It is now Friday and it's officially my last week here in Spain. At 1pm, Nery and Danny arrive in Malaga. I have some things planned for us to do, but hopefully the weather holds and we get to spend time enjoying the weather.
I actually planned a trip to Sevilla for Monday and Tuesday thinking it would be a fun place to go that is relatively close. Turns out that Feria starts on Monday in Sevilla and is basically their version of Carnival or Mardi Gras. Pretty damn lucky if you ask me. So I'm really excited about that and then also showing them around the area I've been living for three months.
Tomorrow we have our last game of the season as well. We play the Barcelona Bufals for the second time. This time it's at home and they have to deal with the 12 hour bus ride. This is the team that beat us by 5 points which eventually led to the collapse of our season. So we some unfinished business one might say.
We have a solid gameplan and are really excited about playing them, because we are expecting over 20 players. With those kind of numbers for us, comes a legitimate shot at winning... While I know there is a 99% chance that no one sees this before Saturday if ever, I do not want to reveal our gameplan. This is probably just ridiculous, but some guys on a few of the teams we play have added me on Facebook and also, you can find this blog if you google search the Marbella Sharks and probably Barcelona Bufals too. I can't afford to give away any advantages to deciphering the artistry that is going to take place on Saturday. Haha. But seriously, we're all very excited. We had two good practices this week and everyone really wants to finish up with a win.
We'll see how it goes.
Thursday, April 15, 2010
Monday, April 12, 2010
Italy
After the Coslada game, AJ and I took a trip to Italy. We spent Easter weekend in Rome, then he went off to visit a friend abroad in India, while I headed north to Florence for 3 more nights.
Rome was amazing. One of my favorite classes at Harvard was about the Roman Games and we learned all about the munera, which were originally funeral games to celebrate that person's death but came to be the gladiatorial games. We also learned a lot about each of the Caesars, what they did, who built the Colosseum and how and why. (This website talks more about it: http://www.vroma.org/~bmcmanus/arena.html) To finally go there and see that was very cool and I had a lot of fun. We had some really nice weather there too and hung out at the Trevi Fountain for a while. We saw the Vatican - St. Peter's Basilica was just incredible - as well as the Pantheon and all of the other tourist junk. We went to a restaurant that had been recommended to us and it did not disappoint. The food there really is incredible.
We stayed in some tiny hostel, but the location was awesome, very close to everything. The first night we were packed into a room with 6 bunks with about a foot in between the beds. We were there from Thursday to Sunday, and we went to some of the popular American study-abroad bars in the Campo di Fiore. Those were fun, but it's almost like being at home. Then again, when you walk by the Colosseum on your way home, it's not just like being home. We found a bar that had the NCAA Final Four, and ended up having an awesome night watching Butler upset Michigan State. Needless to say, people at the hostel were happy to see us go. Apparently coming home at 4 in the morning is not standard procedure with some of those folk.
On Sunday, I got a rental car and headed north to Florence. As it turned out, my hostel wasn't in Florence but 15 minutes South. The easiest way to get there was to take the main highway into Firenze and then take a highway south to Siena, and get off at the right exit. Unfortunately, I didn't get on the Firenze-Siena autostrade, but another road that led to Siena. I had planned on getting a GPS with the rental (they had said one would be available) but when I arrived, the only one they had was broken, so I had to use a map of the entire country to get around, not exactly what you'd call detailed. It was raining and foggy and I made it to Firenze by 10 pm. Should have been to the hostel no later than 1030pm. At 1230am, I was driving through Tuscany, and had been for a few hours and I decided I would just stay at the next villa that I found. 5 minutes on a dirt road through olive fields and I show up at this place. Turns out I couldn't afford the 350 euro/night price, but the guy there spoke English and drew me a great map with good directions to the place. He admitted the area was nearly impossible to navigate, especially with this fog and rain at night. At 1am, I get to the hostel. Alive. Unfortunately the place closes at midnight, so without a phone or key, I was stuck. So I spent the night in my baby blue Fiat Panda - great car, surprisingly spacious.
