This past weekend has to be the best one since our arrival to Germany. It was full with two of my favorite things, soccer and running, along with lots of fun with friends. To give you an idea of how much I enjoyed this weekend, remember the moment that you enjoyed the most, multiply it by 100 and you will still be far from being as happy as I was.
The soccer game was Saturday at 3:30pm. Early that morning, there was a soccer tournament I had wanted to register for, but the problem was it was really early and I wanted to sleep late. I woke up at 12pm, and I was meeting my friends at 1pm in the hauptbahnhoff, so I did not have a lot of time. I got ready as fast as possible, put on my Barcelona FC shirt (even though it was not a Barcelona game) and took of to the central station. By the time I got there, everyone was already boarding the train. Stephanie and Allison were waiting for me at the doors to the train, calling me so I could hurry up. It seems I barely made it on time because as soon as I got on the train and found a place to sit, the train started moving. During our way to Dusseldorf, I got the opportunity to get to know more people and enjoy the moment with everyone. Once we arrived at Dusseldorf hauptbahnhoff, we met with the rest of our group that were on the same train and headed towards the tram that would take us to the stadium. Since there were many people heading towards the stadium, we had to split off once more in order to fit in the tram. I decided to join Dr. Meissner, Jake, and Zach. We were so tight in the tram that I didnt even had to hold myself to something. The people around of me were doing a good job of keeping me standing up. Fortunately, time went by fast in the tram because we kept taking about the soccer tournament in the morning and about the Bundesliga, the German professional soccer league. Once we got to the stadium, I met again with my other friends and then went to go buy some food. While buying what we wanted, we suddenly heard Goool! Someone had scored and we hadnt even gone to our seats yet. That first goal of the match happened at minute 3, so it was a pretty fast goal. As we walked to our seats, I couldnt stop admiring how much these people loved the sport. I have gone to other soccer games, but I had never seen so many people together wearing the same colors and cheering so loud. What made the day even more enjoyable was that the sun was actually out that day. The second goal happened at around minute 35, in a play that started with the opposing team. The opposite team had a corner kick that the defense ended up clearing up. One of the midfielders caught the ball and took it by himself all the way to the goal. My first impression when this happened was that he had made a poor choice. The best thing to do would have been to wait for assistence, but he basically had chosen to go to war by himself. It seemed as if he had heard me and wanted to prove me wrong because as soon as I said that, he got loose from three defenders and get himself infront of the goalie. The goalie got ready to receive the shot, but the midfielder was wise enough to not shoot. Instead, he passed the ball to his teammate who was entering through the other side. His roomate received the blood, shot, and goal! The game was tied 1-1 before the game went to half time. During the second half, the home team scored one more time through a play that seemed similar to the first goal of the game. The intensity of the game went down, so I spend most of the time talking to Jessica trying to explain to her how the teams were playing. This was not good because it made me miss the fourth and last goal of the game. Aparently, the home team scored on their own goal, so the final score was 2-2. Even though I didnt really know these teams, I am happy to say I was able to experience a bundesliga match and had lots of fun.
The next day, I had to wake up early because some of us had the half marathon. I had been worrying all week long because I had been eating a lot of fatty food and I had not run at all for the past three weeks. I did not feel like I was going to survive the marathon, but at the same time I was excited about it. I just kept thinking about the satisfaction I was going to receive once I crossed the finish line. I arrived at the old AIB at 8am and immediately started stretching. The race was not starting until 8:45am, but I wanted to make sure my body was warm and ready. Since we were so many, the race was actually divided into many groups, with each one leaving the starting line every five minutes. The group I was in did not leave until around 9:10am. I did not have headphones, so I had to run the marathon without listening to music. I thought that was going to make it more difficult, but it was actually nice because it gave me time to relax and think about certain things. Before I knew it, 10 km had passed and I just needed 11 km more. That is when I started feeling pain in my feet. They were not sore, but full of blisters that hurt everytime I stepped. During the race, there were some stations where I was able to dehydrate and get some bananas to restore my electrolytes. An hour and 42 minutes later, I was able to cross the finish line. After that, the first thing that came to my head was food. Yes, I was tired and I wanted to go rest, but my wish to get food was stronger that my wish to sleep. I met Andrew a couple of minutes later, so we decided to go get free food from different booths. I got myself two bananas, three bread balls, like 5 twixes, 4 three musketers, 5 granolas, two yogurts, and two cups with beer. After eating all that, I started having a stomach ache that made me want to go back to the AIB to use the restroom. Once in the AIB, we just relaxed listening to music and eating some pasta with tomato sauce and waffles and fruit. I couldnt relax for a long time because I had an SI session at 3pm that day, but it was still a great day.
As stated before, this was the best weekend so far, but I have no doubt that two weekends from today will beat it. In two weekends from today, we will be enjoying the warm sun at the Barcelona coast while playing soccer.
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