looked wasted from being dizzy. One old man ran into a child on a chair that started crying and there were snacks and glasses everywhere and one person ran into a table and glasses fell and broke. It ended up being a disaster, but I was laughing really hard and most people were except for those that thought it was unsafe. I mean it wasn’t the best idea but still humorous. My team made the final round and for that we had to take on the director of CC of Germany. One of the rounds was this game where we had four buckets in a square and you had to throw a mini basketball into the other persons and I got voted by my team to do this. My long limbs did come in handy, but I whacked the director in the face on accident, but I did win at least. I think people like me a little more after this.

The Wasserkuppe is the big ball in the back.

During our free time one day we went to the Wasserkuppe. Which here I thought we were going to a pool or lake or something, but as you can see in the picture it is a big ball that does something for the weather. It was a cool view up there and the highlight was going down this really long alpine slide like thing. It was so much fun. And a beautiful view. I think I got a dud though because the girl behind me caught me and I thought maybe it was because I am big, but “supposedly” that makes you go faster. The girl behind me wasn’t fat though so I still am unsure why I was going slowly. There were lots of people parachuting and hang gliding too. I wanted to, but I mean it wasn’t like I was going to ask a random person.

The weekend was refreshing though. I got to have a few really good quiet times and just sit in God’s creation and pray/journal/read. I really needed that though and the Lord has been teaching me a lot of tough stuff and I have been learning a lot about myself. Seriously I suggest that everyone should read “Changes that Heal” by Henry Cloud. It is a hard book to read, but so good. You will learn a lot about yourself. So if you have time and want to be challenged, you should read it. I will write more about what I have been learning later in the week. This is a long post already. I stink at writing short posts. Boo. Oh well.

entgegenlaufen, sturm, tor, anfeuern, mittelfeld, aus, abwehr, ecke

Where do I begin? First of all, I will start off by warning you that this will be a long post, and for some it will be interesting and some of you probably could care less, but that is why there is an exit button. A lot will be more the sake of my memory. The last five days I spent in Engstingen (a village outside of Stuttgart) and it was one of the best experiences I have had in Germany. It was exactly what I needed and I am going to try and tell about my time there, but it probably will still not do it justice. As some of you know, I went to Engstingen to coach at a AIA Christian soccer camp that was from Thursday to Sunday. My journey started on Wednesday bright and early as I had to wake up at 4:30am to be at a gas station to meet my carpool (mitfahrgelegenheit) with three random girls. Since I went to bed at 1:30, morning came real early. Honestly at this point I really knew nothing about what I was going to do; all I knew was to be in Stuttgart sometime in the afternoon. On the way I get a call from a guy saying he is picking me up in Stuttgart since Harry (another person on our AIA team in Germany) wasn’t going to be in town yet. This kind of describes my life most of the time here; I just go and do what I am told since I never really know or understand the plan. As we are driving to Engstingen, I find out more about the camp and I feel so stupid because here this is the head pastor of the church that AIA is partnering with that has come to get me and I had no idea. I thought he was just a person coming into town as well. I felt bad that I was so clueless, but nonetheless we went back to his house and ate a great meal with his family. At night we headed to the fields to prepare for the camp and I was also going to help Jürgen (pastor) train his 8 year old boys’ team. Later that evening all the staff for the camp had dinner and a meeting. There was about 23 staff, for coaches it was me and then probably 12 other men and then many of the wives who cooked for the camp.

The village that we were in was beautiful. It was soccer fields surrounded by country side that you could see for miles (or kilometers I shall say). It was such a neat change from the Berlin city life because Engstingen was so peaceful and you could just see the beauty of God’s creation. We stayed in host families, but where I was staying the woman was going to be gone so it was just me and another couple. We had to be to the fields by 8 am every morning for a meeting, which was all in German and like usual I usually just pick out the words I know and figure out what is being talked about. I really had no clue what any of the drills we were going to do because lets be real I don’t know that many everyday terms in German let alone soccer terms. I did learn many of them at the camp though, like entgegenlaufen means to pressure. The dialect in Southern Germany is so much different than Berlin, so it made the language even more interesting to understand. We had 49 campers, and 48 of which were little boys between the ages of 8-13 and one girl named Jessie. I loved her and it was so cool that she came to a camp being the only girl. I think the kids were in awe of how big I was and that I was from America and didn’t know German. When I was introduced at the practice the first night I got there, he told them I didn’t know German and they were all like. “Yes! We can speak English.” It was so cool though because even though I couldn’t communicate with a lot of them, I still used the German I knew and they were so patient with me and made fun of me, but it didn’t matter. I got to actually play a lot with them (I don’t think I was supposed to play yet, but definitely did a lot more than I should have) and every night after camp all of us coaches would scrimmage. Every time I go without playing soccer for a while, I forget how much I love the sport. I just sit there and smile and remember how much it brings me to that place where I am just free. Hard to explain.  I just fell in love with these kids though, and at times it was so humbling having an 8 year old teaching me how to speak. Also, it is like I wanted to badly to be able to teach/fix something, but I had to put the words I knew together and usually just show them.

