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!