—martinez’s space—

I could see DJ’s three point shot that would save us if it went in. The score was 33-34, there was one second on the clock, and it had been a tough game against our lifetime rivals, MBS. As I saw the ball coming down, my heart started beating faster, since it looked like it was going in. And then… It bounced off the rim. I couldn’t believe it. Fight throughout our whole undefeated season to watch in agony how the shot that would make us win the game, missed, giving them the victory of only one point. It was amazing. After the feeling of incredulity, I felt anger. I had played a terrible game, made only 4 points, got very few rebounds, missed both of my free throws, and missed lay-ups. If I had made only one of them, we could have won the game. It was so close… I hit the wooden door in the boys’ bathroom right after really hard, letting all that feeling out. I think I hit it too hard, but it didn’t hurt as much I thought it would. Now I realize what the Patriots felt after losing the Super Bowl against the Giants, although they must have felt worse, since it was THE Super Bowl. I think that it happened to us, the same that happened to them, we were too sure that we were going to win. It made sense, since we had already beaten MBS, Humbolt, who had beaten MBS, and we were undefeated. We knew that it was going to be a hard game, but we were sure that we were going to win. This was a big mistake. We should have never underestimated them. It was a tight game, also. The first half of the game, we were getting destroyed; but in the third quarter, we came back, and we passed the. It was an intense quarter, and it really boosted our spirit up. That boost made us keep going, but at the fourth quarter, we got to sure about the victory, and since we were tires, we were not hustling as much, until they made lay-up after lay-up until they past us. We tried our hardest, to catch up with them, but we couldn’t. Everyone played great in the game (except the first half), but we were just short that victory. Next time we’ll get it. 

My hair drenched with sweat covered my face. I did my best o keep it out of my eyes but it was to hard to worry about that and the battle that was going on between two titans on the basketball court, CDS and Humblolt. I breathed heavily, and my legs were worn out. I have been paying as hard as I could to defeat these people that had beat the giant MBS by ten points the week before. I could see the whole team sweating, I could hear the breath heavily, and I could feel the heat. The team was jogging up and down the court, but it was finally the after time. We were beating them by four points. The last seconds of the game were passing by, and they had the ball. A big man in their team runs in, with all his heart, and makes a lay up, but right after the honk that signaled that the game ended sounded throughout the gym. The whole team stood up and started jumping with joy. All the hard work had been paid off. It had been a hard game, with some mistakes, but played with great effort.

Reality struck me in that moment. I realized that we play poorly against the people that are not really a challenge for us. That happened with the Blue Valley game. Most of them looked like 6^th graders and they DID NOT know how to play basketball. They didn’t have any spirit either, which made them the worst team I’ve played against. Because they were so bad, we played really, REALLY poorly, too. We only scored 18 points in the entire game. We did not get the rebounds. We could not make good lay-ups. We missed many shots. It was a boring game.

The situation was different against the Humbolt, or the MBS game. We made some mistakes, but not this kind of mistakes. We got rebounds, and made shots and lay-ups. We played better than them, so we won.

I don’t know why this happens. Maybe because you get motivated with challenging teams, and with poor teams bored.

We have not lost against any team in the whole season. Even though we play poorly, or good, we still beat every team in the tournament. We have beaten MBS, Humbolt, Blue Valley, ICS, AIS and Lincoln. That doesn’t mean that we should be overconfident, because, the finals, against MBS could be tougher than last time, and they can beat us. We should prepare for an MBS that is better than us. So if you are in CDS here in Costa Rica, you should go to the final game and support the team. It is going to be an amazing game. 

The past few weeks I’ve been inactive with my playing. I just practice my old songs, and I try to put them together as good as possible. The only new addition to my play list has been “Dust in the Wind”, and I my teacher only taught me the intro. I like the intro of the song, and its not as hard as it looks like. The movement of your right hand’s fingers is the same all the time; the only thing that changes is the position of your fingers in your left hand. I want to learn the whole song, so I’ll probably use YouTube to see if anyone can teach it to me. My teacher is not coming until Wednesday, so I’ll just look for it, instead of waiting for him. I’m also getting a little bit bored because I’ve been playing the same songs over, and over, and over, and over again. I’ve been playing for like a month the same songs, but I can still improve them, so I keep playing them until I get it right. When I sit down I just think “I need to make this sound awesome.” Obviously, I have not reached the point where I put some feeling into the guitar; right now I’m more concerned about getting the notes right, the finger positions in the right place, and all that stuff that can be annoying for some people, but I enjoy because they are a challenge.I enjoy challenging myself, and especially with the guitar. It would be boring if it was easy and you don’t have to work for it to get it done. What’s the point? Also, there’s no best feeling in the world when something that you really wanted to do but was very difficult, comes out right. All the work, at the end it was worth it. The hope of someday being able to do it makes you keep going, and to not stop. Something easy doesn’t give you that kind of feeling. I really hope to learn more songs, and faster in the future. I will start to look much more in the Internet, than to rely too much in my teacher to teach me songs. I could progress so much faster this way that I will play with feeling soon. If someone knows about a website, video, or anything, please give me the link in one of your comments. Thanks. 

