Soccer Stress and Late Nights

Sunday
October 14, 2007

It is Sunday afternoon and as I wait for my various loads of laundry to be finished, I will write. Right now I am sitting on my sheetless bed, listening to The Cure, The Killers, Austin TV, Porter, and Molotov. Essentially, I’m cramming for my upcoming weekend of Rock en Español and international rock. You see, there is a huge festival on Friday called “Moto Rokr Fest” (http://www.motorokrfest.com/). It is being held at the “Foro Sol” which is the home of the baseball team the Diablos Rojos del Mexico and host of many Mexican League baseball games. The park is in the central east part of Mexico City. Bands such as The Killers (Las Vegas- http://www.myspace.com/thekillers), Incubus (LA- http://www.myspace.com/incubus) , Molotov (DF- http://www.myspace.com/molotovoficial), Porter (Guadalajara- http://www.myspace.com/porterbank), and The Dandy Warhols (Portland, Oregon- http://www.myspace.com/thedandywarhols) will play. Mauricio, a bunch of his friends, and I are going and I’m trying to do as much preparation as possible before the concert. On Sunday, the Cure is playing at the Palacio de Los Deportes. I’m going to that too. I better rest up this week.

Speaking of rest, I woke up at 1pm today. Last night I went to a party in a neighborhood very far away. Mauricio, Sergio (his brother), Alejandra (Sergio’s girlfriend), and I left the house around 10:30 last night and arrived around 12am. We had a tough time finding it because not only was the house far away (near Santa Fe where I work) but it was very complicated and they hardly ever go to that area of the city. The whole time we were looking for it I was secretly hoping that we would get more lost because I was really enjoying the ride there. Alejandra and Sergio are super fun and I hardly ever get to see them because medical school takes up the majority of their time. It was a beautifully clear night and the further from the city we got, the brighter the stars and the nicer the houses became… and the more lost we got. It was great. I felt like I was back in middle and high school where the ride to the houses in the foothills was often more interesting than the parties themselves. By the way… thanks, mom. I now realize how difficult that must have been for you.

The party was super fresa. The host of the party has a brother who is an architect who is finishing up a house in a fancy neighborhood in the hills of the eastern part of the city. Before they put the finishing touches on the house, they decided to throw a party. It was pretty extravagent. They bought a smoke machine and had lots of lights and really bad music. I danced a lot since that was the only thing to keep me from getting annoyed with the music. Our group was a lot of fun because Sergio and Alejandra love to dance. We joked around the entire time; it was great!

Unfortunately, the ride home didn’t take nearly as long. I was in bed by 4am. Yesterday was a pretty relaxing day. I slept in (after going to bed around 4am), had an obscure late breakfast/early lunch of fried rice, pomegranate seeds and coconut (from the del Valle tianguis), and went to Chapultepec to run. On Tuesdays I have been running with a coworker of mine named Marissa. She and I go to the 3rd section of the park which is pretty tranquil since it isn’t in the famous part of Chapultepec. This weekend I convinced Mauricio to go running where I usually do since I didn’t like Viveros (near Coyoacán) where we ran last Saturday. The area of Chapultepec where we went (http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=19.421768,-99.184613&spn=0.019571,0.029273&t=k&hl=en) is better because there aren’t as many people, it is visually more interesting because the tracks aren’t completely flat, the area is prettier, and there is a lake you can run around if you get bored of the dirt tracks. Next week I hope to run in the part of Chapultepec with the castle (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castillo_de_Chapultepec).

Friday was an excellent day. I got an average amount of sleep (5hours) because I was out until midnight eating dinner the night before. I found an Arab restaurant in my neighborhood so Mauricio came by after work so we could check it out. The restaurant was strangely decorated. At first, all I noticed was as mural on the wall across from me with a desert scene with typical images of camels and people looking thirsty. But, near the end of dinner, I looked behind me and saw that there was another series of paintings. One part was of a rain forest and the other was of the ocean. They had 3D decorations in the corner of a jaguar coming out of a tree and further down the wall there was as an aquarium. The food was pretty good and the service was good for the first half of our meal. The reason for this is because right after we received our appetizers, a group of about 12 came in and sat down in the back. I was shocked because one of the guys who came in was someone I actually recognized from a novela I had seen literally two times. I remember him vividly because in the scene I saw him in his character was a disgusting man who was hanging around his swimming pool with a dozen women with huge breasts and tiny bikinis. In the scene, he had on tight white pants and a shirt buttoned only half way up. Which, by the way, is how a third of the people at the party Saturday night were dressed… fresas. Anyway, shocked that I actually recognized a famous actor here, I had to keep myself from looking back and therefore didn’t get a great view of the beautiful artwork on the walls. Later, Mauricio explained that he was probably the least famous of the people we saw at the restaurant that night. Anyway, after that group came in, we pretty much said “good-bye” to our waiter. The food was pretty good but I am excited to try some other Arab places before going back to Adonis.

School on Friday was fine. I usually play with the kids on Fridays and the day is usually much easier because of that. This week we I did Mad Libs with the 3rd graders. At first I told them we were going to play and they got really excited. Upon receiving a piece of paper full of text, their expressions of happiness suddenly turned to disappointment. I knew it would only take them a few minutes to come around and sure enough, they were coming up to my desk half way through their story just to show me what they had so far. They had a blast reading them out loud to the class. Some even got up and pretended to film their classmates while they read. This made me realize that a video project would be great for my 3rd graders. Early this week I am going to send the kids home with a letter asking for their parents’ authorization to work on a movie.

