Triple sessions...

Chepe is in heaven. As if walking around with three gringas all the time weren´t enough, he´s now constantly accompanied by nine. The rest of the crew arrived on Sunday, bumping our total number of Spanish speakers up to three, and increasing our average age by at least 5 years. After a staff dinner in Catarina, Ann was fooled by the windy conditions at the top of the mountain and insisted that her streak of bringing bad weather with her would continue in Nicaragua. Rest assured Nicaragua´s dry season has prevailed; sunny skies, sweltering heat, and dusty fields to our hearts´content.

We began camp on Monday morning, quickly realizing that our morning group would probably be small, since we visited schools in the mornings and so the kids we met are obviously busy all morning. We had about 10 familiar faces for the morning session, and 30 for the afternoon, and continued to hand out flyers to advertise throughout the day, so we are hoping things will grow as the week continues.

Our third session of the day was the coaching clinic. Nine coaches from the men´s league and a player from our women´s team came to our first coaching session. The coaches were incredibly responsive to the format, actively taking notes, asking questions, and jumping in to play in the drills. We are very excited about the response and are looking forward to the rest of the week with them. Unfortunately today is a quadruple session with the addition of our girls´team practice, which has turned into a "Nicaragua vs. the World" scrimmage.

April is still on the lookout for the enormous pig we told her about. Supposedly she has some carrots in her bag with which she plans to both tame and ride said pig. She is also the frontrunner for the "most improved spanish" award, as she has learned to add an "o" onto the end of everything to make it sound more latin. Trying to pump up her fellow defenders at the end of the morning session yesterday, she told them to "breako el legos." I´m sure they heard her loud and clear.

Ann on the other hand has taken it upon herself to seek the "Most Valuable over-the-hill Player" award. Her relay team showed no mercy in successive rounds...the other relay teams ended up sulking and walking off the field, refusing to participate. I may have even seen a tear or two. A day later, she´s still basking in the glory of her relay performance.

Will try to get some pics up as soon as possible, but for now I´m in dire need of some juice in a bag.