A Yanqui Invasion!

Well, this month has absolutely flown by. After the trip to Bariloche with River, a weekend in Córdoba with my grandpa, and a ten-day visit from my aunt and cousin, July has come and gone.

The first week of June, my aunt came to visit and was able to come watch me train at River. She was impressed by the abilities of many of my teammates and noticed a significant difference between the style of play she was used to with her fourteen-year-old daughter's youth team and the style of play here in Argentina. She was even more impressed when I pointed out two of our youngest players who are the same age as my cousin yet can keep up with girls who are anywhere from four to thirteen years older. During our post-practice merienda at the club, my aunt started talking to my coach about the possibility of bringing her daughter to train with the team for a couple weeks in July or August, an idea which my coach, who is always happy to bring in new players, enthusiastically supported.

After practice and for the rest of my aunt's visit, she and I spoke mainly about the team and women's soccer in general in Argentina. As I began explaining the situations of many of the girls – the financial and family issues many of them struggle with – my aunt grew eager to help in any way she could. After brainstorming a few ideas, thinking about finding potential team sponsors or donors, coming up with potential contacts for international trips with the team, we decided the most tangible, though short-term, help she could provide would be to bring cleats for the girls who most needed them the next time she came to Buenos Aires.

Thus, about two weeks ago, my aunt arrived to the International Airport in Ezeiza with my cousin (L), my cousin's friend (C), my cousin's friend's parents, and fifteen pairs of soccer cleats (not including those of my cousin and her friend), which she somehow managed to get through customs without any issues. My cousin and her friend deserve some serious props. The very same day they landed in Buenos Aires, they came to train at River with girls who, on average, are about five or six years older and much stronger. Their short stay in Buenos Aires opened their young eyes to a whole new world of soccer and lifestyle than the world they are so used to in the US.

Got cleats?

Before delving into L and C's experience here, it might be worthwhile to provide some background on the youth soccer scene in the US (or at least the one my cousin and her friend are a part of in South Florida). In general, competitive soccer is a fairly elitist sport in the US, meaning parents must pay significant sums for their child to join a club team, for their child's gear, for travel to tournaments around the state and even to other states. To give their child a competitive edge, many parents also pay for private training with conditioning and position coaches and buy their child the newest and best gear (a new pair of elite cleats can run anywhere from $120 to $250).

Until college, most female players (in competitive soccer) train with their club teams two to three times per week and have one to two games on the weekends. The majority of players get to soccer practice and games by car, whether they drive themselves or ride with their parents. While there are players who have to drive more than an hour to training, on average, most players have a commute closer to a half-hour or fifteen minutes.

I'm not saying any of this as a criticism (after all it's basically the same system I grew up playing in and  the US is one of the countries in which women's soccer is highly developed and valued), but merely to give an idea of where L and C are coming from in order to understand why they were so surprised and sometimes shocked at certain aspects of women's soccer in Argentina. Perhaps my cousin was slightly more prepared than her friend since my aunt had talked to her a little bit about my teammates' home situations. C struggled even to grasp why my aunt had to bring so many pairs of cleats for the girls. "Don't they sell cleats in Argentina??"

They quickly began to empathize with my Argentine teammates after taking the bus a few times. Not too unsurprisingly, my aunt and C's parents were slightly hesitant to let their daughters travel by public transport to training (obviously not alone), but I insisted it was an essential part of understanding what the girls on the team have to do every day to get to the club. Here's my cousin's brief description (word-for-word) of her Buenos Aires bus experience:

"To get to the field, I had to take the bus. It was unsanitary and disgusting, but I want to train at River Plate a lot so I have to get used to it!" (side note: the buses are not really that unsanitary and disgusting, but maybe to a first time bus rider the lack of spick and spanness was a shock...)

Luckily, L and C were able to be broken in gradually to riding the buses here in Buenos Aires. Contrary to the typical bus experience*, just as we arrived at the bus stop, an almost empty bus showed up and we were able to sit down all together. They were also able to avoid having to wait for the bus on a rainy day, which has to be one of the most miserable experiences this life has to offer. The one day the girls did get to ride a full bus, C got her foot caught in the door. Somehow neither of them were lost during travel to and from River, as bus drivers here give passengers a very small window to get on or off (my fear was that either L or C wouldn't get on or off in time and would end up alone in the city without a clue of how to get to where they needed to be...)

