I've grown more accustomed to life here, to be sure. After one week of adjusting to the flow of things and the schedule I follow, I'm beginning to acclimate myself to everyday life. Two weeks is usually a decent length of time for a vacation (I know I'm contradicting my last post in regard to units of measurement for time and experiences, but whatever) and that now has passed, with no end of my stay in sight. This is no mere vacation trip. I try to imagine what life will be like in September or October, whenever I get back to the States, but I cannot. I thought that I could, a month ago, when the future seemed more certain. That's a major lesson I've learned already from this experience: the future is never certain. Whether from the decisions of others, or one's own, there is no predicting what will happen next. All you can do is let go of expectation and go with what is thrown at you. Apparently, the focus on time is still unavoidable for me. I suppose that makes sense; it's almost the only thing I think about. I think back to the immediate past, looking for mistakes that enabled my life to be where it is now; I look forward to the future and try to predict what I can do to make my life go in the direction I want it to. Reading that statement through again, I see that I need to just follow my own advice and go with what I have.
So, as I said, acclimation has begun. Practice Wednesday and Friday nights, filmwork and meetings and studying plays throughout the week, trips to the gym every other day or so. Football is, as always, a great deal of work. I am happy, though, that I decided to continue my career. Don't get me wrong, I never doubted that; I can't imagine my life without football yet. It's providing an intense focus that keeps me from floating off in my own head during this transitory period, between life as an undergraduate and the "real world."
As much as the day to day life is routine, there are still games and/or team activities almost every single weekend. This week we had a nice barbecue with the club's sponsors, where we imports were presented and the season magazine was distributed for the first time. The magazine is top notch; the marketing people for the Tigers are excellent. I'm sure that it will be available on the Tigers website in the near future in PDF form if it isn't already. This weekend we had our first home game on Sunday, and because of that, on Saturday there was a publicity event on the main thoroughfare of the city. The team met and donned our jerseys together in a side street, then walked together to an area in front of what I believe was a newspaper office. We caused quite a stir: a large group of large men walking together in matching short sleeved bright orange jerseys in the midst of the unfamiliar unremarkable drab traffic of the shopping crowd, populated by people wearing jackets and scarves in the face of the wind and low fifty degree weather. I thought it went fairly well. We passed out fliers advertising the game and providing a discount on ticket prices and the cheerleaders performed a long routine twice. That's something different from college: cheerleaders. I had forgotten the pageantry that goes along with football in most places playing for such a small progressive school as Kenyon. The girls do a good job; I think it helps the burgeoning football culture here to have a way to involve girls as well as boys. They mean business, too: they build and flip and cheer hard, even on the hard concrete streets of the city.
Our warm-up jumps are a tad less impressive than theirs.
This past week, we prepared for an interesting opponent, the Bonn Gamecocks. They had lost their previous game in a shootout, and it was hard to gauge whether it was more that their own mistakes had caused the high score against them or if they were weak in some areas.
It turns out that the former rang truer than the latter. They corrected their mistakes from the week before and beat us soundly, 24-14. The picture above is indicative of how the day went from start to finish; the running game couldn't get off the ground. Their defense flowed well and was ready for our offensive scheme and their offense hung around long enough to squeak out some points against our stout defense. They were also able to take advantage of the mistakes that we made, while we didn't do the same with theirs. I personally played atrociously, and received a pretty bad shoulder stinger that will be sore for awhile. The one silver lining from the game is that we can play much better than we did. I'm looking forward to playing against them again. That's one huge difference between here and home: we play each team twice. We have a chance to get another shot at them before the season is over, something that would've served us particularly well my last season at Kenyon.
Aside from its outcome and the events on the field, the game was great. That might seem like a sarcastic statement at first glance, but I mean it. Mitch, Steve and I arrived early on to coach the Juniors, who had a game immediately beforehand. This type of setup is almost unimaginable for the U.S., two games being played in a row under normal circumstances, but it's unremarkable here. It reminds me of junior varsity basketball games being played before varsity, although most of the coaches for the Junior team are players on the Tigers. I hope that I can help out a little more than I have so far. Since I came so late, I haven't felt quite comfortable with inserting myself into an authoritative role with the Juniors, but I have tried to give pieces of advice to players here and there. The boys played well and beat up on their opponent, a team they had beaten once already. Our field is pretty nice; it has a good press box and a nice area for concessions and suitable locker rooms, but it is missing something important: seating of any kind for fans. When we arrived initially I was worried about what type of support we might garner without anywhere for people to sit, although there was a large open area for people to stand with a fence separating that from the sideline. The German fans surprised me yet again. The place was absolutely packed. I think I heard that the official attendance was 1,700, which I wouldn't doubt. I wish we could've played better for them. Next time we will.
Pretty good turnout.
A few new (to me) members of my host family were around this weekend. I feel very welcome in the Klietsch household, which has been essential in the acclimation I've referenced several times now. Anke, the middle child, lives and works in Cologne and came up on Friday night. She's a ton of fun, and immediately welcomed me with a hug and referred to me as her little brother from there on out. I didn't meet the oldest Klietsch for more than a second, but her two daughters and husband were around for a nice cookout we had while Steve's parents were there on Saturday night. As always, it was a nice dynamic that made me feel at home.
Aside from the events of the weekend and practices, things are pretty slow. We try to get into the city as often as possible, and Mitch and I took a pretty good walk yesterday. The German countryside is fantastic. I also experimented with cutting my own hair into a style, rather than just a No. 1 buzz. I think it went alright, we'll see if anyone says anything. Thanks Quickfoot. I think I'm going to try to read a book a week, and this week I was ahead of schedule. In four days or so I finished John Williams' Stoner after the recommendation of my good friend MS Kord (ha), who wrote his senior comps paper on the novel. It was exceedingly well written, given its unremarkable subject matter, but then again, that's what makes the novel itself remarkable and worth reading. It reminded me of a set of novels I read in college for Kluge's American Novel: 1950 to Present course. Those were called Mr. Bridge and Mrs. Bridge, by Connell. I'd recommend all three books to anyone looking to see how a writer can make the ordinary, everyday events of life resonant and meaningful. I've watched nearly half of the new season of Arrested Development and was as shocked as the rest of the internet at Game of Thrones' Red Wedding. I'm glad that I've been able to keep up with little cultural things like that, as unimportant as they may seem. Along those lines, Steve and I were compelled to buy us some America shoes. There's something to buying some nationalistic propaganda in a foreign country. I was leaning towards buying some Vans sometime soon as it was.
This week marked an important departure and arrival, and with it I hope that things can be a bit less muddled. I'm excited to see what the summer holds, everywhere for everyone. Keep in touch.
Finally, I outlined what looks to be my writing project for my time here. I'm planning on expanding a short story I wrote originally for my own comps project, although its something I've been formulating since my freshman year at Kenyon. That's about all I'll say for now. Hopefully I can get enough done while I'm here to have a manuscript of some sort by the time I get home. Maybe I'll put some sections up here as they near completion. We'll see. For now, thanks for keeping in touch, everyone that has. I'll welcome any messages or IMs; I'm online an unhealthy amount of time every day, although that might change with the departure. I'm just keeping on and going with what I have, which is a lot.
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