Drugs drugs drugs!

So far my experience here has been quite a bit different from last year. It definitly feels more like i'm actually playing a professional sport. Everything is much more involved. We train way more. The level of play is higher. We have supervised weight sessions. We have a team physio, a team strength coach, and a bunch of other support staff people that i'm not entirely sure what they are there for. We have team vehicles to travel in.
They are now even starting to control our diets with supplements and vitamins (as pictured above). I'm not entirely sure what all of them are but I'm told they are all legal! We've got some vitamin C tablets on the bottom left, some ginseng and other goodness in the pills on the top right, magnesium gel capsuls on the bottom right, and i think the top left is some sort of arginine syrop...i don't know. I'm only on day one of taking them so i have no idea if they work yet, but i do know that they taste like shit!

Castelo da Maia Gymnasio Club

Here is my home for the next 7-8 months. Its nice playing on a good sport court floor everyday. Overall its a pretty decent gym. It is a good size, it has a good floor, and the lighting is good.
Our weight room on the other hand is pretty ghetto as you can see.

Heart Exam
Our team here in Castelo da Maia requires that all players get a full medical checkup. This medical checkup includes: a visit to a GP for a general checkup, blood tests, urine tests, and an echocardiogram.
We had our GP checkups last week, today it was time for our echocardigram. For no apparent reason I decided to document our trip to the clinic.
These are pictures of our journey into Maia (the neighboring small town) by metro. The first two pics are actual pics of my heart. I asked the doctor is I could take a picture of the screen when my heart was on the monitor and he offered to print a couple pics off for me, what a nice guy eh! So ya thats actually my heart, crzy!
The echocardiogram was pretty cool. They hooked a couple of clips up to each arm, layed me on my side and then used an ultrasound-like device on my chest to bring up my heart on the monitor. It was pretty sweet cuz I could actually hear my heart beating loudly and see my valves opening and closing.

Cooking in Portugal! Here are a couple of pics displaying our fine culinary skills. In the first pic Josh is showcasing our kebabs which we washed down with a couple of cold Super Bocks. The second is chef Lee J's concoction, a believe it was a stew.

So i'm in portugal! What the hell?? Its a little strange but still going well so far.
I arrived the other day after a rediculously long day of travelling. I left Canada at 4pm and landed in portugal at 4pm the next day. At the airport in Porto I was picked up by some old dude who doesn't speak any english. He dropped me off directly at the gym where I was told to jump right into practice with the team. So after 24 hours without sleep or much nourishment I was tossed right into the mix. Apparently the idea of jet lag is a foreign notion to the portuguese. A little dazed and out of it, I managed to fake my way through the practice without many problems. The best part was having Paulo my little sawed-off coach keep telling me: "Jeremy, no beach hands, no beach hands, take ah the ball up ah here!"
Our team is pretty good. The level of play is quite a bit better than I am used to. We have a bunch of guys from the Portuguese national team as well as a bunch of rediculously physical brazilian players. The training has been pretty tough also. We have been practicing twice at day with supervised weight sessions also. Its interesting jumping into drills when the coach explains them in portuguese! Anyways my body has not been this sore in a long time. I've been soo close to passing out in practice its not even funny. The combination of super humidity, hot hot hot weather, jet lag, and being slightly out of shape are killer!
It turns out that I am living with the two other canadian guys on my team, Josh Muise and Lee J Montgomery. We have a pretty sweet set up. Our three bedroom apartment is located seriously about 5 feet from the gym. We are on the top floor of the apartment so we can spit onto the gym, not that i would, but we can! Everything is super close, the grocery store, the metro, all that stuff.
Tomorrow is our first day off!! I can't wait! We might try to venture into the city or maybe hit up the coast to chill on a beach for a while.
We live in a kind of suburb of Porto, its called Castelo da Maia. It takes like 15 mins to get downtown Porto from our place so its not too bad.
Anyways my computer is dying and I forgot my charger so i'm out peace.
oh yeah and these are pics of the view from my room and the balcony in the kitchen...and yes one of them is of a graveyard!