20th of July, 2014

Intern Shareef's Blog #25:

  Today I woke up really late because last night I wasn't feeling too hot, so I didn't go to bed until 1:00 am. When I woke up my uncle made some delicious french toast with fruit. It was really good and he told me that it was the first time he had cooked french toast in almost 20 years! So it was really impressive. After breakfast we headed to the metro stop to meet everyone for our trip to Xochimilco. It took us around 12 metro stops and then a train from one end all the way to the other. Then when we got off the train we had to walk for 20 minutes. Then we finally arrived to the wonderful river, where all of the cute boats were. Xochimilco is a place that has the original part of mexico left. Mexico was built on water so Xochimilco is the only part of Mexico that is how it used to be. We soon got on a boat and it started leaking really, really bad so we all got off. The lady was also trying to overprice us because she thought we were all tourists, but my uncle had his ways of making her put the price down to the official fee. So we got on a different boat and it was so cool because the boat had a table inside of it with chairs, as well as names and flags on each of the boats.

As we went through there were other mini boats as vendors that sold snacks, drinks, tacos, quesadillas, and corn. So we got some food on our ride and also got some Mariachi from another boat to play for us and it was so cool! I had a really good time, after that we headed back home but instead of walking and taking the train we took a bus which probably took twice the amount of time that it would if we would have walked and took the train. So I learned that it isn't always much better to take one bus rather than two different types of transportation. When we got home I got dressed and went to go play some soccer with this guy Manuel. He was really cool even though he doesn't speak english I could understand most of what he was saying even though I could't respond very well we still managed to converse. When we arrived to the park he went in the game to play first and I watched. Later he subbed me out and I got to play. As soon as I got in I did really well and saved two goals from being scored and took on a few guys really well. So they started calling me James after the Colombian soccer Star James Rodriguez. I was also named that because I was wearing my Colombia Jersey, so being good and representing helped. After I started doing really well the ball started bouncing and it came to me and I took a shot and kicked it over a 20 ft high fence. So I had to crawl up and go get it. When I got back down I stopped doing so good and I lost my confidence. So then my team lost and we had to sit out. Then more guys came and I got to be on an actual team and not just as a sub. Then I started doing much better and scored around 4 goals it was really cool. On my last goal we need one more to score and then it came bouncing at me so I hit it but this time I remembered my body posture and boom! I scored bottom right corner a golazo! After we won the game after that I headed back home and ate then talked to some of my friends and laid down.