*Typical BsAs bus experience in a nutshell

• 10-30 minute wait (or if you're super lucky, the bus might not even come because due to a protest somewhere in the city, the bus had to take a detour and won't pass by the bus stop where you've already been waiting for 40 minutes)
• one full bus (sometimes more) passing you by without stopping
• another 5-10 minute wait for the next one 
• getting herded onto a packed bus, shoved between people, backpacks, and purses while holding onto a pole for dear life as the driver slams the brakes each time he stops to pick up more passengers 
• watching like a hawk for anybody seated who looks like they might be ready to get up, prepared to fight to the death in order to get that oh-so-precious, recently-vacated seat...
• if you are lucky enough to find a seat, sliding out before the two people standing over you get into an all out duel for your seat just in time to push the button to finally get off the bus. 
• jump off as soon as the driver opens the door even if the bus never comes to a complete stop

Another moment of shock for L and C came when we played against San Lorenzo. My coach had invited my aunt, L, C, and C's parents to come to the club before the game to eat breakfast with us and ride with us on the team bus. On game day, we go to the club, eat breakfast, change into our River gear, and... the bus isn't there. After making several desperate calls to club administrators, we are forced to take 6 taxis to San Lorenzo's stadium, about a 40 minute drive. We get to the field with just enough time for a decent warm-up, but when the game's start time comes and goes, the referee's whistle still hasn't signaled the start of the game due to the absence of the required ambulance. After waiting around for about a half hour, the ambulance finally pulls through the gates of San Lorenzo's complex and the game begins. L, C, and their parents witnessed a series events, stemming from a severe lack of organization, which would never occur in a US game, except in extreme circumstances, but are a common occurrence here. We were lucky the ambulance showed up because games are often cancelled and the points awarded by default to the visiting team if there either the required ambulance or police are not present within a certain amount of time from the scheduled kick-off.

When it was finally time for my cousin and her friend to leave, neither of them were ready to head back to the US. They had already become attached to the girls on the team. The bond they developed with my teammates came mainly from the time spent socializing during the merienda in the club's confitería, La Máquina, after practice. It is a sacred ritual with our team, in which we all participate after every practice. Some stay for an hour or so while others leave quickly after finishing their tea or café con leche. Either way, it's a part of our routine which the whole team enjoys. Once everybody has finished showering and changing, we all head to the cafeteria, which is basically a restaurant inside the club, where we are served yogurt, orange juice, coffee or tea, and tostados. While we eat, we have the chance to socialize in a different context than in the locker room or on the field.

For my friend Sheeva, a soccer player at Vassar College who trained with River while she was in Buenos Aires for a summer study abroad program, the merienda was where she developed most of her relationships with the girls on the team.

"The post-practice merienda was very new to me. In the US, after practice we usually just get in our car and instantly return to our lives outside of soccer, but the merienda gives everyone a chance to get to know one another in a non-competitive atmosphere. I got the impression that there was more to the team than just practices and games...[The merienda table] was where we made plans for dinner or for the weekends.

Of course, the girls speak very quickly, so I didn't understand all the conversations at the table, but, as a result, I was able to really improve my Spanish. When I didn't understand something, the girls helped me by explaining. Yes, they would get their laughs out of the fact that I can't pronounce my double R's, or if I would stare blankly when they told me the punchline to a joke, but the language barrier didn't stop them from starting conversation. Sometimes the language barrier itself even acted as an interesting topic of conversation."

Having Sheeva, L, and C around for the merienda made for a nice break from being the sole non-native Spanish speaker on the team (except for our Argentine-German player). For once, I wasn't the only one giving blank stares after getting lost in the conversation. At times, the roles were even reversed as the Yanquis would slip into speaking English amongst ourselves, slowly "taking over" River's women's soccer team. Our numbers were reinforced further by the arrival of Gabi, my brilliant teammate from Rice University, another "Argenyanqui"with hopes of playing with the full Argentine national team (she already helped the U-20 Argentine national team to a 2nd place finish at the South American Championships to qualify for last year's U-20 World Cup in Japan). While my teammates gave me a hard time about the so-called "Yanqui" invasion, I know they enjoyed the mix of cultures and backgrounds and the laughs which came from miscommunications and mispronunciations from all sides.

However, as the North American summer comes to a close and a new school year is about to begin, my fellow Yanquis at River (L, C, Sheeva, and Gabi) are leaving me behind in Buenos Aires to fend for myself. Now, I have to readjust to limiting my English to Skyping with my friends and teaching my private students... If my English language abilities start to deteriorate in my blog posts, at least you now know why...