Weekly Review 12th – 18th December 2011

I woke up from the confines of my single bed in The Haven B&B where I’d been living for almost 7 weeks. I finished packing my suitcase and tried to print out my plane boarding pass with landlord deaf Danny who was making sure I wouldn’t miss my train. The boarding pass wouldn’t print out from my defective 1 1/2 year old Sony computer, so off I went past the few minutes work down  to the now very familiar co-op supermarket and on the train platform. The train calling at London Kings Cross arrived as expected and the next six hours were spent working on business and watching my downloaded game of Man United vs Wolves. As I arrived, I scurried off into the busy, lively London streets to a place with internet and a printer, and printed off my boarding pass. One thing you immediately notice from being in a fishing town to London is how much faster everyone walks. I felt better already. The small town environment makes you do too much thinking and pondering, and I didn’t want to think as much as I had been in Montrose about my future and all. So I got my boarding pass printed and off I went, onto the tube to Victoria Station and onto the Gatwick express for my flight to Amsterdam.

I had only got a few hours of sleep from the night before, so I fell dead asleep for the majority of the flight. As I got my luggage, I immediately bought some stroopwaffles (the best treat ever) and got a ticket to Delft. I arrived, hugged my old friend Zeeger and here I was in Holland! Cool! I got to Zeeger’s flat, met his friends and after a short tour of his house and his room, I put on a shirt, suit jacket and shitty black shoes and we were now out the door off to Zeeger’s fraternity. He had told me about his fraternity before and it just sounded crazy what they did there from the amount of drinking to wrestling, I just had to see this. I didn’t really know what I could expect to see when we began walking up the steps into an old Dutch building, after all it was Monday night. But bam! It’s like I walked into a movie set. Over a hundred people drinking, happy, talking and all in formal attire. A few people looked completely fucked like they’ve been on a 4 night benders. I got introduced to all of Zeeg’s friendly friends, to the leaders and immediately, someone got me the strongest drink possible, leaded me to the toilet next to the dedicated vomit sink and was egged on by all his friends to chug this shot-filled drink. Obviously, I didn’t want to drink, but life is full of experiences and you have to take them as they come. I chugged half of the glass and gave the other half to Zeeger. Then I  got a full tour around the building. I’d been to alot of clubs and pubs before, but this was just something different. There were alot of funny rules you had to follow which would have consequences if you were found of breaking them. It was a great atmosphere and everyone wanted to have a conversation with me. Everyone could speak decent English aswell. I left the DSC fraternity having a pretty good first impression of Dutch student life. Over the few days that I was there, I realized how much students drink there, it’s pretty crazy and it’s no wonder a few of Zeeg’s friends were developing beer guts already. Obviously, if I were playing pro football, I couldn’t live this lifestyle, not that I would really want to. It’s fun, but over time I can see that  I would feel like shit because I wouldn’t be achieving my goals and desires. My ideal student life would be having a night out once or twice a week and having the rest of my nights watching movies or chilling.

It was a relief to get home to Budapest, hug my parents again and have a home cooked meal. As you can see, I didn’t do much in terms of football this week. To be honest, over the last month or so, my motivation to train became less and less. I needed a mental break. Being in Montrose was a little stressful and frustrating that it affected my desire to train. If I didn’t take a break and get to witness the stuff I did in Holland for example, I would of just got worse. So I’m glad I took a few days off this week. I did do some training on Tuesday however when I went over to Zeeger’s university gym. It was actually more of a entire sports complex complete with 3 football fields, tennis courts, hockey courts, etc. I went to use the indoor gym which was pretty nice and modern and did some running and stuff.

Anyway, this post was kinda longer than usual and I wrote everything in a bit more detail than I usually do. It’s about 9pm now and usually I don’t do these until about 1 or 2 in the morning when I’m about to go to bed. Doing this earlier gives me more time to reflect and plan.

I have to set some new short-term goals for myself so I keep fit, keep improving and not lose my focus of my longer short-term of goal of getting into the ‘right’ first football club and long term goals.
1. Maintain high fitness.
2. Keep improving on left foot and one on ones. 
3. Build upper torso muscle and strength by working out at the gym, possibly with a personal trainer. 

Next Week

So this week was really a much needed mental recovery week for me  so my hourly target was put on hold. But I’m focused on putting in 20 hours next week, so let’s do it. On Friday I’m supposed to be going to Austria for four or five days for Christmas holiday with the parents, so I’ll probably go there. Will start contacting clubs and people aswell. 40 I will contact. Also, at around the start of everyday (or at the end) I will set a schedule of what things I’ll do and when so I don’t spend too much time stressing on it during the day.