Going into today, I had no idea what to expect. But if I had set any expectations, they would have been blown out of the water. For real. Today was AWESOME! It was our first day of the sports camps! We have basketball, football (soccer), volleyball, and swimming! Each sport is at a different camp and some are at different times so for most of the day, it was just DeeDee and me!
DeeDee is one of the best swim coaches ever. She coached the US National team, Honduras National team, Chile National team, and now she is coaching a swim team in Iraq! She was a teacher/swim coach in the states for 20 some years, lived in Mexico and Chile for a while, and she is now living in Iraq. She just opened her own school in northern Iraq and she is an English language teacher! She is such an amazing woman of God and I have learned so much about swimming, life, and Christ this week!
We got to the pool around 7.30ish and met the other swim coaches Moosa and Elias! Moosa doesn’t speak a lot of English, but enough for basic communication, and Elias speaks great English and would translate for us! There were kids from age 20 to age 8! All the older swimmers (high school age) spoke English but the younger ones did speak a lot of english. At first, I was afraid the language barrier would be really difficult but it really wasn’t! I picked up some Arabic words pretty quick and whatever I didn’t know, I just got Moosa or Elias to translate for me! As a whole, I think practice went really well this morning! Especially for it being our first time with the kids and not really knowing where to start with their training.
Coming in, I didn’t really think I would make close friendships with the kids here but I was waaaay wrong! Sabine Hazboun changed that thought very quickly. I became instant friends with her. Sabine is the Palestinian National Champion Swimmer. And did I mention she just turned 17 a week ago? Yeah..ridiculous! She is leaving in a couple weeks to go to China to train for a month and then she is finishing her senior year of high school in Barcelona, Spain! She is going to be training and going to school there. There is about an 85% chance that she will be swimming in London for the Olympics next summer..CRAZY! Her family runs the Catholic Action Center is Palestine and they are all very strong Christians. Sabine is such a sweet girl and I am definitely going to stay in touch with her! aka I will go to London with her next summer for the Olympics :)
It’s only day 1 of camp and I have already met so many great people! I cannot wait to spend more time with them the rest of the week!
love yall!
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