A few days ago I was told that the word at school is that Jakob is some kind of basketball stud. "Basketball stud" - those were the exact words used. <Insert boastful smile from me here> Let's hope it's true. I haven't seen him play, but have heard good things! Some days the boys are at the gym, some days at the field house. This makes it very confusing for the one who's picking him up each day - that person would be me.
After his first basketball practice I asked him how it went and he said it was hard, but good and that he had fun. He said his basketball coach in Germany wanted him to stay there and told him that they needed him for their team. Sorry, coach. Our high school basketball teams have historically been pretty good and last year's teams were real good. The boys team lost a couple of good players who graduated and I'm hoping Jakob can step in and help fill the void. He measured 6' at the doctor's office the other day, but he looks a lot taller than that. Maybe it's because he's so skinny? We're working to help him put on some weight, though.
After a day at the field house I asked him how it went and he said they ran that day and the first time they ran he was the fastest. <Insert another boastful smile from me> I could tell it made him very happy, too. I asked him if he'd exchanged phone numbers with any of the kids, yet and he said no, but 2 or 3 of them had friended him on FB. I was hoping he and the other kids would have already exchanged info, but I guess it has only been a couple of days since he started school, so I'm probably just being impatient. He did say they all have a lot of questions and many of them have a familial connection to Germany.
He tried to Skype one of his friends in Germany and I knew it would be difficult because we're on satellite internet. Out here in the sticks, it's the only option we have other than dial-up. We've checked into other companies and no one provides anything other than dial-up or satellite at our location. Ours is a lot faster than dial-up, but it's not as fast as DSL because the signal has to go from our satellite, to a satellite in space, back to a satellite on the ground. The provider doesn't recommend it for live streaming video, so I knew it would probably be too slow for Skype. And it was. So, his friend just called him on the phone instead. I could tell the friend must have asked what we were having for dinner because I heard Jakob say, "mashed potatoes" and that's what I was cooking. It's funny listening to teenagers on the phone, even in German, you can tell they're talking about the same things every other teenager talks about. He was smiling and laughing - something I hope he does a lot of at school here.
Later we watched some football. He asked what it means when it says "4th and 10" on the screen. Well, if you didn't know, I hold a v-a-s-t knowledge of football inside my little brain and boy did I ever enlighten him. I'm sure he must have been impressed with the plethora of knowledge of this "man's sport" that I bestowed upon him. He was so impressed, in fact, that he asked if we could watch some basketball instead. LOL Sorry, Jakob, no basketball, yet. But, we do have the NBA channel so we watched a show about Magic and Bird. I even learned a few things about the two men that I didn't know before. I think that's the first time I've ever watched the NBA channel. He said they have a lot of soccer on tv in Germany, but you have to pay extra for it and in his words, "It sucks." It sounded like pay-per-view, not paying extra for a sports package on your cable. If I had to pay extra for every sporting event we watched on tv, we would be bankrupt. Here's a little shout out and a "Hallelujah!" for all of our non-pay-per-view sports!
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