One of the best matches the team has played in a long time (that I've seen/been involved in). We played a team called Club Joma, and to give you an idea of who they are to us, if we are Liverpool, they are Aston Villa or maybe Arsenal. They are very, very good, and we have generally tied or just barely eked out wins against them in the past.
Tonight, it's like we were all on fire, every single one of us. Things were just flowing and even when we were under pressure, it just seemed like we could bend as much as we needed, but never break. Lupe, who is basically filling in as our keeper because Sonia isn't reliable, was insane. She moved like a varsity keeper or better. Sabi scored three screamers (and I mean screamers, it was like seeing her way back when I first started playing with the team) and assisted the fourth, and together, she and I really held the midfield, didn't let Joma get too much of a game going. Cecy was tough as nails on defense and the other girls all put in some really class work on offense and defense. I think if we had played with this kind of intensity against Tormenta, we might have sneaked a win.
As it is, it was just awesome to see how we could play when we were really on top of our game. I think this bodes well for the impending start of finals, and even though I just got back, I really want us to aim for the championship, knock Tormenta or Independiente off their perches. I want me and my teammates to be the ones sweaty and sore and tired as fuck, celebrating with the trophies and the medals at the end of the season.
Saturday, January 30, 2010
Sunday, January 24, 2010
Match report
We played a team called San Lucas last night, and really, the most difficult part of the match was trying to distinguish between their yellow and white jerseys, and our yellow and blue ones.
Our main focus last night was to get Sabina as many goals as we could, because she's in contention for most goals scored (as she almost always is) and the games against weaker teams are a good chance for her to rack up some extra goals.
In the end, she scored six. I netted two of my own, one with my right, a high floater from midfield, and the other one with my left, a sidefooted finish from close range. To be honest, neither Sabi nor I were having particularly good nights in terms of finishing. There was one sequence where she and I kept slamming volleys off the boards, trying to put them on net. We must have hit about six or seven before the ball skittered out of bounds. It was kind of funny and kind of frustrating.
Best moment of the night, though, was when we had come back from scoring a goal, and the other team lined up to take the kick off. Since the field is small, you can have a shot from kick off and have a decent chance at scoring. So one of the girls from the other team, a defender, stepped up to take the shot. She plays with us on Sundays, but with San Lucas on Saturdays, and she's got a wicked boot. So Sabi and I are standing there, and Sabi sees her coming and mutters, "Chingue su madre" at the same time that I mutter, "Oh, shit." We have a quick laugh at that, and then of course I get hit square in the back and Sabi has a good laugh at my misfortune.
Next week we get Club Joma, the team that rounds out the 'top four' in our league. There's us, Club Independiente, Tormenta, and Joma. Depending on how things shake out, I think we will be fighting for third with Joma, so this is a pretty important match. Joma are good, but I know they aren't as good as Tormenta, and we held our own with Tormenta until pretty late in the game.
Me myself, I'm just happy to be back playing at full speed and full intensity. Football is pretty much my lifeline, the one thing that I can always count on to make me happy, and it's just a game that I play for an hour every week, but I feel like I'm so fortunate and lucky to have even one source of complete and total happiness.
Our main focus last night was to get Sabina as many goals as we could, because she's in contention for most goals scored (as she almost always is) and the games against weaker teams are a good chance for her to rack up some extra goals.
In the end, she scored six. I netted two of my own, one with my right, a high floater from midfield, and the other one with my left, a sidefooted finish from close range. To be honest, neither Sabi nor I were having particularly good nights in terms of finishing. There was one sequence where she and I kept slamming volleys off the boards, trying to put them on net. We must have hit about six or seven before the ball skittered out of bounds. It was kind of funny and kind of frustrating.
Best moment of the night, though, was when we had come back from scoring a goal, and the other team lined up to take the kick off. Since the field is small, you can have a shot from kick off and have a decent chance at scoring. So one of the girls from the other team, a defender, stepped up to take the shot. She plays with us on Sundays, but with San Lucas on Saturdays, and she's got a wicked boot. So Sabi and I are standing there, and Sabi sees her coming and mutters, "Chingue su madre" at the same time that I mutter, "Oh, shit." We have a quick laugh at that, and then of course I get hit square in the back and Sabi has a good laugh at my misfortune.
Next week we get Club Joma, the team that rounds out the 'top four' in our league. There's us, Club Independiente, Tormenta, and Joma. Depending on how things shake out, I think we will be fighting for third with Joma, so this is a pretty important match. Joma are good, but I know they aren't as good as Tormenta, and we held our own with Tormenta until pretty late in the game.
Me myself, I'm just happy to be back playing at full speed and full intensity. Football is pretty much my lifeline, the one thing that I can always count on to make me happy, and it's just a game that I play for an hour every week, but I feel like I'm so fortunate and lucky to have even one source of complete and total happiness.
Friday, January 22, 2010
Long overdue update
Well I guess it's safe to say that this blog has fallen by the wayside. My last post was sometime in the summer of 2009, well before I left to do a teaching stint in Spain, and a lot of things have happened since then.
Most notably, I didn't stay the full year in Spain like I was planning to. To make a long story short, small-town Spain is not very kind to people of non-European descent. This manifested itself in me not getting served at the bread counter in the supermarket, the pharmacist telling me to "get cleaned up" before I came back for a prescription, and people making derogatory remarks about me on the street. While I absolutely adored the kids I was teaching and the school I was working in, my contract only allowed me to work twelve hours a week. If I had been working thirty or forty hours a week, I might have stayed, because most of my time would have been spent working and not dealing with people outside the school. As it was, I made the decision to come home at Christmas. It wasn't an easy decision, but I do believe that it was the right one.