I had stopped writing about football for a while, but now I’m going to retake the topic. I have great news! Even though I don’t think it will interest you, I’m going to say it anyways. The football team recruiter came to the school to look for new and fresh people to be added in the team. He came during lunch, and some people in our grade went to give him their personal information. Even though the season starts next year  (according to him), the training and some games have already started.Friends in the United States have told me that the trainings are pretty hard and exhausting. They say that you end up beaten up and in agonizing pain after the two intense hours of practice four times a week. The coaches are desperate to win, so if you mess up something in a game, you are punished severely. Some coaches may even kick you out of the team. Football is a very important part in the life of an American, so they take it very seriously.I don’t think that our training will be that hard, because here in Costa Rica it’s barely beginning, but it will still be tiring. I don’t know a lot of ticos that know much about football, or that like football. I don’t think that it is a very popular sport. They like soccer better.Eighth graders have been practicing in recess with some ninth graders. We play against each other, and we beat them most of the time. We have beat them two out of the tree times we’ve played. The third time they beat us because they brought the best ninth graders, which they didn’t do in the first two times we’ve played.I will tell you about will happen in the training in the practices, and in the friendly games. I hope it all turns out good, and I can play next year in the season.

This post has nothing to do with my previous topics, but I just felt that I HAD to write about it.I’m in the CDS Middle School basketball team. I play power forward in the team, and I think that I’m the captain. I don’t really know because Mr. Jobe, the coach, didn’t officially announced it to us, but in the games, the referee asks for the captain, so he points at me. The point of this post is not about the team, or about who is captain or not; it is about the incredible game that the team had yesterday against Marian Baker School.Marian Baker has always been some kind of a powerful rival in the basketball tournaments. They are the ones that eliminate us in the playoffs, or thanks to them, we don’t even play the play offs. Last year, we played them in the semifinals. They beat us by only two points. In that game, I saw the weirdest basket I’ve seen so far. A MBS player made a very powerful pass to one of his own players, but one of our players smacked it and it went up, and when it came down, it went in the hoop. In the last play, our best player drove to the basket, but when he made the lay-up, he missed it, so we couldn’t tie. Everyone was very disappointed, especially because we had put all of our effort in that game, and we lost because of stupid mistakes. We got eliminated of the tournament, and we left with a bitter taste in our mouths.Yesterday, however, it was different. We played MBS again. We are not in the play-offs, but still, I am very proud of how we played. They had two players that were huge. One was one head taller than me, and the other was about my size, but he could not be in eighth grade, he looked sixteen years old. Either way, it was a very close game. The first half was intense. We lead most of the first half, and we were playing a great defense. We were getting most the rebounds, even though they had a huge player jumping, pushing, and doing whatever he could to get the rebounds. We also intercepted some passes. The plays that they made were a little repetitive, so we predicted them. For example, most of the time I was covering the huge guy. I noticed that the shooting guard in their team always passed it to him, when he saw him a little bit open. I just waited a little bit back, I was not on top of him, and when the guy made the pass, I bolted as fast I could to get the ball. I got the ball few times this way, and they still didn’t get that I knew what they would do.The play of the game was, in my opinion, the last play of the fourth quarter. There were about 18 or 20 seconds left, and the score was 27 to 25. They were beating us by two points, like last time. We had the ball. Ian was dribbling the ball along the three-point line. He couldn’t find an open spot to drive through, and he couldn’t find anyone open either. I saw this, so I bolted to the free shot line, and Ian saw me. As soon as he saw me run towards the line, he passed it to me. I got it, turned, and made a jump shot. I am not that good at jump shots; in fact I miss them most of the time. What happened next, I saw it in slow mo. The ball went up, and went in, barely touching the rim. My heart started beating faster and faster. I had saved the game. It was an incredible play, and the one who saved us from the past. It couldn’t happen again.Since we tied, we got extra-time of three minutes. In that time, we got ahead by four points. The score was 33 to 29. In the last play, the big guy got past me, and he was about to make a lay-up, but I fouled him. I know it was really cheap to do that, but at least he didn’t make the lay-up. They got two shots. Their only way to tie the game was to make the first one, miss the second one, get the rebound, and then make a three point shot and make it. They only made the first one, got the rebound, but it was really hard for them to make a shot, even a lay-up. In the middle of the chaos, I heard the loud honk or whatever that sound was, indicating that the game was over. Everyone in the team, including me, started screaming hysterically, and crashed against each other. Then, we remembered our sportsmanship, and we lined up to say “good game” to the other team.It was the best I’ve had so far. It was incredible, and really satisfactory. I scored 12 points in total in the game, my record so far. Tomorrow we play the AIS, and I hope that we play as good as we played yesterday, but this team is not as good as MBS. 

