I am not in the best of moods this morning. Hopefully my frustrations will roll right off my balcony and not right onto this keyboard. Why am I frustrated? Because I woke up at 6:40 to walk out into the chilly morning just to arrive at school and sit there for 20 minutes waiting for my student who never showed up. I am not mad at him though, no, I am frustrated with my boss, pepper hair Georges Edouard. Today is a holiday in Madrid, but not in Alcobendas so I figured I would still have class. Well, I didn’t and it must have just slipped the mind of my incredibly disorganized boss. Why do I continue to work for this man? Easy, I enjoy my student, and I was all excited today to teach him about the differences between the words Still, Yet and Already, but I guess I’ll just have to wait until next week.
Anyway, this week wasn’t nearly as action packed as last week. We did have a game, though, and managed to sneak by our opponent by a small margin of 2pts. Nothing too exciting happened during the game, but once again we built ourselves a respectable lead and then successfully destroyed it during the 2nd half. Perhaps it doesn’t sound like it, but I really do enjoy playing with these girls and they are all very talented players. For some reason, however, we consistently string together couple minute segments during the 2nd half of every game that are just enough to give our opponents hope and our coach a heart attack. We play away next Saturday against the best team in the league which will give us a better understanding as to where we stand in our conference. As of right now our record is 4-1.
Oh wait, there was a funny moment during this weeks game. So, with about 30 seconds left it was our ball on the sideline at mid court and I jogged out of the huddle feeling a bit confused. I had seen on the white board with my own two eyes where Charly wanted me to be on the court for the following play, but it just didn’t make any sense to me. As I entered the court I started running down towards our basket, since we were on offense, when all of a sudden I could hear Charly’s accented english reverberating throughout the gym “Leslieeeee, Leslieeeeee, you are here, hereeeee!” I quickly jerked my head around and saw where he was pointing, but I didn’t understand. We were on offense and he had everyone scattered around on the defensive end. I honestly thought that he was just confused and didn’t realize that we were in-fact, on offense. I continued to stand rooted to the ground, bewildered at his request. I managed to stutter out in spanish “estamos en ataque (we’re on offense)” and upon saying this he quickly retorted in english “I KNOW!” meanwhile several of my teammates who were watching this fiasco from the bench started laughing, they obviously knew something that I did not. Our opponents finally took the floor and immediately the lightbulb went off. Charly wanted all of us in the back court so that each of us could help the in-bounder if need be. I happened to be the one to catch the inbound pass. Good job, Charly. Leslie, don’t doubt, just do.
Our game on Saturday was at 7:30pm, so with the free time I had in the morning I met up with one of our team’s physical therapists for coffee and an English/Spanish speaking exchange. Juan is yet another person in Spain whose work does not require him to know English, but because he has the personal desire to learn he takes class twice a week at the british council. I figured that a weekly meeting would benefit the both of us, so for 2 hours I listened to Juan speak to me in English about his family, his job and his hobbies. I asked questions in Spanish, corrected him when he made mistakes and then told him similar things about my life as well, but in Spanish. It’s a nice little compromise and is allowing me to expand my small circle of friends here in Spain.
 |
| Little Luis wearing a shower cap and myself. |
 |
| Here we are, Maria, Juan, Mario and Alvaro. |
Wednesday was another fun day at Pablo’s house. I taught Juan and Maria how to play Simon Says and I Spy With My Little Eye. They loved running around the room and using their english, “Is it this?! Is it this!?” Later, in the house of Alvaro and Mario we played a game that was a bit more advanced. I would say a word like “Yellow” and then they would have to determine what the last letter of the word was and then think of a new word that started with that letter, so in this case a word that started with W. Both of these young boys came up with several vocabulary words that took me by surprise. After our little word game we plopped down on Mario’s bedroom floor and began to play an intense game of UNO!
“Leslie’s Loose Ends”
Whenever I tell someone where I am from each and every person always thinks that I am saying “Venezuela.” I guess they both have the same number of syllables, they both end in A, but really?
European basketball is a bit more flashy than the type of basketball that I found myself playing in the Midwest. I would imagine that people might call me a fundamentally sound player who gets the job done. Well, watch out world because Europe is starting to rub off on this cookie cutter player from MN. Every Thursday, Sarah and I shoot with Charly. Many times we work on high post/low post combinations. Charly is always telling us that we are on a string, when one dives the other goes up and vice versa, and if the post with the ball has their back to their partner they should trust that they can pass the ball over their head and know that their teammate will be there to catch it. So, after Thursday’s session of one handed, no look, over the head, between the legs passes to each other, I spontaneously decided to bust one of my new passes out in practice. I was on the left block, spun to the baseline and dribbled twice towards the sideline. For once I wasn’t doubting I was just doing, so out of no where I whipped the ball up over my head and sent it screaming to the opposite block where I had just come from. I turned around to see what had become of my incredibly uncharacteristic Leslie Knight pass to find that my partner in crime, Sheila Magnadas, was in the process of completing my assist! Charly exploded with excitement on the sideline while my teammates all hooted and hollered and I just smiled in utter disbelief and shock. Where in the world did that come from and did I really just do that? Ha;) Perhaps this story should’ve been in the above paragraphs, a bit long for a loose end...
I walked into the weight room the other day and was greeted with a familiar tune, but where was it from? My teammates were humming the words to the Sesame Street theme song. Ha, this quickly turned into a conversation of questions like “how do you say Big Bird in Spanish” or “What’s the name of the guy who lives in the garbage can?”
Alright, the first week of November has come and gone. Congrats to my ballers on their win over UMD yesterday! And nice work on the halloween video as well, ha;) Make it a great week, everyone!
love,
Leslie
No comments:
Post a Comment