Futball

The last two weeks the boys have been enrolled in a futball (that's soccer to you folks stateside) camp.  I knew that we needed to get them in some kind of camp so that Mark and I could get back to work.  So I put a lot of time into finding something for them. 

Just as I do every year, in January I started to look for summer camp options. The big difference was that I was looking for a camp in a foreign country.  I came across a group called Intersoccer that runs English-language camps all across Switzerland. 

It turned out to be a great find.  Christopher and Matthew had a really great time these last two weeks. 

Here are some shots of the guys in action.

Matthew as goalie

Christopher on attack

They had a lot of fun and learned some great soccer moves.  Me?  I learned that it is really hard to take good photos of a soccer game!

Best of all, we came home with some loot.  In the first week of camp, Christopher won MVP and was awarded a mini-soccer ball.  This has been great since we did not bring a soccer ball with us.  In week two, Matthew won the "wacky hat" competition and won a water bottle.  Also critical as we brought no water bottles with us. 

And, each guy got a special Intersoccer shirt EACH week of camp.  This increased their play-shirt options by 66.7% as we packed pretty light (see http://nagle-chaves.blogspot.com/2011/07/and-away-we-go.html).

Turns out this English camp was a bit more of a bilingual camp--some kids spoke English, some did not.  But that was OK.  It was a good opportunity for the guys to pick up some French.

They learned a few key phrases such as:

Joues, joues, joues -- play, play, play.  This was often yelled by the coach when he wanted to keep the ball in play.

Ballon rouge (or blanc, or vert...) -- Red ball.  Yelled by the coach to indicate which team needed to get the ball back in play.

Scooooooore -- score.  Some words need no translation.