A short rest day after our first two Peru-based programs on Wednesday, I was set to return back to Ciudad’s campus to round out the last two sessions of the week with their older beneficiaries – the jovenes. Unfortunately, the rest day in between was hardly restful at all. Unable to sleep well, I woke up mid-morning, rolled over to unlock my phone and had no connection. This was nothing strange since the WiFi was spotty all week. I shrugged my shoulders and plugged in my phone to give it some much needed juice, but the charging icon never popped up. I got up and flicked the light switch, nothing. The whole house and street were without power. I went out for a bite to eat hoping things would right themselves once I got back to my flat. I was wrong, my stomach now content but my electronics less so. The power didn’t end up coming back until much later that night. 

This situation was far from ideal, but the good news was I had extra time to sort this out. With a memory no greater than that of a goldfish, I inflated some soccer balls for the following day’s sessions and placed all my focus on running them. Soon enough, I was back en route to San Juan de Miraflores, arriving just around 3:35 though we would ultimately have a late start with Janeth entering the fold with the five leftover soccer balls from Wednesday’s session as she’d promised. Following her were about five or six boys. “There’s about 18-20 of them, but they’ll trickle in periodically,” Janeth said.

With a window of time before the session started I thanked Janeth for allowing for the schedule change providing that much needed rest day.

“No tuve luz todo el día!” I exclaimed. “Y pues gracias a dios no tuve nada en hacer pero it would’ve been awful if I had to run sessions considering I had no wifi or way of communicating and couldn’t even take a hot shower until that night.”

As we waited for the group to round out I explained the first drill to the boys that were present, while also trying to get a headcount to see how many footballs we’d be giving out as prizes.

“How many of you guys are there?” I asked, following the question up by telling them we had somewhere between eight and 10 soccer balls to give out as prizes for winners of the various games. I told the boys we would be starting with a variation of our listening drill, one where the boys were partnering up with a ball between them both. I explained the drill and then asked if they needed a round to practice.

“Sure Profe”, they said.

“Pecho!” I yelled out, grabbing my feet to see if I could trip them up.

“Cabeza! Rodillas!” I continued.

My attention drifted to the right side of the grid, where two pairs had gotten the rules completely wrong. if I yelled rodillas, they’d touch the ball with their knees. If I yelled cabeza at them, they’d bend down towards the ball, grazing it with the top of their heads. Nothing else to do but lean into it, I laughed and drew things to a halt.

“Con sus manos hermanos!” I yelled out, but little did they know – their error was a happy mistake as I’d be adopting a similar variation for a later game. With everybody finally on the same page now, I ran a couple rounds before calling in the group’s tutor, Jose, to run a few of his own. Three turns later, we moved to the center of the grid and formed a single file line with blue Manchester City footballs to the right and a line of black Dortmund ones to the left.

“Ok guys it’s the same as before, touching the corresponding body part with your hands, pero cuando yo dijo azul qué haces?” I polled the group.

They all pointed towards the blue Manchester City balls.

“Y cuando yo dijo negro?” I said. They pointed to the other side.

With a few rounds of this out the way manned by both myself and Jose, I commanded that each boy grabbed their own ball, emptying the ones perched atop their cones on each side to reveal a large rectangular grid.

“Ok hermanos come here into the center of the cuadro,” I said.

For this one, we’re going to be dribbling the ball here within this space, keeping the ball close, maintaining control as best as we can. Then, when I yell out a part of your body, you’re going to use that part of the body to stop the ball.

“Bueno por ejemplo estoy moviendo así,” I said, dribling the ball closely in front of me, “Rodilla!” I yelled out, stopping the ball promptly, lodging it between the ground and the bottom of my kneecap.

I told the boys this was my first time running this drill since we don’t often have a soccer ball fully inflated for each participant, but I was enjoying the process for what it was, hoping that if it was a big enough hit I could implement it into our curriculum for future sessions. From there, we utilized the same rectangular space for our last man standing dribbling drill, which did its job to grab us a few winners.

We’d go on to grab a couple more winners from mano o cabeza, still leaving us short two.

It was time for another crossbar challenge! We’d go until we got one. As that all unfolded I retreated to the sidelines to snap a picture of one boy with his new Puma ball lodged gently under his arm.

“Que guapo,” he said having viewed the picture preview on my camera – “Claro que si hermano!”

With the next group finally dropping by, we wrapped things up with two additional winners from our crossbar challenge who were fortunate enough to make off with a king’s ransom of two extra drawstring bags on top of their brand new footballs.

“Ah que suerte que you have two prizes hermano! Una mochilita y una pelota,” I said while they raised both up in each hand proudly, having done extremely well to earn their prizes, and deservedly showing them off as a result.

This last group was the oldest one in Ciudad. The 16 and 17-year-olds entered the fold, greeting me warmly with outstretched arms and handshakes just like I’d come to know and love from all our past sessions with Ciudad. As always, our first drill was the listening exercise, much of the heavy lifting being done by Max, this particular group’s tutor.

