Dear water...I miss you!

Emily and the pig, after the pig was chased by dogs, before Emily was chased by dogs

Molly and Em juggling in a crowd at recess

House on the road to the lagoon

The water in Granada went missing early yesterday morning and remained evasive until today. Knowing that the water was out, our decision to ride bikes across town on dusty roads, hike down the side of a volcano, and swim in a lagoon may reflect poor judgment. Especially after we didn't end up seeing any monkeys on the hike! The road home was humbling; all of the houses were one room, mostly constructed of wood and leaves. All of them seemed to have radios though...and dogs. Emily was chased by a pack of dogs, and she learned the hard way that high pitched screaming doesn't make them go away. Apparently she learned nothing from the pig we had passed earlier that found itself in a similar situation, squealing while being chased by a pack of dogs. In any event, we made it home dirty, sweaty, and soaked with volcano water. Everyone else in our neighborhood seemed calm and clean...apparently they know better than to do anything active when the water is out. Thankfully our host mom had stored up some water in a large bucket that we used to get just clean enough to be able to sleep, but add it to the list of reasons she thinks we're completely helpless without her!

Between yesterday morning and this morning we wrapped up our sessions at another two elementary schools. This morning's school was by far the best behaved, so we were able to try some new games with them including a two-way steal the bacon on their futsal court. Molly offered to play keeper for one team and showed impressive form using the underrated "split save" (literally doing the splits to protect the whole goal) and the "slide tackle save" (sliding into a pile of children to take out the ball, their legs, and anything else with the intention of scoring). Despite her efforts, her team suffered a 1-0 loss.

We've now finished our sessions with four schools, leaving behind a set of playground balls, a soccer ball, and a coaching manual for each of the PE teachers. The manual describes 10 soccer games that can be played with minimal equipment and space but lots of kids, and all the PE teachers seemed excited for the new ideas and stuff. At each school, we've worked with at least 40 girls, and hope that some of them will join us on Saturday for our second girls' open clinic. Saturday happens to be International Women's Day (March is Women's History Month), so we will hold a group discussion to open the session on Saturday to talk a little bit about the day and some female sports figures. We also plan to hand out a lot of cleats, to celebrate the day and to encourage girls to attend our camp next week.

Time is flying by and we are anxious to see how the camp and coaches clinic play out. We decided to make the camp girls-only, and will spend the next couple of days hanging flyers around town. Thankfully we were able to reserve the multi-stadium baseball fields (four adjacent baseball fields), rather than the one dusty goat/pig field, which will give us more space as well as access to water in the dugouts. Avoiding heat stroke may be impossible, but we'll give it our best shot.

The rest of the coaches for the camp and clinic will arrive in the next couple of days, and we are tentatively planning a staff meeting on the fiesta bus for Sunday night. I hope they're all practicing their salsa moves now!