After the miserable start, Florence ended up being quite nice. I spent the next day there and was able to hang out in the Boboli Gardens, see the Duomo, and a few museums. At the Academy Gallery though, I hit a speedbump, or perhaps a wall. In order to rent the car, I had to put a deposit down. This exceeded my daily allowance so I could not use my debit card to get cash for 24 hours. Unfortunately the Academy Gallery does not accept credit cards, and there was no way to get cashback at any local places. Matt did not get to see Michelangelo's David. However I did see a copy of the statue that stands in the original location of David, in front of the Palazzo Vecchio.
My hostel was in a small town called Tavarnelle Val di Pesa, situated right in the middle of Tuscany, and I found a little restaurant there that was probably the best meal I have ever eaten. Some red wine, spaghetti bolognaise, lambchops with potatoes, and gelato. Unreal. Back at the hostel I made some friends and we went out to a bar nearby. This place was a tiny little town and we were the only ones at the bar except for a few high school aged locals who were out messing around on a Monday night. It was a fun experience.
The next day I drove to Pisa to see the leaning tower. That thing is pretty cool. I felt kind of lame knowing that Galileo had figured out gravity there and I was just taking pictures of people pretending to hold it up, but it was a nice day so I took a nap on the grass. After that I drove north along the coast to Cinqe Terre. The place was amazing. I'll put up pictures later but here's a good one from the internet: http://www.nomaders.com/blog/index.php/recordando-un-mes-de-mayo-de-hace-unos-anos/
It's a small region of five villages built into the mountains on the coast. They are tiny little towns that have recently become a popular tourist spot because of how cool the area is and how beautiful the landscape is. You can hike back and forth between the villages or take a train that runs back and forth. It was a nice day so I hiked and the whole time I was just loving it. I'd love to go back some day and stay right there in the villages. Unfortunately my budget doesn't exactly allow for that just yet.
On Wednesday, my last day, I drove back south towards Rome, stopping at Siena for lunch. That's a cool place but I didn't stay too long there. I wanted to first go to Ostia Antico before getting back to the airport.
Ostia is a port city on the mouth of the Tiber River that goes directly into Rome. It was very important in ancient times when all global transportation was done by boat. It wasn't a huge city, but there were something like 40,000 inhabitants. In the 7th or 8th century though, a case of Malaria spread through the town and it was eventually abandoned. Everyone just picked up and left. No one ever built over it, and the ruins have since been excavated and studied and is now a park. Like the Colosseum, I really enjoyed getting to see the ancient Roman ruins. That type of stuff really interests me and it was amazing that so much of the stuff was still intact from over 1200 years ago.
That night I flew back to Spain and have been hanging out here for the last few days. The weather has been nice, and I went to my first bullfight yesterday. That was unlike anything I had ever seen before. Very interesting, especially since there was a female matador who failed to kill the bull and was eventually boo'ed out of ring when her sword got flung up into the crowd and almost impaled the beer vendor. Haha. Time to go outside.
Rome was amazing. One of my favorite classes at Harvard was about the Roman Games and we learned all about the munera, which were originally funeral games to celebrate that person's death but came to be the gladiatorial games. We also learned a lot about each of the Caesars, what they did, who built the Colosseum and how and why. (This website talks more about it: http://www.vroma.org/~bmcmanus/arena.html) To finally go there and see that was very cool and I had a lot of fun. We had some really nice weather there too and hung out at the Trevi Fountain for a while. We saw the Vatican - St. Peter's Basilica was just incredible - as well as the Pantheon and all of the other tourist junk. We went to a restaurant that had been recommended to us and it did not disappoint. The food there really is incredible.
We stayed in some tiny hostel, but the location was awesome, very close to everything. The first night we were packed into a room with 6 bunks with about a foot in between the beds. We were there from Thursday to Sunday, and we went to some of the popular American study-abroad bars in the Campo di Fiore. Those were fun, but it's almost like being at home. Then again, when you walk by the Colosseum on your way home, it's not just like being home. We found a bar that had the NCAA Final Four, and ended up having an awesome night watching Butler upset Michigan State. Needless to say, people at the hostel were happy to see us go. Apparently coming home at 4 in the morning is not standard procedure with some of those folk.
