This blog was going to be about the beach, but it’s not

This was the first morning that I finally got to sleep in.  I went to bed the night before thinking that I was going to go to the beach today… That’s not what I did today.

I woke up at around noon and see an email from Carlene telling me that she saw a soccer field and that I should go work on my story… The first thoughts that went through my head were, “this can’t be serious.”

So then I showered and thought about it and reread to see that my deadline was Tuesday apparently… Great.

Then I thought about it and after a couple minutes of hesitation, I realized that it was probably a good idea… It was.

I told my roommate, Joe, about the email and he told me that he was willing to come with me to find a soccer field so he could photograph my story.  I realized that I probably had a very little chance of getting interviews done without our translator, Oscar.

I called Oscar and after one ring, I got an “hola.”  I hadn’t given any prior notice to him about this but he said he was free so we met up an hour later.  I asked my host family about a field and Francisco told me about one in the area, but not knowing my way around, I couldn’t really visualize any of the directions.

When Joe and I met up with Oscar he said he knew about one field, so we got on the metro and headed there.  We walked in to see a men’s league game finishing up right as we sit down.  Oscar and I manage to talk to one of the coaches very briefly who then gave us a player to talk to about his experience growing up and playing soccer in Barcelona.

From there, I only got more and more material.  From 13 year old “MVPs” to one of the directors of the the club C.E. Jupiter, the interviews I conducted were all different.  Getting any of these interviews, would not have been possible without Oscar though, since only a couple people spoke English, and they were still very hesitant to respond in English.

Although I am sunburned right now and it’s not from the beach, I wouldn’t have done anything else other than report for five hours at a local soccer field today.