First Day of School, Soccer

School was uneventful, except that my first teacher is a little hard to understand because it sounds like he has a frog in his throat -- I´m not sure if they have frogs in Argentina, I haven´t seen one yet, but there is definitely some sort of croaky reptile hiding in there.

Oh yeah ... and my nose decided it didn´t like sitting through two hours of Spanish class so it started bleeding spontaneously in order to get out of there. At first thought -- well played, nose, now you don´t have to do the boring first-day-of-school stuff. Not so fast. The teacher sends me to the infermeria. And they stuff a foot of bandage up my nose, until I swear it is tickling my cerrebellum. AND THEN decide, since that does not look awkward enough, to tape it off. With the most awkward, crooked, nasty looking pieces of tape ever. 30 minutes before class ended. I looked like Elephant Man. I scared small children when I walked home. And I had to walk back into the class. And the Italian guy behind me told me that it happened because I talked trash about the Italian soccer team earlier in front of the class. Fair game. But the Italian guy is cool, and there is a German behind me as well who is like 6´4¨with a blond mohawk. Hoss.

On a more exciting, less morbid note, I went out to play with the school team for a tryout. They are on the cover of the school magazine and their poster is on every door, because taahey won the whole league last year. I showed up about forty minutes before everyone else, but it ended up just being me and two new guys and the whole team. We ran for about 80 minutes, and I did very well with that. And then we played a bit, which was confusing because the field is poorly-lit and there was no way of distinguishing who was playing for what team. No bibs, no shirts vs. skins, nada. I played it safe and passed it back to whoever gave me the ball just about every time. Butttttt.. the last play of the game I won the ball, built up some confidence, scooped it past the center mid, and diiiiced the center back up. It was ugly. I cut it behind my leg, and an onrushing him, and got it on the other side at the top of the box. I couldn´t understand what his teamates were saying to him afterwards, but I think they were saying ¨that was ugly¨. Our next practice is Thursday, and they told me to come back, so I don´t know if that means I am on the team or what, but it´s a good start. If I could learn to understand what they are saying that would be even better. One step at a time..

I have to go now. Lord of the Rings is on TV, with subtitles, and I really need to learn how to say some of the words they use in that movie in Spanish. Ciao!