Bienvenidos!
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Training with the Panamanian National Squad
Wow, acheyness... We had our first evening's training at the Salle John de Pool yesterday, and it was intense. Mario and I got there at just after four, but no-one else showed up until half past. We did a quick warm up and waited for the coach, who arrived at about five. He then made us warm up again, so we spent about 20 minutes running, then five of them had a mini kickabout (I declined this) then we went back inside to strecth. After this we did some exercises up and down the piste. I thought my legs were going to fall off during one of them, but we still had footwork to go. That took about 30 minutes, and after two months of not doing any exercise at all, this was tough. It got worse when I picked up my epee again; I could feel the burn in my shoulder almost immediately. It eased off soon though. After footwork we did some lunging practice, and as it was Mario's and my first time there, there were a lot of corrections. The coach, who used to be part of the Cuban national squad and won a load of medals, didn't speak that much english so Mario had to stand there and translate for me when he was telling my what I needed to change. After the lunging and point work we went into bouts. The salle is training up a delegation to send to the Central American and Caribbean games, so the standard there is really high. I had two bouts - the first with the Panamanian number 1 (I got one lucky hit when I managed to knock his fleche aside) and the second with a girl. I don't know if she was on the squad as well, but that match I lost 3-5. I should have gotten one more, as I parried one attack sucessfully but then missed on the riposte. But, for my first practice back, it didn't go too badly. I'm in so much pain today though! We're aiming to go three or more times per week, but I didn't want to jump back into it too enthusiastically this first week and risk an injury as I'm so out of practice. I think we're going again tomorrow and maybe Friday, depending on how we feel in the morning.
We got back later than I wanted last night as Mario's epee malfunctioned during one match so he stuck around to fix it and then fenced two more bouts. I was getting a bit grumpy by this point as it was an hour after he'd originally said 'one more bout'. We had a snack when we got in then I pretty much fell straight to sleep. I overslept the alarm this morning though and ended up having to get ready in a hurry. I was glad to wake up though as I'd been dreaming about being chased by vampire-Kev and vampire-Jason and it wasn't fun. Hospital today went ok. The presentations were a bit boring and it was more babies with colds, but I'm sure I'm learning something. I just wish I could speak to them. It's all well and good being able to pick up what they're saying but I just can't reply. I think I may have started the Oxford Handbook (TM, or something) revolution, as one of the students was very interested in mine and asked me how much they were. It would be cool if I do. I think UoPanama and UoLiverpool could learn a lot from each other. We could do with a bit more of the theory they learn here, and they could do with some better clinical and communication skills teaching.
I love the noises here. Right now I can hear three or four different birds outside the window, and the bells of the ice-cream man's cart, and even the thunder sounds cool. We saw some funky lightning in the clouds last night, a few miles off over the mountains. When it rained the other day I was amazed at how loud it sounded. We'd managed to be out of the house for every major downpour before, but this one we were home for. It was thundering onto the zinc roofing and hammering against the windows and gushing out of the drain pipes and the edge of the porch roof was like a wall of water. It was absolutely amazing. I'm sure it loses its novelty if you've lived here your whole life but I enjoyed it.
This weekend we've been invited out by the students I'm on rotation with at the moment. Not sure what they want to do yet but we'll find out. I was pleasantly surprised when Neslim (I keep wanting to call her Nesquick) asked. It turns out that one of the other students, Paula, used to go to school with Mario's brother Joe. Small world...
2:25 p.m. - 2006-06-28
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