new shoes!

this seems to be a recurring theme. I'm not really a clothes horse (not really...), but I have found that I am lacking some very important items of clothing and footwear, mostly water proof things. well, I went two days of practicing out on a large grassy pitch, and the lack of cleats was definitely noticeable on at least one occassion, which I'll return to in a minute.
so on wednesday they had the first training session for camogie, which I finally found, after about an hour walk from the apartment. there's a shorter way to walk, but it's probably not less than 40 minutes in each direction, and since I'll probably be walking back in the dark, I'm thinking of investing in a monthly bus pass. if I have training (practice, that is) three or four times a week, the thing will pay for itself pretty quickly. anyways, my friend ashley (from vermont, via wisconsin) and I decided that we definitely need to try out this very unique sport. we ended up being the only people there who had never played camogie before. there was one other girl who knew very little about the game, una, who was part of our little group of non-cleat-wearing, non-masked group. we were given to some returning players to try to get us a little instruction, but I don't think they understood that we had no idea what to do. they gave each of us a hurlie (the stick which is kind of like a cross between a baseball bat, a hockey stick, and a golf club) and were trying to get us the hit the slitter (ball that looks like either a baseball or a tennis ball) off the ground. you swing it kind of like a golf club, but the end of the stick is flat like a hockey stick, so you can hit it with either side. I was having a heck of a time just trying to hit the dumb thing, while ashley is across from me, just hitting away... very annoying. then one of the older girls came over and was like, I think your hurlie might be a little short... then she gave me one that was about two inches longer, and voila, I was actually able to make contact with the slitter. after a couple minutes of that we were thrown into the practice match that was going on. it was a little intimidating: here are these girls in masks and helmets running around with sticks, and little ole me can hardly hit the ball off the ground. well, we ran around for about 15 minutes, and I can proudly say that I never touched the slitter that whole time.
after all this excitement I thought that our day was over, but oh no, there was more. one of the coaches suggested that we go to a tutorial that evening where there would be a bit more basic instruction. an hour later (and a very long and tiring walk as well) we found ourselves back at the pitch with a group of what we later found out to be teachers, who were there getting instructions on how to deal with little kids playing hurling or camogie. we then went through an hour of "what to do when teaching a group hurling." the guy there went through the basic skills and what kind of drills you can do with kids from the ages of 11-15. most of the people there had some experience with hurling, but a few didn't, and much hilarity ensued, such as the first "clash" between ashley and myself, where she missed the slitter and caught my left hand full across the knuckles. it doesn't hurt too much today, but my hand was not happy yesterday. an upshot of our obvious badness was that one of the coaches of the women's team who was there let us take home the hurlies and a couple slitters, so that we could practice over the weekend.
the next day, thursday, it was time for gaelic football. this one I had to go to alone, because ashley wants to do cricket instead (boo). when I got there, there were a few more people who didn't know how to play, including una from camogie and another american girl. I was a little nervous after the challenging aspects of camogie, but it turns out that gaelic football is like soccer with a lot of goalies. and I mean a lot of goalies. each side has fifteen players on the field at a time. normally everyone has someone who is their mark, but the coach just kind of put us in the middle of the field and let us run around. it's actually pretty different from soccer, even though many of the skills are similar. people usually stay in their position, and you run while holding the ball, but every four steps you either have to bounce the ball or do what's called a 'solo' where you just drop the ball and kick it up to yourself. well, I had a golden opportunity at one point. the goalie for my team got the ball, I waved to her, and she kicked down the field straight to me. I was wide open since I had no one marking me, and I caught the ball off the bounce, a nice over the head catch, and was turning to kick it down field, since I had seen that I had a clear shot down toward the goal. as I was turning not one, but both of my feet went flying out from under me and I landed flat on my ass. and hard. it didn't hurt that much, especially after the shot from the hurlie the day before, but I felt like an idiot, and I lost the ball. sigh. when I got up the coach asked if I was alright and I said, yeah, just lost my feet, and he suggested I go buy boots over the weekend, the kind with the screw in cleats.
that was a lot of back story just to get to my initial point, that I got football boots. ashley and I went shopping for boots this afternoon, and at champion sports they had this pair of shiny red shoes, which ashley and I zoomed in on right away. they were so pretty....but ashley wanted them, so I decided to take one for the time, and just let her get them. when the sales lady came over, ashley asked her for the shoes in fours (the size she had found fit her here) and she was told that they didn't come in anything smaller than a six. after consoling her briefly, I asked for them in a seven. turns out the seven and a halfs were better, but I fell in love with them, and 40 euros didn't seem like much to keep myself from falling on my ass again.
after we each had found shoes, ashley and I went out into a field by her apartment and we practiced tossing up the slitter and hitting it, which is really the main way of moving the ball. we spent about an hour at it, discovering in the process that I'm good at hitting the ball with a front hand (standing like I was going up to bat or to hit a golf ball) while ashley is better at hitting it with a back hand. tomorrow she's going to come over here and we're going to work on hitting slitters off the ground and picking them up... it should be fun.

on a totally unrelated note, I know that I had promised pictures at some point, but I'm having troubles contacting to the picture service, but that's one of my projects for the weekend.