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First Day of Training, by Anna Herold
July 23, 2007

Isabella woke Tara and I up at 7:15 this morning... well apparently it was 7:15, but since we don't have a clock we had no idea what time it was so we got up and were ready to walk out the door within ten minutes. We walked out into the kitchen and saw that it was only 7:30 meaning that we weren't leaving for an hour. Considering how tired we were after being out late the night before, Tara and I were a little frustrated, but it was okay because instead of an extra hour of sleep we just had an extra long breakfast with our family.

At 8:30 we piled six people (Tara, Me, Mama, Isabella, Julio, and Isabella's friend) into a car equivalent to the size of a Geo Metro and headed off for our first practice at Minas. Our first practice session of the day was from 9-11 with Marcelo. It was a practiced designed to work on individual skills so there were lots of crazy drills that none of us had ever done before. At times we were super confused but it was all in good fun. Half of the fun of the practice is trying to understand what Marcello is explaining to us... it's not that his English is bad, he is just still learning so we try to help him.

After practice we headed straight out to the pool for a good three hours of fun in the sun before getting ready for our second session with the Brasilian coaches at 4. I took a quick nap at about 3:00 before our practice because I was exhausted and a few of the other girls joined in as well. Getting ready for practice the general attitude was that people did not want to practice.

Our second practice was with Patricia and it was focused on team drills. Though we were all completely wiped out from our day in the sun and from our earlier practice we pulled out a pretty decent practice and had fun too. Our last water break and the end of practice brought smiles to all of our faces once again. Tara and I left the club with Isabella to head home and take a shower.

At home we took our showers and ate dinner. For dinner we ate beef, bread, beans and rice, and an amazing desert that we think was kit-kats in a dulce de leite sauce. It was so good!

After dinner our cousins and their boyfriends came over and we all headed out in a caravan of three very small cars. First we went to this gorgeous overlook of the entire city. It was dark out so all of the lights of the city were bright and shining... it was an amazing view. Next we went to a lake, the only lake in Belo. It was a huge lake for being man-made and just last month, my family was telling us, they found five alligators! Let's just say that we kept our distance from the shore. Across the street from the lake happened to be a small carnival so we all headed over there and went on the bumper cars. As soon as we left the carnival we drove to see the soccer stadium where the professional soccer is played. It looked huge even from the outside. Isabella said that the stadium fits 80,000 people now, but they used to allow people to stand so in the past it has fit up to 112,000!

Finally, after the stadium, they took us home. We walked up the stairs into our house on top of our father's construction store and saw a clock for the first time all night. The clock read 1:00. No wonder we were feeling so tired. Tara and I kept thinking "These people never sleep!" We get ready for bed pretty quickly and head to sleep for six hours before we have to wake up for our three-a-days starting in the morning.

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