As it is normal to me that things work when they want to here in Dominican Republic, we did not get to take the Metro yesterday because there was no power in that part of the city. The reason for wanting to do it yesterday was for us to know the route we need to take to get to the Estadio Olímpico where Rio is training. This morning, in order to make things easier we took a taxi, not an Uber because it would cost more money during traffic time, and we did not take a chance with the metro as we didn’t have time for mistakes. We left at 8:15 maybe 8:20 and arrived at 9:10. Clearly taking the Metro makes more sense as it is a 15 minute ride. Rio needs to be at practice by 9:00am. For the kid that doesn’t like to be late, we arrived late, still he was in good spirits.
His practice was exactly that, practice, nothing particularly special. However, listening to “everything baseball” in Spanish had to have had an impact. Lots of young men were there. This had an impact on me. Everyone was nice and even shy. Boys this age are still so vulnerable. More about the kids in another blog post.
Can we admit that in moments like this, the first day, people can be nervous, I was. Rio in his cool, 14 year old self, was more excited than nervous. Even though Rio was stung by a bee, he survived his first practice. After practice we took the Metro home, a 15 minute ride, easy.