Day 7- May 13, 2013

Today officially marks my 7^th day here.  Although the days seem long, this week has actually gone by pretty quickly!  I had an early start this morning, and back to two-a-days again!  This morning we had training at the BGC Turf Field, and worked on tactical defending for a while.  We play a 3-6-1 (and the 6 in the midfield is made up of two wingers and a square in the center with two holding and two attacking mids).  I’m a holding mid, and have been having a little difficulty adjusting to the system but I’m trying!  His men’s team plays a 3-6-1, and it actually works really well.  We scrimmaged against his men’s team at the end of practice and they beat us 12ish to 1 (I’m really bad at keeping track of the score.  Farmer wouldn’t be happy).  I took a nap after training and then we went to lunch at Giligan’s.  I tried to order this fish thing, but the waiter thought I was asking for mango juice, so he kept saying, “Mango shake yes, yes.”  Eventually I gave up and just ordered chicken sticks because it’s the easiest thing to say.  After lunch, we had a “classroom session” at Tito Ernie’s house.  We watched parts of the Stallions (his men’s team) games, and part of the Malditas vs. Vietnam game from a couple years ago.  My Filipino phone recites scripture to me every hour on the hour, and it went off during the classroom session which was a little awkward for everyone who heard it…Everyone asked me why my phone recites scriptures to me.  I don’t know how to stop it though.  After our classroom session, we had our evening training session in Alabang.  We worked on both our offense and defense, and finished with set plays.  Training went until the sun went down and we couldn’t see anymore.  After training we had dinner at Giligan’s, and this time I just ate some of what everybody else ordered.  We had mozzarella sticks (which is basically cheese fried tempura style here), lumpia, salpicao (spelling?), baked pork belly, some kind of fish, and garlic rice.  I had a mango shake, and also had a fruit shake today.  The fruit shakes are realllllly good.  They’re made with red mango and banana!  My new fave!  After dinner, we just came back to the condos and I’m about to go to sleep.

The team with a news reporter (in black) after training at BGC