I have been thinking about what am I going to write in my blog now. I thought that football would be an easy thing to write about, and a long one too.  My thoughts were that I wouldn’t need to change my topic, since I thought I would be able to write about it the whole time. Unfortunately, that’s not the case. Don’t get me wrong; I love football above any other sport, but, right now, I don’t have the inspiration, or the mood, to write about football. Season was over two months ago; maybe if I had written about it then, I would have been able to write much more about football weekly, maybe even daily. Since it’s over, I still can’t find a team, and I’m not in the mood, this post, and maybe future ones, will not be about football. I am not going to stop writing about football; I’m just going to add one more topic, one more passion, which will be posted regularly, along football. This new passion of mine is guitar. I started to play guitar about a month ago. I started to play it because my friends in Mexico have been playing also, and I liked how they played. They have a band and they play really good. Watching them play in recess, in their houses, and even on stage, made me become more and more interested on the subject. When I came back from winter break, I tried playing simple things and became more aware about how the professionals did it. I noticed that it as not really hard, but I also realized that I wouldn’t learn properly without a teacher. Two months ago I found this awesome teacher that taught my cousin and I contacted him. We began our classes here in my house and started to play, simple but great things. The first class was more of a theory class. He taught me things about the threads, the “tablaturas” (I don’t know how to say it in English, but it’s a way to read notes in a guitar, tat shows the 6 strings and the number of the thread), finger positions, and some simple chords. I think that I learned pretty fast all those things. The following classes he started teaching me some songs. He taught me the Intro of “One” by Metallica, and a part of “Knocking on Heaven’s Door” by Guns N’ Roses. After Spring Break, we lost contact, but I still practiced. After having practiced over and over those two songs, I just started laying by ear some small parts of songs, just to not get bored. But, that was a little easy, and boring, so I looked for a song in YouTube, that I liked very much, but I wasn’t sure if I could play it or not. I looked for the intro of “Stairway to Heaven” by Led Zeppelin. It was hard. Learning it from YouTube and play it was hard. I couldn’t read “tablaturas” really well yet; that’s why I was watching it in YouTube. I still can’t play it fluently, but I remember the notes pretty well, and I have had a very extent time to practice, since I’m still grounded, for some weeks now.My way to spend time during the afternoons now is to play guitar. I’ve had plenty time to practice, and to improve my skills. When I get bored, I just get the guitar and start playing. I like it very much, and if it weren’t for it, I wouldn’t know what to do during the afternoon. I would be REALLY bored.I reestablished contact with my teacher last week, and we had our first class since Spring Break yesterday. He was impressed. I think he thought that I was really lazy, and that I haven’t practiced since, but he was wrong. He was impressed that I could play “Stairway to Heaven”, and he hadn’t even taught it to me. We spent the whole class yesterday just fixing some details, and trying to hear the song to see if the guy in YouTube that taught it to me was wrong. We had a good class.The guitar is an awesome instrument to play, and it sounds really cool. The songs that are played in it, sound really good. It is a difficult instrument to play, but it is the greatest one.  