On Sunday, I got a rental car and headed north to Florence. As it turned out, my hostel wasn't in Florence but 15 minutes South. The easiest way to get there was to take the main highway into Firenze and then take a highway south to Siena, and get off at the right exit. Unfortunately, I didn't get on the Firenze-Siena autostrade, but another road that led to Siena. I had planned on getting a GPS with the rental (they had said one would be available) but when I arrived, the only one they had was broken, so I had to use a map of the entire country to get around, not exactly what you'd call detailed. It was raining and foggy and I made it to Firenze by 10 pm. Should have been to the hostel no later than 1030pm. At 1230am, I was driving through Tuscany, and had been for a few hours and I decided I would just stay at the next villa that I found. 5 minutes on a dirt road through olive fields and I show up at this place. Turns out I couldn't afford the 350 euro/night price, but the guy there spoke English and drew me a great map with good directions to the place. He admitted the area was nearly impossible to navigate, especially with this fog and rain at night. At 1am, I get to the hostel. Alive. Unfortunately the place closes at midnight, so without a phone or key, I was stuck. So I spent the night in my baby blue Fiat Panda - great car, surprisingly spacious.
After the miserable start, Florence ended up being quite nice. I spent the next day there and was able to hang out in the Boboli Gardens, see the Duomo, and a few museums. At the Academy Gallery though, I hit a speedbump, or perhaps a wall. In order to rent the car, I had to put a deposit down. This exceeded my daily allowance so I could not use my debit card to get cash for 24 hours. Unfortunately the Academy Gallery does not accept credit cards, and there was no way to get cashback at any local places. Matt did not get to see Michelangelo's David. However I did see a copy of the statue that stands in the original location of David, in front of the Palazzo Vecchio.
My hostel was in a small town called Tavarnelle Val di Pesa, situated right in the middle of Tuscany, and I found a little restaurant there that was probably the best meal I have ever eaten. Some red wine, spaghetti bolognaise, lambchops with potatoes, and gelato. Unreal. Back at the hostel I made some friends and we went out to a bar nearby. This place was a tiny little town and we were the only ones at the bar except for a few high school aged locals who were out messing around on a Monday night. It was a fun experience.
The next day I drove to Pisa to see the leaning tower. That thing is pretty cool. I felt kind of lame knowing that Galileo had figured out gravity there and I was just taking pictures of people pretending to hold it up, but it was a nice day so I took a nap on the grass. After that I drove north along the coast to Cinqe Terre. The place was amazing. I'll put up pictures later but here's a good one from the internet: http://www.nomaders.com/blog/index.php/recordando-un-mes-de-mayo-de-hace-unos-anos/
It's a small region of five villages built into the mountains on the coast. They are tiny little towns that have recently become a popular tourist spot because of how cool the area is and how beautiful the landscape is. You can hike back and forth between the villages or take a train that runs back and forth. It was a nice day so I hiked and the whole time I was just loving it. I'd love to go back some day and stay right there in the villages. Unfortunately my budget doesn't exactly allow for that just yet.
On Wednesday, my last day, I drove back south towards Rome, stopping at Siena for lunch. That's a cool place but I didn't stay too long there. I wanted to first go to Ostia Antico before getting back to the airport.
Ostia is a port city on the mouth of the Tiber River that goes directly into Rome. It was very important in ancient times when all global transportation was done by boat. It wasn't a huge city, but there were something like 40,000 inhabitants. In the 7th or 8th century though, a case of Malaria spread through the town and it was eventually abandoned. Everyone just picked up and left. No one ever built over it, and the ruins have since been excavated and studied and is now a park. Like the Colosseum, I really enjoyed getting to see the ancient Roman ruins. That type of stuff really interests me and it was amazing that so much of the stuff was still intact from over 1200 years ago.
That night I flew back to Spain and have been hanging out here for the last few days. The weather has been nice, and I went to my first bullfight yesterday. That was unlike anything I had ever seen before. Very interesting, especially since there was a female matador who failed to kill the bull and was eventually boo'ed out of ring when her sword got flung up into the crowd and almost impaled the beer vendor. Haha. Time to go outside.
