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.