food and drink

we had our first practices yesterday. first up was the young kids 5-9 and we played t-ball with them. next were the older kids 10-14 and we took batting practice with softballs in the gym at their school. by that point i was worn out from chasing balls all over the place, but it was then time to have a practice of my own. the 3rd man's team is the lowest and really just for fun, a lot of the younger players are on that team as a way to get experience before moving up to the more competitive 2nd and 1st mens' teams.

finally got to see the surface of the home field at practice last night...much better than the beach of an infield we played on over the weekend. the batters box was 10 fold better at holding up to the abuse of batting practice. I didnt get a chance to get on the mound but it looks like its in good shape, i hope there is clay under the top layer of dirt so we dont dig a bunch of holes. we also have lights on the field, wait, check that, we have lights on the infield- two poles with two fllod lights a piece. they made it nice for batting practice but playing a game would be impossible given the darkness of the outfield.

ok enough about baseball, lets move on to food and drink. in the days ive been here i really havent had anyhting that unusual or different from back home state-side. ive had lasagauna, stews, toast, eggs, sausage, nothing out of the ordinary. the milk has a more straight-from-the-udder taste to it, and they have some different fruits over here that they bottle juices from but it tastes a lot like the stuff from home. one odd thing they do is mix apple juice and water, a common drink here. the juice itself isnt strong or concentrated at all, they just like it half and half with water. now for the question on everyone's mind, hows the beer. im sad to report that ive only had 2 kinds of beer. the first, Astra, is the cheap beer here, but it reminds me a lot of killians...not too bad for 10 euro a case. the other beer i had, a wheat beer, which i cant remember the name of, was pretty good. it tasted a lot like bluemoon without the orange flavor. and they also told me that it is really good if you put banana juice in it...just dont let anyone know you fruited your beer...it seems the Miller Man Laws are universal- burt reynolds would be proud.