Bayern Munchen (the team Niko and I trained)

On Thursday before lunch we had evaluated the kids to place them on six different teams. We had a “Champions League” and drew teams and of course I was lucky enough to get Bayern München. Booyah! Our team started out with a perfect record, but towards the end we crumbled. Every day the parents came at 16:00 to watch the Champions League games and have cake and coffee. It was a neat way to interact with them.

I loved all the kids, they started to open up more towards me and be less intimidated, which was cool to see. The boys were all so cute, they would come dressed head to toe in their Bayern or Stuttgart uniforms and every day we had a band and would sing songs about soccer. I have no rhythm and can barely clap on beat myself, but when you put 50 kids in the room that are trying to clap on beat as well it made it nearly impossible for me and the worst part was they would stare at me to see if I was singing in German, so they could tell I had no rhythm. We didn’t directly talk about God but we had different themes that correlated and used different soccer examples. For example, what happens when you don’t listen to your soccer coach and that Jesus can be your life coach all the time, etc. The camp was just so encouraging. All the staff, parents and kids were so helpful and knew that I didn’t know a ton of German, but would still let me practice my German with them and help me. There were a couple times where I wasn’t informed, but those are the times that you just have to laugh about. For instance, one time I thought our game ended, but apparently we had “extra time” added so I went juggling and running onto the field in front of everyone and it was so embarrassing.

Another funny thing that happened was when a woman was telling me something and I thought she was saying she wanted to choke me. So I put my hands to my neck and was like acting out like you want to choke me and she was like “ja”, but really she was telling me that she wanted to tell me a joke the whole time. I was so confused as to why we were talking about choking. It made me laugh. I think the worst part of the camp (that didn’t end up being that bad) was when I was informed that I was going to be interviewed on the last day of the camp for the “Sport Studio” in front of all the parents and kids. Me, Harry, and a Bundesliga player from Stuttgart were all being interviewed. As most of you know, I am deadly afraid of public speaking in front of Americans, let alone a bunch of people that don’t speak the same language as me. I was so nervous and my hands were profusely sweating and I always talk faster when I am nervous. I had someone that was translating for me though, so I kept trying to tell myself that it was kind of as if I wasn’t talking. Not at all though I realized because most people understand English. So when it was my turn I didn’t know it and was just standing there until I realized that everyone was looking at me to go up front. Off to a great start. Jürgen asked me a question in German (which I understand a lot so I knew what he was asking, or so I thought), but then I realized that he didn’t ask a question and all he said was some things about me so I got the microphone and was like, “Uhhh, ja.” He re-asked the question and I answered, but the entire time I totally forgot to stop after each sentence and have someone translate. I kept being like, “oh shoot!”, and giving the microphone to the translator, but then I would totally lose my train of thought. And it was weird because they would laugh when I was speaking, so it was like they knew what I was saying, but then she would still translate. It just was not smooth at all and I kept forgetting so I would just go on in English. All in all, at least I didn’t have to say anything clever or funny because the fact that I sucked at having a translator was entertaining enough. I mainly just talked about dad being from Germany and that it would be his dream to be here with all these little German soccer players to coach and how he got stuck with three girls (they thought that was humorous). I think I kept repeating myself and not even answering the questions. It reminded me of in my public speaking class when I kept saying I worked at Target for no reason and I was talking in circles. It worked out though and it wasn’t like I was the big show, Sven (Bundesliga player) was who all the kids were dying to hear from because he was an Engstingen native and it’s a pretty big deal to play at that level. His dad was a coach at the camp all week and reminded me so much of my dad it was crazy. I kept almost calling him dad because of how much they were alike and even kind of looked alike.

I was sad to leave everyone that I met, because I had so much fun there and it felt like family. I think partly it just reminded me of home and my dad being with tons of Bayern fans and German men that love soccer. I told everyone that if I can make it back next year, I want to try to have my dad come with and help train. They said they would love that, so hopefully that works out. I got home yesterday and the way home was good, except the girl who sat in the back with me talked SOOOO loud. I seriously felt like she was yelling in my ear in German. But they were all really nice so that was good. And the best news was that when I got home I found out from my older sister that Francis Chan is writing a new book that comes out July 5^th. Best news EVER! Well at this point nobody is probably still reading except my parents because this is really long, but it was five of the best days I have had so it’s worth writing about.