Friday, July 6, 2007

Little Kickers

So I was sitting in my reclining beach chair in our back garden, in the scorching heat of the London sun, sipping on a cold can of Stella and I thought to myself... 'it doesn't get much better than this'! Okay the reality of life in London has been quite different to say the least... the other day I could have opened with 'So I was sitting on my milk crate which doubles as my computer desk chair watching the rain turn to hail which brought on the thunder storm... and I thought to myself, does London even have a sun'???

I must be honest though, despite what has been, and is to be the rainiest summer on record in London... I REPEAT... THE RAINIEST SUMMER ON RECORD IN LONDON... despite this I am having an amazing time! And to be honest, the only thing worse than the weather in London is people complaining about the weather in London, and I have fallen victim this as well. Either way, you really appreciate a sunny day of say 24/25 degrees when you do get one!

My Job:
I haven't spoken much about this yet so here goes... Little Kickers is a company that offers football (soccer) classes to pre-school aged children. We run them through a set of warmup activities, games with soccer balls, and scoring goals. We focus on fun games rather than drill based activities so that the children are not forced to wait in lines. Part of my job is coaching, and I have really enjoyed this. I especially enjoy the Little Kicks class where the kids are as young as 18 months old. The classes usually end with the children giving high fives to the coaches... they love it when you move your hand a couple times before letting them actually get you, or falling over when they give you the high five letting on that they are VERY STRONG... the other day a young boy named Andreas constantly ran away from his mum while I was coaching and started pushing me... I knew what he was trying to do so I fell over and said Whoaaa! hahahaha I guess he couldn't wait for the session to finish to beat up on Coach Ryan. In another one of the classes that I help coach in the kids are starting to take their shoes and socks off and go barefoot which seems to have caught on like wildfire! It starts with Madison, and when Luke sees that Madison has done anything he must do it to... when the other children see this, they all jump on board!

Off to Crawley tomorrow to see Bill and Hilary (for those of you who know them) and do a Session Assessment of the classes that are running there!

Ciao for now... Ryan