Ok well let's be honest, it wasn't really a battle. It was more like a massacre. We lost 15-0, but I get ahead of myself.
To remind new readers, I am playing on a soccer team here. The female football team of University Torquato Di Tella. The coordinator of sports is Juan Jose (Juanjo), and our coach's name is Hernan. We're a group of girls from 19-24, only one of whom actually goes to Di Tella now! Ha! The rest go to different schools or have already graduated from Di Tella! We play for fun, in all honesty. Some games get competitive but it's mostly for kicks. A couple of months ago we were told that we were going to play a tournament in Mar de Plata. That is supposed to be a really nice beach town! I was so excited! Then we were told that this university we were going to play couldn't get enough girls together to form a team. Sadness. Then Juanjo said he had received an email from the coach of a girls team in San Nicolas, west of Buenos Aires inquiring about the possibility of playing a scrimmage.
This team is part of a foundation that, through soccer, works with girls from extremely poor neighborhoods helping them to finish school. The team is called the Pumas. The team has two divisions, one of girls 12-16 and the other from 16-26. They're a great bunch of girls and they were so nice, but WOW were they good. They played a different kind of soccer than we did, with noticeably rehearsed plays and it was obvious they were used to playing a field for 11 v 11 when we only play on a field for 8 v 8. We never stood a chance.
I fought hard though! I hurt my knee when one of the girls ran into me and I fell quite badly. But after some ice and advil it's feeling better. I'm sure it's nothing serious. I was flying too! But those goals just kept going by! It was good that they one though. I mean, of all times I don't mind losing that badly it would definitely be this one. It was interesting to see some of the real Argentina too, I mean like Argentina outside "the paris of south america", which is what they call Buenos Aires. It was really something to think that these girls come from absolutely nothing and could do soo much on a soccer field! It was neat too that, when we got to talk to them afterwards plus the day after, they were sooo fascinated by the fact that most of Di Tella's team can speak more than one language and have traveled extensively. They asked me and the other exchange students all about what America was like and they thought it was the coolest thing that one of the exchange students could speak Japanese!
So we came home with some battle wounds. One of the forwards sprained her ankle, another had a HUGE welt on her left shin, and of course I'm still icing my knee. But I think everyone enjoyed the comraderie and the learning experience and I know the Pumas enjoyed smashing us on the soccer field.
In other news I have a 15-20 page paper due in a week, and five pages due by Wednesday for another class, and four for another class. I've basically forgotten what sleep is, but I'm reading some poems tonight at a huge bookstore for the famous poet Mario Trejo that I wrote about a long while ago! Come on folks, who really needs sleep when you're in the Paris of South America??? I come home in 6 weeks and I feel like I've got sooo much left to do here!
Anyone interested can follow the link to the album of photographs. Sorry all the captions are in Spanish!
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2060126&id=19304269&l=14a9d6a8ad
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