Day 5

Practice day and DAY AT THE BEACH team Dinner too!

Ok, now that I have a chance to sit down and write a bit let me tell you about our journey…Everything is a bit different here. The plumbing drain pipes have open grates inside the bathrooms, did I mention that there is very little paper here. No tissues in the bathroom, the napkins are super small and mostly in a pop up dispenser, no peanut butter or milk (except for in your coffee) most locals put yogurt in their cereal, the cars actually pull out into the center of the road and wait kamikaze style for oncoming traffic to clear a bit before they pull out. People on foot DO NOT HAVE THE RIGHT OF WAY…if you are in the road you will be hit…there are very few large vehicles - I have only seen one semi size truck the whole time were have been here and it was a beer truck, there are buses and horse drawn carts (these go around and scavenge all the recyclable materials out of the garbage) and there is very little trash on the sidewalks even in run down parts of town it is pretty clean here. There are no laundry mats, all laundry is taken out of the city in the morning and brought back in the next day…There are a lot of street vendors and shops and YES there is a McDonald’s here but the hamburgers are awesome…South America prides itself on their Beef! And it is some of the best I have every eaten. I am just starting to get comfortable with the few words I know in Spanish and then we came to Uruguay and they say things a bit different here! Oh, well another learning experience …enough about S.A. onto GER news…

After a very nice buffet style breakfast we all headed out to the practice field. It is just a few blocks down the road from the hotel…Did I tell you we are right on the waterfront! Check out the picture of our hotel the NH Columbia it is the one with the blue glass stripe down the center. There is a small park like area with a small practice field (soccer I think) right next to the ocean wall. It is quite picturesque here and while the boys were practicing we headed out to look for water for them. Up the road a few blocks we found a small grocery market where we purchased four 5 liter Sin Gas (no bubbles just water I learned that one the hard way) bottles of water for the team. The price…$88 pesos or so…U$S $4 bucks…I know you feel really rich here when you cash in $20 and get $400 back...but then a cup of coffee costs $45 so it all evens out a bit. After practice we had a short break where they boys got to go eat something and then we were off in the taxi’s to the beach (Kibon was the name we gave the driver). The boys took one of their rugby balls and proceded to have quite a fun time chasing each other back and forth…Sinone has been teaching them all a new opening chant the Hobacca (not quite sure if I spelled that one right) about 5 of them have it down pretty good and if you look you will see several of them learning this new chant in the water. It was a great day of play at the beach, a chance to let go and unwind a bit. We came back to the hotel, showered and got ready for our team dinner. We met Carlos our coordinator here in South America at the restaurant. He has helped us all the way with transportation, lodging, coordinating the games and he even got our laundry done. It was quite the feast, all the food was prepared over an open fire type oven and like I said the South Americans pride themselves on good steaks…food was very, very good. We all headed back for an early night since we had practice in the morning and a night game the next day.

Oh, yes…I forgot if you look closely you might see a reverse mohok on one of our lads but I am sure you really need to keep and eye peeled for the several half shaved eyebrows in the crowd…tisk for task…

Day 6 up next…the game at the famous Carrasco Polo Club…