A. My life has been busy; last week was training camp for my soccer team. We went away for five days to a facility especially for training camps, which was an hour east of Berlin. We had three a days and on Monday we had a game against a Polish team. They were fast. At camp, I think for the first time I got to show a glimpse of my personality to the girls and started to come out of my shell a little more on and off the field. Pretty much our lives consisted of spielen, essen, und schlafen, which is playing, eating and sleeping. The facility was neat though, the German National handball team was there and so was the national volleyball and canoe team. Who knew there are National canoe teams? I really enjoy the women on my team though and it was great being able to spend time together outside of practice. We played the German version of Cranium and let’s just say that one girl shouted, “We should go first because we have the auslander (foreigner).” I counted myself as a half a person. I only did the ones that were drawing and let’s be real, I wasn’t good at that either. First of all, I asked if I was supposed to shut my eyes and they thought I was crazy, because in Cranium you do, so it seemed like a valid question. For one of my turns I was supposed to draw a word that meant fog in front of car headlights. I don’t even know how I would draw that in English even though you aren’t using words. How do you draw fog? I went with the bonfire smoke idea. Clearly didn’t work. We did win though. I mean I would guess, but my guesses were like Level 1 German words like to eat. And clearly that’s not in a game for adults. It was fun though. The food was so good there, we had a buffet every meal and literally even though we were training three times a day I think we ate enough to break even in calories. They fed us well to say the least. We got to play beach volleyball for the first half hour of one practice, which was fun. It is so funny how going into things I never really know what to expect. Like packing for camp, I knew I just needed all my Hertha gear and then other sports clothes, but not nice clothes. Thank goodness. I show up to leave though and everyone is matching but me. Awesome. So I put on our matching travel jacket at least to make it look like a sad attempt to match. What I didn’t realize was that I needed no other clothes and literally we woke up every morning and put on our polos (Yes, you read correctly. Polos.) and warm up suits to go to breakfast. Then we changed in and out of our practice gear throughout the day only to always end my day in my lovely blue polo. I have two actually and when packing, I decided to only bring one because I was like it’s not like we will wear these during the week. Well, I should have known that is all we would wear. Training camp was overall really good though and I definitely enjoyed the time with the team and getting to know the girls.
B. The next question of this blog is do foxes attack? So I was at camp and I was talking to my mom through Skype and I was walking by myself on the long path to where we slept and I saw a fox. I just first stopped at stared at it hoping that it would think I was a tree. It definitely didn’t, it just started creeping towards me and I totally thought that they were scared of people, but then I thought that maybe I was mixing it up with another animal like a deer. So I decided I needed to run just in case, not to mention I have my big soccer bag. Wearing my polo. It still kind of kept running towards me so I ran to a bench and jumped on it. Thinking that I guess it couldn’t get me there even though they for sure can jump. It just stared for a while and then became disinterested. I know not much for a climax, you probably thought it was gonna bite me or something. Well it didn’t. I am glad no Germans saw me standing on a bench in my polo scared of a fox.
C. Today, we had a game against Jena. They are in the first league. We lost 2-1. I couldn’t play because I am hurt. I am back in the good ole’ boot until Thursday. Regardless, that’s not the moral of the story. I was sitting on the bench during the game and it is interesting we play teams at neutral sites, but yet we have all these random fans there. It is like we have more fans there than I ever did at a college soccer game including all our parents. All of sudden like ten minutes before half time all these cowboys and women with huge, poufy skirts show up. They are dressed like they are from the time when that was popular, which I don’t even know. They were carrying in speakers and I was like oh yikes, maybe these people have a show going on here today or something. Nope, I was wrong. Tends to be the case these days. They were our halftime show. Sure enough, they set up their speakers and at half time (Lucky me, I got to stay and watch.) they fancied their way onto the field and turned on their hoedown country music and started line/square/two stepping dancing or whatever you want to call it. I leaned over to my teammate and asked, “Is this normal?” but don’t worry she was just as surprised. I was hoping they could at least play some good country music, I mean country is nonexistent over here or so I thought. Just another day living in Germany. Love it.
D. Exactly a week from tomorrow I will be on an airplane back to the US for my best friend’s wedding. I am really excited, but nervous at the same time. I think I might have culture shock and it will be interesting from going to being alone a lot and traveling alone to always being around people that I know and driving a car. I am so excited to see my family though and very excited for the wedding and all the festivities. A little nervous for the public speaking, as many of you know it is not exactly my favorite thing to do or one of my talents. But it will all work out in the end. So if you could pray for safe travels that would be great. Chipotle here I come!!
Well, you probably did good getting out of the way of that fox. Foxes usually avoid people and are hard to meet. But when you do meet one and it is not running away from you, it is likely to be a sick one (the sickness is called "rabies" in English, I think).
ReplyDeleteJan.