Week one...check! from Mary

It's about time I tried my hand at the old blog once again. It's been an incredibly long but incredibly touching week here in Granada. The semi-silence on the blog betrays the fact that we've kept our volunteers busy pretty much around the clock. When they aren't sunburning themselves to a crisp at the fields, they are off sharing gallo pinto with their host families or learning to bachata.

The week began on Sunday with orientation for the new volunteers. After a debriefing on the program, we headed up to Catarina for some lunch on a local bus. The key word there is local, as the bus was meant to take about 30 minutes but ended up taking almost an hour and a half to get there, making me feel like we accidentally took the local route instead of the express. It happens. After devouring the tasty "platos tipicos" of Nicaragua we wandered around a bit before heading back down to Granada for some food shopping and our first night with the host families.

The camp ahead would be the 2nd annual T.E.A.M. Camp (Trabajando en Equipo Aprendemos Mas which means Working in a Team we Learn More) and Coaches' Clinic which on paper would be twice as big as last year, twice as long, and with more than twice the number of volunteers. The camp curriculum has changed slightly with the extra days, with the first week emphasizing individual skill development while beginning to teach the concepts of leadership and teamwork, and the second week focusing on teamwork and community. The curriculum for the coaches was also different, with the first week geared toward youth coaches and PE teachers. We crossed our fingers that word had spread to all of our usual girls and walked to the fields on Monday with high hopes. Words can't really describe the week from there. I'll just share some highlights in no particular order:

1)Chepe- He has been unbelievably helpful and excited about the growth of this project. He's all smiles and somehow manages to pull off some of the craziest last minute requests.

2) Torneo- On Thursday we held a practice/workshop on teamwork at the fields. Anyone who has been to a youth tournament in the last decade knows that there is no better place to find team spirit (evidenced by matching outfits, songs, warmups, and facepaint) than a tournament! After a quick warmup game, we broke into four teams and gave them their coaches for the session. Each coach led a get-to-know-you discussion by using a foolproof American technique: bribery with chocolate. Each girl received a soccer ball shaped chocolate for being willing to share a little bit about herself with her team. Despite the fact that the chocolates were mostly melted, we learned a lot about the girls we had been working with. Following the discussion, each team played a quick game of Human Knot before moving on to much tougher tasks...coming up with a team name, flag, and cheer! Some of the cheers were actually quite catchy (que gane? que gane? el equipo con corazon!) while some of the team names made you wonder what's going through their heads (Sangre? Blood?!). The round-robin tournament left us with one winner and one spirit award in both the morning and afternoon. The spirit award, again in true American fashion, was invented at the last minute to recognize the team whose coaches focused ten times more on coming up with a cheer than playing well. For example, Myra and Hubs' morning team "The Crazy Frogs" started all three of their games late on account of their 20 line song, and managed not to win a single game.

3) Dinner with Gusta- Chepe's stepmom made us a feast of gallo pinto, chicken, plantains, and her famous salsa tomate on Wednesday night. The influx of carbs must have reenergized the group because a dance party broke out in Chepe's living room within minutes. Soon after, his stepmom shared her enormous basket (the ones women here carry on their heads and manage to balance against all laws of gravity) with all of us and we each took a turn trying to walk it across the room slash dance with it. We definitely plan to have more family dinners on the block next week! My personal highlight was finally getting to dance with Jose Luis, my five year old dance instructor who, rumor has it, has become enamored with Hubs in my absence. Sigh.

4) Juegos Olympicos- On Friday we gave the girls a chance to show off their new skills in an Olympic style skills fest. While I was not there personally on account of a poor juice-in-a-bag choice and preparation for Friday girls night, all accounts say that skills seem to have improved ten-fold and the girls were excited to win pins and patches for their efforts!

Speaking of Friday girls' night...

5) Friday girls night- We held a special girls night on Friday as a pre-opening of the office, inviting the girls to become the first local members of Futbol Sin Fronteras (Soccer Without Borders). More than 70 people piled into our office for a very special surprise....a movie! Ann brought a projector and found two incredible videos in Spanish, one highlight film of women's soccer around the world and one close-up of Marta. The girls sat glued to the mesmorizing projector, the same way we had last week when we watched Bend it Like Beckham. Afterwards, in broken Spanish (my broken Spanish, not theirs) we talked about the mission of Futbol Sin Fronteras in Granada and asked who wanted to be a part of our team. T.E.A.M. Granada has some new rules that they had to agree to in order to receive their sweet new blue bracelets:
-Respect yourself, Respect each other
-Dream big
-Challenge yourself, Challenge each other
-Have fun
We went through each of the rules (insert more broken Spanish here) asking for their ideas on what it means to follow them. Ironically, the girl who had nearly caused a fight the previous morning after she swore at girls on the other team kicked things off by explaining that respecting each other meant not using bad words. Thanks Gabby!

After going through the rules, we asked them again if they still wanted to be a part of the team, which they all did! One by one we called out their names, gave them a new equipment card and a bracelet, and they signed their name to the T.E.A.M. rules. We ended with a huge team cheer and invited them back for Saturday morning practice and our official office opening (more on this later).

There is so much more to say, so much to digest, so much to share, and yet I fear next week is going to pass as quickly as this first one. Pictures to come, but thanks for reading!