Update
My time in Spain is coming to a close, but fortunately I've got 2 good weeks ahead of me. I come home on April 23rd, and I'm very excited to see all my family and friends, but I know that I will miss this place and the friends I've made here.
Anyways the last few weeks have been great here too. The weather is finally been consistent. Instead of beach days thrown into my schedule at random, it is now becoming more of an every day possibility. Haha, cannot complain with that.
We have played a football game since March 26, when we traveled up to Coslada to play the Camioneros. Coslada is right outside of Madrid and takes about 7 hours by bus. The game was Sunday at noon, so we got onto a bus here in Nueva Andalucia at 1130pm Saturday night. We made one stop about a half hour north to pick up a few more players... But something just wasn't right. Why were there only 21 people on the bus? I suppose that would have been fine if 2 weren't Mike's kids, one wasn't a player's girlfriend, 3 weren't friends coming for the bus ride to Madrid, and 1 wasn't a coach. Yeah. So that puts us at 14. One of which had never played a down of football in his life and had only been to one practice the night before. Haha, you can imagine the thoughts going through our head at this point.
At about 12:30am, someone decided to put on 'The Hills Have Eyes'. Hmm. Great idea! Haha. We had a game to play in less than 12 hours, no one has slept, and we're about to watch a horror movie. Ha. It ended by 2am or so and when someone tried to put on 'Disaster Movie' I had had enough and put a quick end to that.
So we arrive in Madrid around 8 o'clock (DST is 2 weeks after the states, and this happened to be the night we 'sprung ahead'! Lucky.) We put our stuff in the locker room and thought we were going to a team breakfast. Mike, our coach said,"Okay guys, its 815 now, be back by 10 to get ready for the game at noon." When asked about the team breakfast he replied, "Well, you have about two hours, so if you have some money I suppose you could go buy some breakfast." Haha. I got a kick out of that.
A contingent of about 8 start walking around this little outskirt town of Madrid. Unfortunately, in Spain, everything is closed on Sundays. And not actually every single place, but about 95% of places. After a decent hike, we find a coffee shops that serves coffee, juice, and churros (fried dough sticks). I really actually can't think of a better pre-game meal. We did end up finding a little sandwich shop after the churros, but it wasn't much better.
Gametime: 14 players. Now, if you know football, you know that it's not like soccer. You can't really play a football game with 14 guys. That would mean that just about every player is playing both ways and every special team. Insane. The one thing we had going for us was that they only had like 23 guys, which is also very difficult. Midway through the first quarter one of our players coming back from an ACL injury reinjured his knee and was out for the game. 13.
We actually put up quite a fight. Despite penalties and linemen going both ways, we hung in there and fought until the end. They were leading 26-14 when Zac threw fade to me in the endzone in the last few minutes for a touchdown. The final score was 26-20. We actually did have a chance at winning that game, which would have been nothing short of a miracle. We were missing our 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 6th string receivers, so after AJ, we put in our backup middle linebacker/defensive end to play wideout. We had a fullback who had never played fullback before. Of our secondary, we had 3 players from the original 7 linebackers and defensive backs from earlier in the season. Our offensive line fought hard and opened up some big holes for me to run through and I did alright carrying the ball. My shoulder held up too, so I'm happy about that.
We ended up having a very fun bus ride home. We had dropped our second game, which put us at 3-3-1 (we ended up having to take a forfeit for the game we missed due to travel isssues) but we were having fun playing football and hanging out together.
We have one game left, this upcoming Saturday against the Barcelona Bufals at home. This would have been a showdown for a chance to make the playoffs had things not fallen apart, but now it is solely our chance at redemption for the team that beat us a few months ago. They are the best team in the league, but I know if we have a better turnout with players, we do have a solid chance to beat them. I sent an email out to the team the other night, asking players to come together for one more game as a team. I addressed the fact that yes, while the season did fall apart, it was still a lot of fun. I had a good response and I think that we may end up having at least 20 players for this one. If that is the case, then I have a good feeling about it. It would be the perfect way to finish the season - and possibly my career. Who knows if I'll play another football game after this one?
