Day 3: Pretty light

Today was a relatively light day. We went to Stoke again and trained with the youth team. The 1st team and reserves had off today, so it was only the young guys around. We just played a full sided 11v11 game, with 3 coaches making up the final 3 on one team. That team lost 6-0. Steve played all over the pitch:forward, center mid, and yes, center back, where he held his own but wasn't too confident about his performance, especially since 2 of the 3 coaches were his outside backs and provided little help. I had relatively little to do. My right index is worse than yesterday and mostly everyone who looked at it said it was broken. I'll get it actually checked by the physio tomorrow, hopefully it won't be as bad as it is now. Lunch at the Michelin (Stoke's training ground) was again real good. "Minced" lamb, potatoes, broccoli, mashed potatoes, and some kind of really good green soup. Afterwards we actually had to walk home today, Ken had a meeting, but it wasn't too bad: about a half hour walk.

We rested at home for a bit and then went over to this kind of outdoor shopping center, Trenthan Gardens. We walked around a bit looking in on some shops, mostly paintings and artisan shops, but didn't buy anything. More or less the price tags were slightly beyond our range. There were also some nature parts of Trentham Gardens that we walked around in for a bit, kind of reminiscent of the reservoir at Central Park, just not as many people or big buildings in the background. For dinner, we went to Pizza Hut with Lizzie (Ken's daughter, 17). Believe it or not, Pizza Hut in England is actually a nice sit down restaurant that doesn't even do take out. Here is when Steve somehow ordered two main meals: an individual pizza and a pasta bowl. But he ate them both like a champ. Around 8:30 we all went and saw the Watchmen, which was pretty good after it got going, but loooong. A nearly 3 hour movie and there were almost 30 minutes of previews and commercials before hand. Argh. anyway, that ended and Ken picked us up and dropped us off at home. Tomorrow should be another fairly relaxing day. i think we're going to do some school work in the morning and early afternoon before some kind of a meeting Ken set up at 2:30ish before training with Newcastle Town at night.

S&B

To note: According to Lizzie, both our English accents our very "posh" like a Londoner. She refused to do an American accent.

Also, somewhat of a schedule (that I've found out can change any time) could look like this:#

Thursday: training with Newcastle Town#
Friday: training with Stoke
Saturday: tour of the Britania and game vs. Middlebrough
Sunday: TBD
Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday: training with Crewe
Thursday: training with Newcastle Town