Weather, a Double-Edged Sword

If you are the kind of person that thinks that sometimes the weather is against you or betrays you or that sometimes when you say that is a beautiful day, then it becomes awful, this is the perfect piece of writing that will understand your feelings and let you to express them. I am the kind of person that likes when the days are always perfect with a blue without clouds sky,  the beautiful Sun, I like the day to be warm not hot nor cold I like it warm and also I like everything to be calm and everything to be the perfect day if you understand me. Sometimes I think that the weather can hear me because every time the day is beautiful, I say or think to myself that it is perfect and that hopefully it will stay like that all day and a few hours later BANG! It changed completely. Yet, for my luck sometimes the day changes just a little bit like instead of being warm it is cold, but some other times it changes from being sunny to be raining and with thunders and very strong winds. One day I had a soccer game in the place where I practice and it was at 4:30 in the afternoon, I think it was a Wednesday. I still remember it was a wonderful day and that was sunny, cool and comfortable. I was very happy that day because I had done well in school, had no work to do and my grandmother, who lives in Costa Rica, was visiting here in Guatemala. That happiness did not last long because I usually sleep in the car on the way to Futeca and when I got there it was RAINING, so I got out of the car very mad and so pissed off that I didn´t said goodbye to my mother and didn´t greet my coaches nor my teammates and only sit down and wait for a miracle to stop the rain. I was in Futeca half an hour before the game get started, so I had time to warm up a bit, freshen up and be calm and I had time to stretch and talk to the coaches.  It was already time to start the match and it didn´t stopped raining but for my luck the referee was 45 minutes late and we stayed inside the gym and waited and nothing happened. When the referee got to the field we started to stretch and warm up when suddenly a teammate came to me and said, “Come on Mena you can do it, it is just about wanting and acting and everything is on the mind, you are good at this and you need to believe in yourself. You are the fastest person in here so it is better for you because when the field is wet the more the ball spins so use your weaknesses and convert them into your best friend!” this entered my mind and never got out and I just thought positive and did all I knew, practiced and improved over the weeks before this important match. I realized I was faster than I thought because every long ball someone passed to me was easy to reach and since this time I always review the words my teammate said to me and they are really true, once you get to control your mind the rest is easy. After this soccer match, every other was more easy and now it does not matter if it is a sunny day or a horrible, raining day, the only thing that matters is to do my best every time and never but never give up, always pursuit your goals and try to achieve them the best way you can. The weather should not affect you after reading this instead you should affect the weather and be always positive. It does not matter if is a wonderful day or horrible but what matters is that you get over it, step on it and BANG! Follow your way.

