Todos ninas

Chepe directing Body Stop Dribbling

The baggie of juice
Carolina ready for practice

The lagoon, seen from Catarina

Keep-away and donut breakfast in the town square

Girls clinic

We had our first open clinic for girls yesterday morning. We said we'd meet in the town square around 8 for anyone interested and walk over to the field around 9. Molly imagined us with little flutes like Peter Piper, walking through town playing music collecting people to play. Although there wasn't any music, we did end up playing keep-away in the square for almost the whole hour as girls began to arrive. The donut lady also stopped by...if you look closely in the picture you can see donuts in everyone's hands. We're setting a great nutritional example, I know.

At 9 we headed over to the field and discovered an even larger group waiting for us. We let them kick the balls around freely for awhile, and then broke into two goups for some ball skills. We introduced them to "Body Stop Dribbling" which involves dribbling the ball around and stopping it on command with different parts of your body. Even the girls dressed in capris and fancy tank tops hit the ground to stop the ball with their foreheads. The most encouraging part of the morning was that 7 of the older girls showed up to help us coach the session. In our practices they are often shy about speaking up to ask questions, or to demonstrate. In the context of coaching younger girls, they were outgoing, helpful, and patient while demonstrating the different skills. At the end we had a big 14 v 14 game that ended with a missed penalty kick and a lot of cheering. Everyone left in good spirits and anxious for more, so we are hopeful that next Saturday we'll have an even bigger turnout. We will be visiting three new elementary schools this week, so that will probably boost the numbers as well. Watching the older girls take initiative bodes well for keeping these clinics going once we leave, and perhaps even having each of them coach a team in a youth league if enough girls are interested! Our favorite little girl, Carolina, came to practice decked out in the new outfit we gave her, little cleats and all! Soccer Without Borders finally has a mascot...

After the practice, Molly and Elise headed off to the lagoon, where Molly insists she saw two monkeys but has no photographic evidence, and Elise was charged by an angry cow ironically named Elise. Chepe and I chose to spend the afternoon on higher and dryer ground in a town called Catarina, which necessitated my first Nicaraguan bus experience. The buses are all old American school buses that don't leave the station until they are completely filled. The definition of completely filled is all the seats, all the standing room, the roof, and anyone willing to hang off the back. The roof was also packed full of bikes, so when the bus would stop I'd see bikes falling past my window as someone tossed them off the roof. The road to Catarina was under construction, making parts of it just one lane that both directions had to share. In the US when this happens, someone directs the traffic so that they alternate which line of cars gets to use the road. Not so in Nicaragua. Here it's more of an "I'm bigger than you" rule. I looked up to see a row of 10 cars heading straight for us, and our bus driver was unyielding. Sure enough, the 10 cars all swerved into the lane under construction to avoid being run over. Shortly thereafter, we engaged in a true game of chicken...bus vs. bus. I held my breath as both bus drivers swallowed just a little bit of their pride and squeezed past one another, half on the road, half in a ditch.

Catarina was well worth the adventure as we looked down on the lagoon that Molly and Elise were swimming in. We ended the afternoon with some typical juice-in-a-baggie, which is the only way they serve juice here. Sometimes your baggie comes with a straw, sometimes not.