Gioco basket

09/23/08

This will be just a brief check in because I have a ton of work to do tonight and it’s almost one am. Today was acting workshop, spazio conversazione (locals come to the school and we sit around and try to talk Italian with them, while they work on their English), and basketball practice. Result of acting workshop: there is a really cute girl in it, but she already has a boyfriend (see disgruntled blog from sometime last week). Boo. But she has the most amazing smile. I can’t ignore her. The rest of the workshop was fun too.
Basketball was awesome! There were only four of us who showed up. I had heard we would be playing with another team and I assumed it was going to be a team of college-aged students. We show up and a 40-something man who speaks great English introduces himself as Andrea. The rest of his team is probably in their forties or fifties. We observe this unexpected scene and start warming up. It turns out this team of 40-50 year old men is actually quite hardcore. And most of them are named Marco. We did warm ups and drills for about 40 minutes and then scrimmaged for 30. They are all really good and in excellent shape. We kept up with them though. One of the Syracuse students who was playing with us is about 6’5” and enjoys effortlessly dunking the basketball. I think our team is going to be pretty good. I made some good passes and made about half my shots. Learned some new words: blocco means screen and stoppata means block. Andrea (the team captain, I later learned) taught me how to say these and other words, but those are the only ones that stayed with me. My highlights of the practice include taking a big charge from a different big kid from Syracuse and diving into the legs of the seemingly oldest member of the team and having him fall on me. All in all, it was amazing. I got a great workout and had a ton of fun. I think we play games some time as well – don’t know yet though. Gioco basket! I play basketball!
Everything else is great, I’m gonna try to do some reading before I pass out.