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Other entries in Buenos Aires

Pele I´m not

Every day Noah and I set a goal for ourselves, Ussually a small but important goal that we think is achievable, just to keep us feeling good about ourselves.The goals ussually entail something that we neccesarily have to do, for example our goal (unspoken) is to get to the airport on time, and we often have the goal of going to do our laundry, but sometimes the goals are small, like mail a postcard, call someone in the states, or buy soap. For the most part we try to limit ourselves to one per day, because quite often these goals are harder to accomplish than they should be.  Often these menial tasks are different in other countries and are therefore harder, For example, read Noah's entry on when we tried to find a place to do our laundry in Lima (basically we walked for 3 hours and got lost in not such a great neighborhood), and other times we just get distracted by the excitement of new people in a new place. But for our last two days in Buenos Aires, we had 5 goals: mail a postcard, laquer our walking sticks, do our laundry, write an online journal, and play in a soccer game, so we had our work cut out for us. On sunday we mailed postcards, anand wrote an online journal, so we finished that day feeling pretty good about ourselves, but on monday we knew we had a HUGE day ahead of us; 24 hours and three goals, that was only 8 hours per goal (plus we had to eat and sleep in those hours too), but we bravely forged ahead and put our nose to the grindstone. We had bought, at a hardware store close by a brush and a huge can of wood laquer to coat our sticks so that we wouldnt have problems carrying them into other countries (something about foreign wood), soon enough we had rustled up some old paper and were painting away #1 done.

Then we gathered our laundry and strolled down to the local lavanderia on the way to lunch (#2 done, we were doing good). We ate a fantastic lunch of ham and tomato pizza, and then thought about our final goal: playing a soccer game. Now this was actually an old goal (a sort of overarching goal for all of south america) that we had not completed yet, and for good reason. We dont know the etiquite of pick-up games, dont know where to find a game, and dont know if we would even be accepted on field. Then once on a field we were (at least I was) a little intimidated by the idea of playing soccer here, I mean this is like going into the inner city to play basketball (not that its dangerous) just that I might look like a fool, but despite all of these misgivings we decided that we had to do this.

 We started to walk down the street to go to a field we had seen earlier near the area of La Boca, but on our way we found a couple kids who looked like they had just finished playing. When we asked them where they told us that it was close by and so we walked over ther.  We soon found the place, it was a bunch of fields (turf) underneath a bridge. We walked up and asked some kids through the chain link fence if we could play. When we went inside, we found out quickly that you had to pay (40 pesos per hour) to rent the field, and these kids werent going to pay (they had probably spent most of their money already on their previous game). They also figured (and were right) that 2 american dudes could afford to sponsor an extra game for half an hour, and they suggested that we might get a discounted rate (im not sure why). So we went to  the owner with a couple of them and asked for 15 pesos for half an hour. He refused but then noah asked me in spanish: ¨well david 20 pesos, thats expensive, we can play or we can eat dinner tonight¨ and I responded
in spanish: ÿeah its a hard choice, I really cant decide so quickly¨ so the owner let us play for 15. Soon enough we were split onto teams of 6 and playing on basically an indoor field except underneath a highway and with concrete retaining walls and chain link seperating the fields. The fields were basically astroturf with a thin layer of sand in it which actually made it quite slippery. Anyhoo when we started (noah and I on different teams)  I think the kids passed to us a little more than they would have because we paid. But as the game wore on, and Noah and I remembered our skills more and more we were integrated more easily into the course of the game. Overall, this soccer was very different from the soccer I always played because we werent really playing positions, the ball was smaller, and the field was much smaller. These things made the game much less organized, more about ball control and ball skills, and quicker but with less long sprints. It was actually more like pick up basketball, except with feet-  and these kids had learned to have finnese with the ball because of this type of soccer. Most attempted fairly succesfully to kick the ball backward with their heel, all could dribble smoothly, and many were able to kick the ball out of the air with accuracy, one kid especially was like mini pele. When he dribbled the ball you couldnt touch it, he kicked hard and accurately, and he was so smooth he had even mastered sliding to a stop on the slippery turf. Yet despite these skills these kids (and I call them kids because i think the avg age was 17) werent too good for us, We played for at least 45 minutes until the owner finally came out, but not before both Noah and I were able to kick in a decent number of goals between us.  At the end we thanked all the kids, shook hands, and walked off feeling  tired but pretty good (after all this was the msot exercise weve had in probably two months), because not only had we completed goal #3, but we had gotten passed our trepidations, had sort of a genuine argentinian experience, and given a good impression ( i think) to some nice argentinian kids. While Pele I'm not, I can still play in international competitions.

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