Not My Greatest Day

Tuesday November 10th

Today was not my greatest day here in Ghana. It started off with senior training. I didn't really want to play, for a couple of reasons, but I did nonetheless. (My toe hurts a lot, and I wanted to do fittness training with the players like we usually do on Tuesdays.) Well, I played extremely poorly; it was really embarrassing for myself (I thought), and I felt like an idiot. To make matters worse, one of the players, Sappho, kept kicking at my ankles. Then he came over to me, and had to balls to tell me I was using my body. First of all, it is legal to use your body to push another player in soccer. (Ask anyone who knows how I play-- I don't pull people's shirts or hold them.) Secondly, he was literally grabbing my arms, pulling my shirt and wrapping his arms around my waist, so the fact he said I was using my body pissed me off so much.
After such a horrible morning session, I returned home for a quick shower, because I was bleeding and full of dirt. I hurried to clean myself, and went to a restuarant called Melting Moments, which was amazing! (On my way there I saw Fynn, the man in charge of the volunteers, and I said something to him about another volunteer here being nervous about her job (literally all I said)(The girl was Jasmine, who is my good friend here).Well, That was the wrong thing to say- Jasmine was upset with me and later on Fynn said I shouldn't have gotten involved- literally all I said was she was nervous. I was trying to be nice and helpful, but I get in trouble instead.) (That being said, Jasmine wasn't really that mad at me, and Fynn told me in a really nice way, so they weren't that upset, but still I thought I was being nice.)

After lunch I went with Henriette and the boys I went with on Sunday, Joseph and Emmanual to the market Cantamentu to buy them shoes. (Emmanual is my favorite kid here; he is honestly the nicest person and so cool. Like I would adopt him as my brother if I could.) Well, the market was much more crowded than it was on Sunday. It was really awesome to see a local market where the people actually go to to buy their necessaties. We got to the sneaker store, and Joseph tried on a pair of shoes, and a small piece ripped off. It wasn't his fault, the piece was already falling off, so when he went to put the shoe on it just slipped off. Well, these people were over-charging us, so we left to go to another show store. At the other store I bought a pair of cleats for a kid named Adam not here. The other shoe people had followed us, and told us that we had to buy the shoes because we broke them. Henriette was yelling at him a little bit, but I realized that there was no point in arguing with him. I payed the money and bought those shoes for Joseph. (They were a nice pair of shoes, so he was happy, but I think he felt embarrassed that these grown men were blaming him.)

We left the market, and went to U 12 training. At training the kids were really fooling around, and not taking it seriously. I actually had to kick some kids out of practice.
Also, I was looking through my pictures, and I thought they all were deleted. (They weren't but I didn't figure this out until later tonight, so I was really upset by this news.)

After practice I decided to buy myself a drink, and when I went to the store I saw 9 or 10 of the kids I trained there, so I decided to buy them all drinks. Well, I did something wrong in buying kids drinks. Apparently the coach was hungry and wanted food. We were told this buy Emmanual as we were walking away from the pitch. I was going to go back and buy him something, but we actually decided to buy him something big to eat tomorrow as my apology (I did feel really bad). (Emmanual said he wasn't that upset, so I didn't see the need to rush). We hung around the teams at the office for another 5 minutes, and then we left. Well, as we were walking back to the taxis, Emmanual ran to us and said the coach was angry and wanted money for food. A full grown man was mad that I did not buy him a juice box, so sent a kid to take money from me for food, there is something wrong with this picture. Well, I gave Emmanual 2 cedis to give to Richard, and went home. I was really, really pissed off already today just because of little things, this thing got me so much more angry.

I got home at around 6:50. Everyone was telling me I wasn't going to be ready for Quiz Night, and that I needed to hurry up. Of course I was the first one to go, and since I was already fumming, I was mad when my house-mates weren't ready to go, until 20 minutes after we were planning to leave.

At Quiz night I talked with a lot of volunteers, had pizza and did the quiz. I was having a good time. (This is when Fynn pulled me over to talk with me about Jasmine, which wasn't too bad.) Then Charlie made an off hand remark (not meant as an insult, but it came off like it), how him and I were rubbish at soccer. Like, did I need this. I try really hard whenever I play, which isn;t too often, and just because I played poorly one day and can't juggle, I apparently suck at soccer.