Also, my ex-roommates Nery and Danny are coming on Friday for a week, so that's going to be great. And of course I can't let them down by losing.
Anyways the last few weeks have been great here too. The weather is finally been consistent. Instead of beach days thrown into my schedule at random, it is now becoming more of an every day possibility. Haha, cannot complain with that.
We have played a football game since March 26, when we traveled up to Coslada to play the Camioneros. Coslada is right outside of Madrid and takes about 7 hours by bus. The game was Sunday at noon, so we got onto a bus here in Nueva Andalucia at 1130pm Saturday night. We made one stop about a half hour north to pick up a few more players... But something just wasn't right. Why were there only 21 people on the bus? I suppose that would have been fine if 2 weren't Mike's kids, one wasn't a player's girlfriend, 3 weren't friends coming for the bus ride to Madrid, and 1 wasn't a coach. Yeah. So that puts us at 14. One of which had never played a down of football in his life and had only been to one practice the night before. Haha, you can imagine the thoughts going through our head at this point.
At about 12:30am, someone decided to put on 'The Hills Have Eyes'. Hmm. Great idea! Haha. We had a game to play in less than 12 hours, no one has slept, and we're about to watch a horror movie. Ha. It ended by 2am or so and when someone tried to put on 'Disaster Movie' I had had enough and put a quick end to that.
So we arrive in Madrid around 8 o'clock (DST is 2 weeks after the states, and this happened to be the night we 'sprung ahead'! Lucky.) We put our stuff in the locker room and thought we were going to a team breakfast. Mike, our coach said,"Okay guys, its 815 now, be back by 10 to get ready for the game at noon." When asked about the team breakfast he replied, "Well, you have about two hours, so if you have some money I suppose you could go buy some breakfast." Haha. I got a kick out of that.
A contingent of about 8 start walking around this little outskirt town of Madrid. Unfortunately, in Spain, everything is closed on Sundays. And not actually every single place, but about 95% of places. After a decent hike, we find a coffee shops that serves coffee, juice, and churros (fried dough sticks). I really actually can't think of a better pre-game meal. We did end up finding a little sandwich shop after the churros, but it wasn't much better.
Gametime: 14 players. Now, if you know football, you know that it's not like soccer. You can't really play a football game with 14 guys. That would mean that just about every player is playing both ways and every special team. Insane. The one thing we had going for us was that they only had like 23 guys, which is also very difficult. Midway through the first quarter one of our players coming back from an ACL injury reinjured his knee and was out for the game. 13.
We actually put up quite a fight. Despite penalties and linemen going both ways, we hung in there and fought until the end. They were leading 26-14 when Zac threw fade to me in the endzone in the last few minutes for a touchdown. The final score was 26-20. We actually did have a chance at winning that game, which would have been nothing short of a miracle. We were missing our 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 6th string receivers, so after AJ, we put in our backup middle linebacker/defensive end to play wideout. We had a fullback who had never played fullback before. Of our secondary, we had 3 players from the original 7 linebackers and defensive backs from earlier in the season. Our offensive line fought hard and opened up some big holes for me to run through and I did alright carrying the ball. My shoulder held up too, so I'm happy about that.
We ended up having a very fun bus ride home. We had dropped our second game, which put us at 3-3-1 (we ended up having to take a forfeit for the game we missed due to travel isssues) but we were having fun playing football and hanging out together.
We have one game left, this upcoming Saturday against the Barcelona Bufals at home. This would have been a showdown for a chance to make the playoffs had things not fallen apart, but now it is solely our chance at redemption for the team that beat us a few months ago. They are the best team in the league, but I know if we have a better turnout with players, we do have a solid chance to beat them. I sent an email out to the team the other night, asking players to come together for one more game as a team. I addressed the fact that yes, while the season did fall apart, it was still a lot of fun. I had a good response and I think that we may end up having at least 20 players for this one. If that is the case, then I have a good feeling about it. It would be the perfect way to finish the season - and possibly my career. Who knows if I'll play another football game after this one?
Also, my ex-roommates Nery and Danny are coming on Friday for a week, so that's going to be great. And of course I can't let them down by losing.
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