Since my last blog post, I have returned home from Australia to Portland, where I stayed for 2 weeks. Last week I signed to play with Sagrados Corazones in Vina Del Mar, Chile. I have been down here in Chile for a week now and once again I find myself in a great situation. Vina Del Mar is a beatiful Chilean city right on the Pacific ocean.It is a major tourist attraction in Chile and I heard it gets crazy in the summer with all the visitors coming from abroad! Since I've been here, its been sunny all but 1 day.
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| 5 minutes from my hotel |
I live in a hotel in a great part of Vina. It is close to the center of the city, the beach, and many pubs and nightclubs, as well as a huge casino. The lovely workers of the hotel make us three meals a day, and are great cooks. In Chile, lunch is the biggest meal of the day. For "almuerzo", we eat a soup and salad for starters, then a main course of chicken, fish, or some kind of meat and then desert, or "postre"
I really an enjoying experiencing this new culture and I am getting along well with the coach and players. The language barrier is very frustrating at times, but I am doing Rosetta Stone to help learn Spanish. I may also enroll in a language school in Vina in the mornings. A few of my teammates speak English and one or 2 is fluent. They serve as our main translators when coach is giving us directions. (He is from Argentina and doesn't speak much English) When i'm not playing ball, I like to walk around the city and try and take it all in. There is so much to see and do and there are always so many people walking the streets, which makes it interesting. Living in Chile, where the average man is.... well lets just say not very tall, I get stared at often, as the Chileans don't see a 6'7 gringo everyday..
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| Sagrados Corazones |
Our first game ended in a 6-6 tie... Now you may be thinking to yourself, thats a pretty low score, basketball games can't end in a tie. Well in this instance, 4 minutes into a game in Santiago (Chile's capital and largest city) there was a massive power outage in the city, causing millions of people to go without power for a few hours, including our team. Fortunately we had a game the next day and pleased our home crowd with a 68- 38 win. This weekend we have 2 games, the second one being against the league top team, "Boston College". It should be a great weekend to gauge where we are at as a team.
