We Won!...and lost

Along with working at Urban Junction I am also coaching two girls basketball teams at Newpark, the local secondary school in Blackrock, the cadettes and the senior girls teams.  Both teams had their first game today, I was excited and nervous.  A bit of background, I've played basketball from when I was ten through college, I'm use to intense daily workouts and practices and regularly scheduled games.  None of that exists here, or at least not at this school.  I think we have had three practices, and none of the league games are scheduled, we have to work them in on the calender for when the gyms are not being used by others.  We only practice once a week, for an hour, and at our last practice we had a total of nine players show up (there are ten girls on each team).  So let's just say I wasn't expecting much with these first games.  But the girls played hard and didn't give up. 

The cadette girls lost, but I was proud of how they played, and considering we didn't have any structure, I was surprised that we only lost by about ten (it looked more like jungleball).  They put their hearts into that match, it was fun to coach.

The senior girls won, by around 20, but that was more expected.  Most of these girls have played on the team in years past and play well together.  They also played hard and I am very proud of them.

I'm curious to see how the rest of the season is going to turn out, keep us in your prayers.

Circus, Girls Night, and Immigration

So part of my job is hanging out with kids and doing activities with them.  One activity that we did with them recently was taking about 10 kids to the circus that was in town.  It was great, the performers were incredible, Simon (the manager of Urban Junction) got called infront of everyone to perform a stunt, and a man in a gorilla outfit sat next to me and put his arm around me.  The kids thought it was amazing and were cracking up at both events.  

We also had a girls night for the younger girls.  We ended up with only two girls, but we had a lot of fun.  We watched "Hairspray" ate take out chinese food, and made cake in the microwave.  

I went into the immigration office last week to get my visa.  I got to the office around 10 in the morning, and waited in line for about 45 min to get my number.  Once I got my number, the guy at the window told me I would be called until after 5pm that evening.  I wandered around Dublin till about 5pm, then was tire of walking so I went back into the office only to be called at around 7:30pm and told that I couldn't get my visa because, the letter that I had didn't have exactly how long I was going to be there.  It was very frustrating to say the least.  I will go back again soon, and this time actually get my visa.

I miss all of you.  

Tea and Toast

I have never had so much tea and toast in my entire life.  I am always being asked if I want any tea and/or toast.  Emma tells me this is quite common, and that I better get use to it.  I'm trying, but I don't know how much more toast i can eat...

Birthday and allergy

So Saturday was my birthday.  Yep I'm now 26 years old.  Sometimes I feel like I haven't really done much since I graduated from college, but then I realize, I've done loads and wouldn't take any of it back, well most of it.  I was talking to Simon (my boss) not too long ago and he made a comment about my resume, how many prior jobs I have had, I had to tell him I didn't put all of them on there, he started laughing.  

Anyway, I had a really good birthday weekend.  Friday night my housemates took me out, but we were all tired so called it an early night.  When we got back to the house we managed to stay up another hour and a half or so and talk about dating criteria.  It was one of the funniest conversations I have had in a long time.  Saturday we all were doing some maintainance work at Urban Junction, I was doing a lot of gardening, pulling weeds, cutting ivy, that sort of stuff.  I left early and went to Phil and Cheryl's house for dinner with Matt and Hailey and the kids as well.  After dinner Matt and Hailey left the kids with the grandparents and took me out to the Sugar Club where we saw the band Half Set play.  All in all it was a fun night.  

The next morning I woke up to discover rashes all over my forearms, and soon realized I'm allergic to ivy.  So my arms a healing fine, a little itchy at times, but not bad.  So far everything is going really well.  God is good.