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Since I can remember, my team has always been Dallas. I don’t really know why, maybe because it is also my family’s team, or because I’ve seen their games in Mexico City. Even though, Dallas has not been a strong team recently, the reality is that I can’t imagine going for another team.Last year, Romo was an inexperienced rookie, even though he was already near his 30’s. The season’s record was 9-7. They didn’t make it to the play-offs, thanks to a big mistake that Romo made against the Seahawks. He was holding the ball for a field goal. The fourth quarter was almost over, Dallas was behind by three, and it was fourth down. The field goal would have tied the game, and they would have likely gone to extra time. The Romo did the most unintelligent thing that he could have done. He took the ball and started running with it. Quarterbacks are not known for their velocity, so he got tackled. That was the end of it. They put that in the past and this year Dallas was a favorite to be in the Super Bowl at the beginning of the season. The experts predicted that either Dallas or Greenbay would go against the Patriots. The Cowboys started played the season really well. The record was 13-4 in the season, giving them the first place in the NFC (National Football Conference). They only lost against the Patriots, the Eagles and the Red Skins. I believe that they lost the Eagles, and the Red Skins games because they were overconfident. They thought they could win because they had only lost one game in the whole season, against the undefeated. This made them think that they would have it easy, but in reality it didn’t and they lost. The play-offs were short for Dallas. They lost against the champions, the New York Giants. Even though they might have never won, I think they could have done much better in that game. Romo was making bad passes, and the plays didn’t come out right. This game was a surprise to all Dallas fans. We were more preoccupied about the next game, which would have been against Greenbay. But then, the Giants kicked us out of the play-offs. In the Super Bowl, the Giants played incredibly, and, even though they took Dallas out, I was hoping for them to win.I think that Romo is a very talented quarterback; he just needs to be more experienced. The bad thing is that he entered the NFL too old to become a very well experienced quarterback. If he had entered 5 or 6 years earlier he would have had more years of experience, which really make a difference. Last year, Romo was seriously very ignorant. He made many mistakes and did dumb things. This year, his only mistake was overconfidence, which also very experienced veterans commit. I would think that Romo would have learned from his mistakes for next year. He will be more experienced, and maybe overconfidence will not be a problem.                                                                                         

Freedom of speech. This is a very difficult phrase to define exactly. There are many angles that this phrase can be looked from. What does it really mean? The United States Constitution has it written under its Bill of Rights. It is stated under the Constitution that the Congress will not punish their people for expressing themselves, as long as it’s peacefully. This means that no legal punishment will be inflicted in a person for expressing themselves, and say what they think peacefully, without violence. I think that that also includes offensive language, and insults. The law does not punish people for cussing in public. They have the right to do it and they can do it as bad as they want. Usually, this kind of behavior ends up in a violent encounter, which is punished by the law. What I’m saying is that, if you really wanted to, you could cuss in national television, and the government would not be able to stop you. This does not mean that you are free of consequences. If you worked on a television channel, or insulted someone very rudely on national television, you would probably be fired. You would have lost your job, and people would not respect you for acting like a clown on national TV. This also may happen at your house. If you start to insult your mom, the government will not chase you down, but she will, most likely, ground you. The consequences for saying whatever you are really thinking, or feeling, could be severe, even though you are not going to jail.  There are, obviously, limits for what you say in public, or to certain people. You may joke around with your friends, and say bad words here and there, and you will not get punished. Bit if you say the same words to the principal, for example, you may be suspended. When you are in the public eye, and everyone can see what you are writing about, you may think that you can say whatever you want, but you can be kicked out of whatever you are doing. If you work in a newspaper, you can’t just start insulting your boss in one of your editorials. First of all, I don’t think that it will ever be approved, and second of all, you get fired of the job. If they take it REALLY easy on you, you might just be lowered from your position, but the consequences are still severe. However, there are people that use other form of communication to avoid severe consequences. Music, paintings, dressing habits are all forms of communication that are used to express your feelings and your thoughts in a more free way. It is more difficult to get whatever they are expressing than a more direct way to communicate it. Many songs are made in protest against corrupt governments throughout the world. These songs have hidden messages that only someone that listens to them carefully can understand. As far as I know, no songwriter has been arrested for protest in his or her songs, and if there’s been, I’m sure there have been little of them. The artistic way of communication is the freest way to say what you want without severe consequences. Obviously, when the main point of a song, drawing, or painting is to insult, it is more likely that there will be consequences. For a songwriter, for example, a recording company wouldn’t want to produce any of his/her songs, if the song is just insulting.So the main point is that legally, you are able to say whatever you want, but that doesn’t mean that there are no severe consequences. For us, bloggers, writing something that surpasses the limit, would mean expulsion from the site, and maybe the school would suspend us. We are not completely free to express ourselves, but we have some freedom to write about what we want.