Classes went well on Friday but soccer was STRESSFUL. The big troublemaker, who goes by “Pollo,” actually came and I was happy that she did because if I can figure out how to work with her, she will be an important asset to the team. To explain who Pollo is in one sentence, I guess I would say that she is the rebel of the school. She tries to act macho, never comes to school, and likes to flaunt that she has money. Apparently she boxes and rides horses on her free time. I really like Pollo and would like to get along with her (I think she feels antagonized by the other faculty members) but I get extremely frustrated during practice when I have to spend half the time giving her special attention. For example, the day she came last week, she came late and I had to leave the team alone to scrimmage because I needed to run the steps of the amphitheatre again to make sure that she did it. I have no problem spending time after practice to talk about how she is doing and why she didn’t participate or what she enjoyed about practice, but during practice, I simply don’t have time. This has caused a lot of problems because if I don’t have time to talk 1 on 1 with her, she gets upset and says that I am not being reasonable with her. On Friday she arrived on time and ran the 7 summits (subidas sounds much better in Spanish) of the amphitheatre but after the two minute water break, she came back to the field talking on her cell phone. I asked her to hang up and come to the center of the field to divide up the teams for a scrimmage and she said, while still on the phone, “just a minute.” I said, “no, you come now or you won’t play,” and that was that. She got all upset and tried to make it sound like I’m the one being unreasonable. This wasn’t the only source of stress. Two other girls, Marisa and Fernanda, also miraculously arrived on time to practice. But, when I gathered everyone to go to the amphitheatre, they were nowhere to be seen. When we returned to the field to scrimmage, they were back fully expecting to play with us. I asked them where they were and they said, “es que no nos gusta correr” (“it’s that we don’t like to run”). I said, “Then you won’t play today” and had them leave the field. At first the simply muttered some things under their breath and refused to leave the field. I was caught in a tricky situation because normally this behavior is unacceptable but both the headmaster and the assistant principal (remember the principal was fired during the first week for sexual harassment and bringing alcohol in a water bottle to campus) are away and I didn’t know who to go to about behavioral problems. Also, I didn’t want to have to leave my girls alone to scrimmage for a second Friday in a row. So, I let Fernanda and Marisa off the hook. It didn’t take them much time to leave the field because they remembered they could chat with the boys from volleyball who were doing nothing because their coach, also the athletic director, quit a few weeks ago.

After practice I had a 15 minute discussion with Pollo. I explained my point of view and she explained why she got upset. One thing I have been trying to express to her is that I don’t know her history and I don’t know what people say about her in the high school. First of all, because I don’t care and don’t discriminate, and second of all because I don’t teach in the high school. She seems to automatically assume that teachers expect nothing from her and this is a problem because I treat her like the rest of my students. I explained to her that it isn’t fair to the other girls if I have to take time to run with her because she arrives late etc. I can tell that she wants to play soccer and the fact that she ran the entire time with us (considering the fact that she smokes, is out of shape, and was wearing Crocs) shows that she is willing to give a significant effort. I was really happy to be able to talk 1 on 1 with her and hope that every practice she cooperates like the rest of the team.

The scrimmage was exhausting. They finally fixed the synthetic field and since we scrimmage on Fridays, it was a perfect opportunity to inaugurate the field. Normally, for a scrimmage of 3 on 3, I would use half the field. But, a few of the players on the boys team, who do assume a level of superiority and privileged when it comes to equipment etc. were hassling me to let them use the field since they had a game that afternoon. Having experienced the machismo of the University of Costa Rica soccer program, I know that if I let them use even half of the field on Friday this will slowly convert to the entire field on Monday, more than half of the cones and pennies on Wednesday, and the better soccer balls on Friday. So, since I was already bitchy (my actions would be resemblant of strong and respectable character if I were a guy) enough to refuse them use of the field, I knew that we couldn’t just use half of the field for our scrimmage. So, the 6 of us busted our asses (well, I did at least) during the scrimmage just to take advantage of the entire space.

During the entire scrimmage, the boys who weren’t playing shouted things on the sideline. They were “positive” soccer-related remarks but all were thickly coated with sarcasm. I would have taken measures to stop them as the comments were enraging, but again, I didn’t know who to go to and I didn’t want to leave my team alone when time to scrimmage was quickly running out.

I was so stressed by the end of practice, and saddened after my conversation with Pollo, that I knew my only way to relax would be to stick around for high school lunch to play basketball with the boys. Usually on Fridays, since I’m already dressed in sports clothes from soccer, I stick around to play basketball with the few high schoolers who are actually nice, mature, and respectful. On Friday I played 3 on 3 with D. a super cool guy from Queens, two tall Brazilians from São Paulo, a humongous Korean we call Yao (for his size, not his nationality) and a small Mexican who was the perfect opponent for me. I had an absolute blast not only because these guys are cool, but because they aren’t too good and I actually contributed to the scrimmage significantly. Needless to say, I was exhausted afterwards and felt great.

When I got home that afternoon, I took a big nap so I could enjoy the night. First I meet up with some of the high school teachers at Aaron’s (from Oregon) apartment. Around midnight, we went to a bar in the Centro where there were a few rock bands playing. Two of the bands were really young and it was obvious that their parents and grandparents were there. The bar was a total dive. It was a big room named something like “El Torero” and had gigantic (10ft x 10ft) paintings of bullring scenes and framed statues of old kings and bull fighters. If I hadn’t been drinking, I probably would have been more freaked out by the scene. I loved ever second of our time at that bar. Don, I can’t wait to take you there.

I’m going to conclude my entry as I have to hang up my last load of laundry and get dressed to go and see a movie called Stellet Licht (Silent Light). It’s a film by Carlos Reygadas and it takes place in Northern Mexico. The main characters are Mennonites and the movie is in their native Dutch. It won the Jury award at Cannes and I think it’ll be up for more awards throughout the year. Luego les cuento qué tal.