Travel plus day 1

On Sunday, we were out the door from Simon's house at 4:30 to catch our 6:30 AM flight. Got into New York around 3:00 PM and left for Manchester at 9:00 PM or so, getting into the UK around 7:00 AM. So, we forgot to get the address of the place we were staying, and I (Brett) being on top of my stuff, left Ken Walshire's (the man picking us up from the airport and making much of the arrangements for us here) phone number on my desk in Walla Walla. So, they wouldn't let us through customs since all we could tell them was that we were getting picked up by a friend of a friend without an address or phone number. Brilliant. Eventually, they did let us through after the customs lines cleared out and we were able to explain our trip more thoroughly.

So, Ken was there, not waiting for too long (our bags DID make it through). He brought us back to his house (super small but really, really nice and well put together) in Newcastle-under-Lyme (I'll just say Newcastle from here out). On the way, he explained a rough schedule, which didn't resemble what we'd been told before that much, and displayed insane British driving. Insane because everyone here appears to not only be in control of their car, but courteous and smart about driving as well. Basically, they all display what should be a normal amount of common sense on the roads.

As the day progressed, the schedule for this first week got more solid. It goes like this:
Tuesday morning: training with Stoke City youth
Tuesday evening: watch half of the Stoke City reserves game and half of the Newcastle Town FC game.
Wednesday morning and afternoon: Training at Stoke
Thursday: Possible training with Newcastle Town, possibly rest.
Friday: Training at Stoke
Saturday morning: Tour of the Britannia Stadium, where Stoke plays its home games
Saturday afternoon: go to Stoke vs. Middlebrough (which is a big game since both are fighting to stay out of relegation)

After Ken fed us a bit of real breakfast (unlike what we got on the plane), he took us by where we'll be staying. Its just with a family who has two extra rooms and take in soccer players (excuse me, football players). Steve's room is about the size of small room in an off campus house at Whitman. My room is literally the size of a half bathroom. Its ok though, we shouldn't be spending too much time here.

Soon after that (it was only around 11:00 AM now), Ken took us to the Stoke training grounds and we met the assistant manager (coach) and the youth team coach, who we'll be training with tomorrow morning. We watched a bit of the 1st team/reserves training, mostly warming up for 20 minutes and then playing a warm up small sided game. Afterward we actually went to Ken's gym and he got us in with guest passes. We had to sweat out the crap they gave us on the plane...and looses up a bit too. We're really, really sore from training on Saturday on turf then sitting ALL of Sunday. After that we went and checked out the Newcastle downtown market, which was nice, cobblestone streets that appear to be closed off to cars, lots of little stands selling goods in the middle flanked on the outsides by a mixture of banks, pharmacies, bakeries, jewelry stores, and sandwich shops.

By now it was about 3:30. To make the rest of the day short, we went to Ken's house again, fell asleep lounging out in the sun in his "garden" (back yard), met his wife and daughter (who is 17 and, by American standards, might as well be a young adult in terms of how she acts), and ate dinner. Now I'm back at the house, which is in Trentham(?), one of the six towns that make up Stoke-on-Trent.

Some interesting things of note:
-Ken is an amazing person to know. He seems like he knows EVERYBODY under the sun. He's on the phone all day long, when he's not talking to someone in person, setting something else up.
-We had about 8 cups of tea today with milk and sugar, which was good but got old.
-Every single stereotype about the way the English speak is TRUE. I understood about 1/3 of everything that I heard today, but words of notice that I heard over and over include: 'smashing', 'cheers', 'you alright mate?', 'lad(s)', and 'Bye, bye...bye', and 'schedule' but pronounced shedule.

I'll try and take some pictures tomorrow to upload, but I don't have Internet access from my laptop, so it might be hard to upload them for a bit.

S&B