Up, out. Kids to camps, me to the market to chat up my recent acquaintances. Basi has been either absent or a bit stand-offish lately – I’l have to work on that some. But the other folks I’ve been getting to know are really nice and very friendly. Including Lilo, a vegetable vendor who gave me a couple of these:
It’s called panapén, and is apparently a relative of breadfruit. Which I’ve never had, but which I understand has been named perfectly. Because when I fried and boiled it (two batches for two specimens that were in varying states of ripeness, per Lilo’s instructions), the result was at least as tasty as yucca and just as filling as potatoes. I’ll be doing that again. Here's the cooked version:
Off to pick up Q from soccer. I got to watch about 20 minutes, and in that time Q was scrappy, creative, and potent, scoring twice and holding his own against older players defensively. At one point an 11-year-old, who’s quite small, was trying to move Q out of the way on a corner kick. Q held his ground; the other kid lowered his center of gravity and began an all-out shove against Q’s hip. Q looked down, seemed surprised, and then, seeming to shrug, as if to say “OK, if that’s the way you want it,” he shoved the little guy completely away from him with his left arm, just as the corner kick came. It was kind of slapstick-y and funny.
Post camp, as I went to sign Q out, his coach, the Spaniard, shook my hand as I approached and his eyes got big. He gestured toward Q. “Regateaba muy bien hoy,” he said. I must not have instantly shown comprehension – not surprising, as to me, “regatear” means “to bargain / haggle”. He repeated it; then his eyes kind of darkened, and he just handed me the paper, frustrated / disgusted, it seemed, with my failure to understand.
I asked Q. He didn’t know either. So we used the Cellular Telephone Device and called Janneke, who looked it up. Apparently, in a soccer context, “regatear” means “to fake someone out”.
Upon hearing this, Q grinned. “OOOOOhhhh,” he said. And he told me why that had been something the coach had noticed. Q has a kind of signature move on the end line. The other kid is between Q and the goal, and is using the end line as a wall, thinking, “Well, he can’t go that way, so I’ll cut him off this way.” Q, however, lifts the ball over the kid’s foot JUST inside the end line, and he himself runs around the kid, outside the line, to recover the ball on the other side. All perfectly legal; just something most of the players he plays don’t consider possible. Rob Swann, one of Q’s coaches, chuckled once when Q did the move and said that what he loves about it is that anybody can do it – you just have to have speed, skill, and smarts. Any one of those isn’t there, and you can’t do it.
Well, Q pulled that one out of the bag Wednesday, and got a lot of props for it. He’s also just gaining in comfort level and confidence, so his natural abilities are coming to the fore more and more. And: His Puerto Rican accent now sticks with him, to varying degrees, all the way to bedtime.
Here are a few pics from soccer camp:
Q celebrates a goal.
Q and his team take a break.
Boys and their coach. He's a very warm, even-keeled, lovely man. Laughs all day, stays serious, never gets angry. And the other kids, as you can see, are a variety of ages. Nice mix.
T had another great day. Again, I don’t see the inner workings of that camp, so I have less eye-witness information to give you. But she says Clarabelle is the only dog – and T, he only owner – to advance to doing “shake”. She hangs out with a different batch of kids every day, she says, and they’re all nice, so she can’t really decide on a best friend there. We’ve made clear that we are more than willing to organize play dates, but so far, none have come up. We’ll have to try to get phone numbers for the three weeks we have after these camps run out, because we are not finding anything at all for the kids to do after Friday. We may be resorting to private tennis lessons. Of course, our goal here is much more linguistic than anything else. Just seems like a damned shame to be here and not drown them in meaningful, other-than-us Spanish as much as we possibly can.
In the afternoon, I ran, Janneke did some exercise, and the kids and I swam at the beach, despite a (lightning-free) downpour. The water feels really warm when it’s raining, and the visuals of raindrops on the ocean when you’re bobbing in it yourself are pretty amazing. Still, the kids get sick of the ocean long, long after I do. In fact, they pretty much don’t. Ever.
Supper at home, and then Q and I did a boys’ night out, going to another Puerto Rico Islanders game. We sat in basically the same seats, and the crowd was a little thinner, but still, when the Islanders scored, it felt to me just about as loud as the Packers-Patriots game we attended last fall. Just thunderous. The Islanders went down, 0-1, on an own goal in the first half, but in injury time at the close of the half, they scored on a lovely cross from the right side that an Islander - the same one who scored the own goal! - knocked in. In the second half, the Ft Lauderdale Strikers were kind of dominating play, but an Islander got a breakaway on an errant Striker tackle and was headed for the goal, in the box, when a Striker made what appeared to me to be a brilliant, legitimate tackle from behind. The Islander went down, but, I think, less than legitimately. The ref, though, was behind the action, and came charging up decisively, pointing at the spot and pulling out a RED CARD! Q and I, and the whole stadium, went bananas. (Update, 5:56 PM Thursday: Check out the video on the Islanders site. The ref blew it: That was a clean tackle. And the red card? Not for a "denial-of-goal-scoring-opportunity in the box", or "la ley de último recurso" in the words of the commentary guys, as the rulebook says he should have given. No: It was to another player, for dissent, because he came up and shoved / grabbed the ref repeatedly. So the ref blew a couple of things there: Shouldn't have called the foul, should have (if he says it's a foul) red-carded the fouling player.)
The kick was converted by #7, the 5’7” Englishman whom Janneke and I had found so annoying for his lack of a desire to pass. But on watching them a second time, I have say, he’s clearly their best player. He has such great touch on the ball, and quickness. Anyway, once he converted, he ran to the sideline that faces the crowd and saluted us and basked in the thunder we rained down on him. Five minutes later, the swarming Islanders did an amazing short-range give-and-go that made it three to one, and soon after, he game ended. Big fun.
And directly to bed. One of these days I’m going to get up at 4:00 AM to film he opening of the market for the day’s business, but it ain’t going to be today. I was flat tuckered when I went to bed last night. And now it’s 10:25 AM – Let’s see what I can accomplish with the remains of the day.
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