More soccer, what do you know…

So the world cup has started! This means that an already soccer crazy environment is even more dedicated to soccer. Thursday afternoon I got back from a 3 day regional Safety & Security meeting, instead of working on Friday I decided to have more of a “cultural integration day” meaning it would be a soccer day. I woke up at 5 to start watching the opening ceremonies and commentaries before the Mexico/South Africa game. After this, because it was ‘students day’ or ‘week’ or something, all public schools in Santa Barbara didn’t have school all week, the high school in San Marcos was invited to play against the military high school in Pinalejo, Quimistan, about 15 minutes away. I went there with my host dad, the vice-principal and soccer liaison of the high school, with no real intentions of playing, but when they asked if I wanted to play (other teachers were playing too), and I saw that we had legitimate uniforms and everything I couldn’t say no. we warmed up for a while and then had to sit around for 2 hours for a girls game to get played, it wasn’t the highest quality game ever, but they played full 45 min halfs… I didn’t get to start the game because I don’t have soccer shoes here, but when one of the teachers got tired I got to borrow his shoes. It took a little while to get used to playing a full field, 11v11 game with people I hadn’t played with, who were all speaking Spanish, but I got into the swing of things pretty quick. Full time ended with a 2-2 tie, but everyone wanted to play overtime, I was tired and wanted to go straight to penalty kicks, but that didn’t happen. We played two 10 min overtime halves, the other team scored earlyand it wasn’t looking good for us, but we scored off of a free kick from 25 yards out with 30 seconds left in the game, sending us into pk’s . I don’t mind pk’s, as long as I don’t have to take them, I told my dad/coach this, but he said that I would be in the group of 5 that would take one anyway…thanks. We made the first one and the other team missed their first one, everyone else made theirs so we were up 4-3 with one pk apiece, and somehow I got stuck taking the last one, although it wasn’t do or die it was still a lot of pressure, if I made it we would win, if I missed it would probably go into sudden death pk’s. I tried not to think about it too much as I stepped up to take my shot, but both teams were lining the 18 yard box and the military fans/drum band were going crazy right behind the goal, and as the goalie walked by me he talked some trash, fortunately I didn’t understand him… I tried to not have my eyes give it away, I always go right, so I stared at the right side, the goalie went right, but for the first time ever I went left, scoring the winning PK. I was very relieved to say the least. It was also good because I talked to the Coronel/ director of the school and organized a meeting with them about doing some health presentations. All in all it was a very good day. Now I’m watching the Ghana/Serbia game, it’s on 8 different channels, another channel has a replay of a game yesterday, and two other channels have WC history on them. When Ghana scored my dad thought it was fun to say Ghana gana, Ghana gana (Ghana wins)…pretty clever.

Futbol

So down here futbol really is life, or at least a huge part of it. Other than chisme and how hot it is down here soccer is the main focus of conversation, especially with the World Cup coming up so soon. There is a Honduran soccer league and everyone has strong affiliation to their home team, which, second only to politics, can be a very hot topic, fortunately I haven’t been forced to affiliate myself with a team… yet. After their Honduran soccer team everyone has their favorite international team, usually one of the big teams from Spain, Italy, or England. Usually at any given time you can find at least 2, sometimes up to 5 different games on TV, your choices are really soccer, telenovelas, or music videos. It’s great with the start of the World Cup less than a week away and Honduras being in it for just the second time ever and the first time in 28 years. Even though Honduras is going to get murdered, even the Hondurans agree upon this, just making the selection is reason to celebrate. On all three days that Honduras will playing work, school, and pretty much everything is going to be canceled even though the games take place super early and people could easily work after the game…but I’m not going to complain, it’s awesome being in a place where just making it to the competition gets more attention than winning the world cup would get in the US. It’s also funny because the only reason Honduras qualified was because of a last minute USA goal against Costa Rica, knocking CR out and advancing Honduras, people actually thank me for that goal, they say It’s one of most important goals ever scored for Honduras soccer and it was scored by an American… Soccer has also been a great way for me to meet people, every night in the central park there are 3v3 games from 7-10 PM, there’s usually about 15 guys that play, it only takes one goal to win so everyone cycles through pretty quick. Also most days at the town stadium a bunch of guys play, last week over 100 guys came through, everyone is really chill and it’s a great time. Even though it’s not necessarily work related, soccer is helping me tremendously in terms of community integration, exercise, and it’s giving me something to do which is always good.

RIP Lobo January 2010- June 11, 2010

I don’t really know what happened, there have been a number of stories that I have heard, but what I do know is that on Friday June 11 my family in Yarumela woke up and found Lobo dead in the yard. There has been rumor that he was poisoned, by who I don’t know, but what my family thinks is that it was probably some infection, either way I’m really sad. It really sucks, especially because I didn’t get a chance to see him one last time, apparently he was getting really big and his fur had changed from black to more of a grey color and he was getting really smart and well trained. Today I also saw a husky puppy here in San Marcos, it was about the same size and color pattern, the only difference was that it was brown and white; it made me miss Lobo a lot. My plan is to either get a kitten or a puppy in about a month when I get my own place.

Rain

I’ll start this off by saying that Honduras has gotten a ton of rain the last week and it has caused lots of flooding and landslides, but I’m doing just fine in San Marcos, it’s doing a lot more damage to the big cities….It’s funny, being from Seattle, the rain doesn’t really bug me, even though it doesn’t rain as much as the myths have it, but for me the rain can be therapeutic. The rain down here isn’t the same type of rain that we get back home though. Seattle rain tends to be more of a constant drizzle that lasts for hours/days/weeks/fall through spring, here it’s different, when it rains it pours, there is no light mist, and it rains so hard that the power goes out, literally. Some of the time the rain is great, those days that it is too hot to do anything, the rain cools us down, makes it less dusty, and makes the green even greener. There are other times however that the rain isn’t as welcome, like when I have to walk the ½ hour walk to the maternal clinic, or when it rains early and then when it gets hot the whole town turns into a sauna, the rain also makes people lazy, myself included, when it’s raining no one really works or leaves the house, you pretty much are trapped wherever you are, even if it’s with a group of high school kids who invited you to watch them practice their theater/miming routine and you have to spend 3 hours with them listening to 50 Cent and Lady Gaga because it’s raining and you can’t leave. It’s also tough when it rains so hard that you can’t hear anything, music, people talking, nothing because the rain drops sound like drums beating on the roof. It can be a little rough when it rains for days on end and it feels like you never leave the house, but on those days when it doesn’t rain, like today, it makes it even sweeter when you get to walk around town meeting new people. Fortunately the rain is warm down here, the frogs come out, and you get to drive through rivers.