Coming back home, I knew I was walking into one of the worst job markets in a long time and I was prepared to face a long period of fruitless searching. I was very unlucky to have just missed out on a opportunity at the Taiwanese Consulate in Los Angeles when I left for Spain (they actually called me for an interview, but the interview was the day before my flight to Madrid and I didn't think it was appropriate for me to interview knowing I had to leave in 24 hours), and I confess I was a little blue knowing that I could have been working in Los Angeles the past four months instead of enduring racism in Spain.
However, I received a huge, *huge* stroke of luck when a family friend called with an opportunity to work for a local adoption organization. The organization had just received a federal grant to expand its services for adoptees, and they were looking specifically for an adoptee to fill one of their positions. I called the organization that same day and, upon speaking to the project manager, realized that I knew her from my previous work with Children's Home Society and Family Services. I went in to talk with her/interview a few days later, and after about a week received confirmation that I was indeed hired, and all we had to do now was wait for the grant money to come in.
At the moment, we're still waiting, because the government, like any good bureaucracy, is taking its time in getting things off their desks, but I've been in to the office to do some work that will count as volunteer time, just to get things moving so when the money finally comes in we can hit the ground running. The job itself is a little bit of everything, from website design and maintenance to answering phones and making copies. The goal of the program is to create a resource network by adoptees for adoptees, the underlying idea being that adoptees understand themselves better than anyone else, and that we benefit from connecting with other adoptees.
I'm really excited about this job, excited not only because I practically walked into it and because it happened right when I needed it, but because adoption is something that I've thought about and reflected on a lot, and I think this is an amazing opportunity to help shape the direction of services and resources for adoptees and to put all that thinking and reflection to use.
On other fronts, I'm still playing futbol with my Mexican team. It's been something like seven or eight years now that I've been playing on the same team, and there are only a few of us left from the original squad, though we've kept our name, Club America. I tore my meniscus over the summer and didn't finish the season, but I've been back on the field this winter and had a couple decent runs, so hopefully I will be back to playing full ninety-minute matches soon. The girls, as always, welcomed me back with open arms, and I can't reiterate enough how lucky I am to call them friends and teammates. We may not be the best team in the league, but I like the togetherness we have and the sense of loyalty.
I've set myself a goal of writing for at least half an hour every day, in some capacity, whether it's blogging or creative writing, so I'm really going to make an effort to keep this blog updated more regularly.
Most notably, I didn't stay the full year in Spain like I was planning to. To make a long story short, small-town Spain is not very kind to people of non-European descent. This manifested itself in me not getting served at the bread counter in the supermarket, the pharmacist telling me to "get cleaned up" before I came back for a prescription, and people making derogatory remarks about me on the street. While I absolutely adored the kids I was teaching and the school I was working in, my contract only allowed me to work twelve hours a week. If I had been working thirty or forty hours a week, I might have stayed, because most of my time would have been spent working and not dealing with people outside the school. As it was, I made the decision to come home at Christmas. It wasn't an easy decision, but I do believe that it was the right one.
Coming back home, I knew I was walking into one of the worst job markets in a long time and I was prepared to face a long period of fruitless searching. I was very unlucky to have just missed out on a opportunity at the Taiwanese Consulate in Los Angeles when I left for Spain (they actually called me for an interview, but the interview was the day before my flight to Madrid and I didn't think it was appropriate for me to interview knowing I had to leave in 24 hours), and I confess I was a little blue knowing that I could have been working in Los Angeles the past four months instead of enduring racism in Spain.
However, I received a huge, *huge* stroke of luck when a family friend called with an opportunity to work for a local adoption organization. The organization had just received a federal grant to expand its services for adoptees, and they were looking specifically for an adoptee to fill one of their positions. I called the organization that same day and, upon speaking to the project manager, realized that I knew her from my previous work with Children's Home Society and Family Services. I went in to talk with her/interview a few days later, and after about a week received confirmation that I was indeed hired, and all we had to do now was wait for the grant money to come in.
At the moment, we're still waiting, because the government, like any good bureaucracy, is taking its time in getting things off their desks, but I've been in to the office to do some work that will count as volunteer time, just to get things moving so when the money finally comes in we can hit the ground running. The job itself is a little bit of everything, from website design and maintenance to answering phones and making copies. The goal of the program is to create a resource network by adoptees for adoptees, the underlying idea being that adoptees understand themselves better than anyone else, and that we benefit from connecting with other adoptees.
I'm really excited about this job, excited not only because I practically walked into it and because it happened right when I needed it, but because adoption is something that I've thought about and reflected on a lot, and I think this is an amazing opportunity to help shape the direction of services and resources for adoptees and to put all that thinking and reflection to use.
On other fronts, I'm still playing futbol with my Mexican team. It's been something like seven or eight years now that I've been playing on the same team, and there are only a few of us left from the original squad, though we've kept our name, Club America. I tore my meniscus over the summer and didn't finish the season, but I've been back on the field this winter and had a couple decent runs, so hopefully I will be back to playing full ninety-minute matches soon. The girls, as always, welcomed me back with open arms, and I can't reiterate enough how lucky I am to call them friends and teammates. We may not be the best team in the league, but I like the togetherness we have and the sense of loyalty.
I've set myself a goal of writing for at least half an hour every day, in some capacity, whether it's blogging or creative writing, so I'm really going to make an effort to keep this blog updated more regularly.
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