Fighting for Your Goals

There is a lot of people in the world, boys, girls, men, women, etc, but the very important people is a just a part of human race. That is why this time I am going to write about a very important person I have met. I met this person at Colegio Internacional de Guatemala in a conference at the gymnasium that this person gave us. It was a special day at school so we had a civic act and also they invited people that make delicious food if I might say, but this wasn’t all. The teachers before the civic act started told us that they had a surprise to us and that a very important person was coming to the school. They told us that he was important but I never thought that he would be so brave and important that he is considered like a Guatemalan sports symbol. This important person for me and for a lot of people too is Juan Carlos Sagastume, he is from Guatemala and he likes many sports and also likes people and kids. He is small like 1 meter and 70 centimeters, dark hair, brown eyes, thin and muscular and I still remember that the day he went to our school he was dressed with a black shirt, jeans and he was wearing some brown flip flops. He is an incredible person not only for what he does but also because as a person he is nice and very happy. The topic of the conference he gave us was “never give up” and I like it very much because I thought it was the perfect conference for me and that it was addressed to me. There were a couple of things that Juan Carlos Sagastume did that really were like WOW, that impressed me like no other thing before, one of them was all the marathons he did not only here but on other countries and sometimes easier but other times much more difficult.  One of the many things that really impressed me that Juan Carlos did is a very difficult marathon in an African desert. This desert marathon, I think it was on Sahara Desert, was an incredible thing. It was 212 kilometers long and obviously they had to rest and drink a lot of water, this is why they completed the marathon in 3 days. Juan Carlos showed us some photos he and his teammates take from those days in the Sahara Desert and they were perfect, until he showed a photo from his feet and all the blisters and bruises they had. It was ugly and he said it hurt like hell like something we didn´t wanted to feel in our lives. Another thing that caught my attention was a marathon that Juan Carlos did in Alaska. It was 520 kilometers long, and only a few people participated on this dangerous race. Juan Carlos said it was exhausting not only because he got tired but also the cold and the heavy cloth he had to carry. It was very dangerous because if he got caught in a snow storm he had a few chances to live, or if he got hypothermia or if some fingers froze, the chances to stay alive were only a few. The most amazing thing Juan Carlos Sagastume did and that really caught my attention was, rowed across the Atlantic Ocean. He did this journey on 2009 with the help of a very good friend of hi´s. His friend was from London and liked the things that Juan Carlos did and accepted to help him. It was the most difficult thing he did. The trip took a entire month and it was so difficult that when they spotted land they started to cry and tried to give their best effort and rowed for the last 5 hours without stopping. They won the Guinness Record because the Atlantic Ocean was never crossed on a boat with oars. I decided to write about this person not only for what he has done but also because he made me to seek for the things that I really want and to never give up, always be positive and try to look for the good things out of the worse moments in life.

Personal Rituals

A personal ritual is any formal act, institution, or procedure that is followed consistently. I have my personal ritual every week and it is very strange I might say but is something I need to do in order to get what I want. I have soccer practices all the time, starting on Monday and finishing on Thursday, and on Thursday´s at the end of the practice our coaches give us the date and hour of our weekend game. The games are usually always on Saturdays the only thing that changes is the hour. Here is where my personal ritual starts. On Fridays I start to relax and be mentally prepared for the big moment and try to get all the bad things out of me and just try to be happy and relaxed for the big moment. I hang out with my neighbors all the day and we always have a football match on the field and I´m the quarterback of my team. We play until we are exhausted, and the first thing we do is get to the closest house from us and drink gallons of water until we are about to explode. After doing all this stuff we always end up very hungry so at night we call Pizza Hut and other some delicious, spicy and crunchy pepperoni and mushroom pizza for all of us. We wait for the pizza at the security booth because we like to get a little far or get away from the society and parents, and eat our pizza on the sports club from our condominium and laugh or hear some music or also sometimes we eat on the gym because there is a TV and watch a movie or something. I get home around 10:00 or 10:30pm to start arranging my things for my Saturdays soccer games. I arrange my cloth but I have or follow a pattern to arrange them. First I pull out from my closet the camp elite team´s shirt, then my short, later I take out my boxer and the soccer shoes I like the most, this will be my adizero F50 turf orange ADIDAS shoes, and my F50 bag where I  keep my stuff. After this I wash my teeth and put on my pajama and sleep like a baby until the next day. My alarm clock wakes me up always 2 or 3 hours before the soccer match so I turn it off and first make my bed and then get down for breakfast. I usually like 3 eggs and some cheese or jam and milk or orange juice for breakfast. After taking my breakfast I go upstairs again and watch some TV. I really don´t like to take a bath before a soccer game because then I would relax, my muscles would relax and I will be playing not bad but not the way I like to play, so instead of taking a shower or bath I just get my hair all wet and I wash my face because that way I woke up in a quicker way. Then I take my time to get all dressed up and the last piece of cloth I put are the socks because I use double sock, first I put a casual white socks made of cotton and then I put my red soccer socks and finally my shoes. I have to get out of my home 45 minutes before the game because I live very far from the soccer place, so that when I get there I will still have some time to warm up and to talk with my coaches and teammates. Before the game is about to start I tie up my shoes and buy some water or powerade and drink a little bit to get hydrated before the match starts. Finally I get inside the field and warm up a little bit more and when the referee starts de match I just do my best.