My Day of Days......

ah May 21st.....this truly is one of my favorite days of the year!

I'm in a great mood and very excited for today. Very, Very early this morning, the State of Origin Series kicked off in Sydney with the cursed Blues defeating Queensland 18-4. Luckily there will be two more matches, so hopefully Queensland will pull it out.

Then.....there's the big one:

Live from Moscow, the biggest event of the football season kicks off this afternoon (roughly 2:30 pm EST--on ESPN in the States!).

If the European Championships weren't this summer, this would easily be the biggest sporting even in Europe this year. EASILY. Hundreds of millions of people watch this game and not because of the commercials (which are very few), but because they either actually like the teams or because it is to crown the champion of club football in Europe.

I'm psyched for the game, although sadly I have to give a presentation on the Inkas at kickoff (but I'll have it on the bottom of my screen--thanks to Soccernet.com).

To be honest, I highly suggest you check it out....even if you're not a footy fan. The atmosphere should be amazing and to even hear the fans singing and chanting at the stadium should be a site to see. If you want to follow it at work (like me!) you can do one of two things:

http://www.soccernet.com/ They will have a little match center that will allow you to track the game as it goes.

http://www.espn.go.com/ ESPN is showing the game live on ESPN360-where they often show different games throughout the year and they showed a lot of World Cup games here back in 2006 and it worked very well.

As for my prediction, I'm a Red Devil, so I'm looking for Man U to win, 2-1. Chelsea is a good team though, so don't be surprised if they win it.

Before I go, I thought I'd share one of my favorite pictures from last year's final when AC Milan defeated Liverpool:

This is Kaka, the 2007 World Player of the Year and the stud for AC Milan. After his team won the title last year, he took off his shirt, dropped to his knees and gave thanks.

My Goal and my Birthday wishes.....

I just looked at my blog count and realized that I only posted 64 times last year! What a slacker!!! (especially in comparison to the 111 times the previous year)......

So my goal is to beat 111 this year, no matter where I end up!

and while I'm at it:

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MOM!!!!

Hope you have a good day! Love ya and miss ya and I'll see you two weeks from today!!

(on a side note...if today isn't the day....I'm going to be a bit embarrassed)

My Open Doors......

Again, it's been a while and again, I thank you for your patience.

Things have been moving along rapidly here and now I find myself with less than three weeks till I return to the place I call home. I must admit that I'm very excited to get back to the States, to see some friends, take another road trip, go to a wedding and maybe even bale some hay.

But....onto the latest happenings.....We had an elementary softball tournament here at EA. It was a hot, hot day (my peeling scalp can attest). I was on-hand to help out, especially since the tournament was here. Suddenly, I was asked if I would be a base coach for the EA team.

Now for those of you that don't know, I'm a soccer guy. I never played baseball and I don't entirely understand the game (Dustin and Brad can back me up on that). I informed our coaching staff that adding me to the staff may in fact harm our chances of winning....but I was told to suck it up and go stand at 3rd Base (which I did).

Ultimately, my lack of knowledge didn't harm us, as the EA squad won the tournament by going 3-0 against the competition. It was our first championship of the year and the kids were very excited. They defeated their opponents by scores of 18-3, 13-1 and 21-2 (yeah, it wasn't even close). So congrats to the EA team on that.

Other than that, we have really been starting to bring the year to an end and with that, I've continued to search for a new job. After sending out what seemed like a ton of resumes (and getting no love in response.....kind of like last year!) the doors are finally starting to open. I actually have a couple of phone interviews in the next couple of days and hopefully something will come out of one.

I'll keep you up-to-date.

As for the location of the schools.....I'm going to keep that secret for the time being. I will say that they are in the Northern & Western Hemishperes, which is definitely a plus.....and people speak English in both of the countries/territories/provinces.

Well, that's all I've got for now. This weekend I have a wedding rehearsal and Mr. Fitz and I are going to try and go to the Pirate Bar (how could we not?!?!?!).

Dios te bendiga

Mis Heroes de Hugo......

A few weeks back we had an amazing field trip for the elementary students....bowling!!!

I know, what do you learn through bowling? How about a short field trip for P.E.? Does that justify it?

No?

Okay...um....what about a Math lesson? We were taking a field trip to work on our Math facts and different types of Math problems. Does that justify it?

No again? Man...tough crowd today.....

Okay, fine. We've worked hard all year and we wanted a break. There, I said it.

So we journeyed up to Ten Pin, a nice bowling alley up in Puerto La Cruz for an afternoon of bowling....Venezuelan style. In signing up, every class had to pick a color for their shirts and I decided to give us a team name, Hugo's Heroes. Our colors: RED (the color of Chavez's supporters).

So los Heroes de Hugo took the lane. It was my 5th graders and myself, bowling for a good time. Actually, the entire K-5 school went and we all really enjoyed ourselves. Sadly, even with bumpers....Isaac was the winner (oddly enough it was his birthday too).

Our winner