The boys were flexing some English on me throughout the early goings of the session so I decided to push the needle and see if they wanted to run a round in English.

“Hands!” I yelled out.

They looked at each other cluelessly, some staring at me like I had two heads. Only one boy managed to clasp his hands together.

“Chest!” I yelled out.

Once again, befuddlement. “Alright y’all this ain’t gonna work,” I said with a laugh, though I greatly appreciated their effort.

Moving on, next up on the schedule was ball control grids with Max and another boy helping run three teams of five. First, we started with push passes, then guided volleys, then direct out of air volleys, then chest traps to volleys, rounding it all out with some header variations.

I finished the drill off by asking the group why it was important to do these. One reason is to maintain control, the other is to either direct it towards goal or to clear the ball while on defense, said one boy, which is exactly correct.

Moving on from there, I called for two teams so we could jumpstart our one-on-one drill. A boy rocking a Sporting Cristal was quickly deployed to play portero. We had one team of six and the other with seven, as Max helped mix players around to even the sides up.

“Okay hermanos so like I told you, we have 10 footballs to give out as prizes,” I said, after running a few practice rounds of the 1v1 drill. “And now we’re going to start keeping track of goals.”

“It’s 0-0, but after 15 minutes the team with the most goals will win premios for the entire side – so you guys have an opportunity to leave with a new football if you work hard at this one,” I said.

The training wheels completely off now, I was ready for some fierce competition. For the first variation, participants were facing the opposite goal and doing a half turn at the sound of the whistle. Boom 1-0 for the team to my left. Next variation was laying on their stomach.

“Su pecho hasta la tierra hermanos!” I yelled out.

Boom 2-0 to the good guys. I was working on the fly here since I’ve never actually done more than 2 rounds of this game. Variation three included a jumping jack before going to goal. Max and I were watching intently, almost acting as human-VARs to make sure the jumping jack was completed before a goal was scored. 

Boom 2-1!

The other team meanwhile continued to pile points on, 3-0, 4-0, 5-0. Outcome looking bleak as ever, we reached our fourth variation. After the whistle, players ran around the person at the back of the line and then towards the ball. I noted to both teams it might be advantageous to squeeze their lines a little closer together to minimize the distance they’d need to travel.

Boom, 6-0! Another one.

Seeing deflation on the other team’s faces, I whistled things to a stop. “Ok, this next round, a goal is worth 5 points!” I yelled out.

“Profe, come on!” whined our winning side.

“Hermanito ya tienes seis puntos porque tienes miedo?”

He pointed at the teammate they had on deck as the reason for his groaning. Both players sprinted to the end of the line, one slipping on dirt as he rounded the corner. It was neck and neck, and the losing side’s representative got to the ball first with his opponent close behind. He ripped a shot towards net, but the keeper made a monster save! 

*Tweeeet-tweet* I blew the play dead, and the activity as well. “¡Ya tenemos ganadores!” I yelled out.

We had six winners for this one, but really seven if you count the goalie because a defensive masterclass like that certainly warranted a prize of his own.

“Okay amigos faltan como tres premios so now we have our ultimo juego: mano o cabeza,” I said, which was met with oohs and aahs from the participants.

I explained the game and we got straight into it. The boys who lost the last game were determined to go the distance and succeed where their team collectively couldn’t.

We played three rounds with three different winners. That was it – I drew things to a halt and circled the boys up in front of me.

I thanked them for welcoming me to their casa. “Profe, do you like Peru?” a boy who had been engaged the entire session said, interrupting my speech.

“Hermano, more than you could ever know,” I responded, quickly telling the group about how their beautiful country was the first place I ever ran an Around the Worlds program since that very first one in Lurin in 2015.

Their eyes all widened, their mouths curled up into proud smiles. “Profe, do you like ciudad? “Of course!” I answered. “Pues it’s siempre un gusto to be here. I was here in June, you know?” I said.

They were really impressed, as I explained having an interest back then in working with them. All the sappy stuff out the way, we congratulated our mano o cabeza winners who got their first pick of the pile of soccer balls. Then, we had a booming round of applause for our courageous goalkeeper. And to round things out, we celebrated our 1v1 winning team.

“Don’t worry,” I said to the others, “We do have prizes for you too but the truth is I always want to bring a ball for each of you but it’s a little difficult to bring 80 with me in only two bags.”

“Don’t worry hermano it’s okay,” said one of the boys in English, letting me off the hook.

As the program wound down I found myself chatting with some of the boys, largely conversing in English. “My favorite team is Madrid. Profe, what is yours?” asked a boy. Apparently, they were all eager to practice language sharing now despite our failed attempts at doing the other drills in English earlier.

As I passed out some of our Better Everyday bags – ones that had been personalized from participants in a Monterrey, MX session, I watched one of their new recipients, a small boy, smiling big just like the words written by one of our other “jovenes” from Nuestros Pequeños Hermanos had instructed him to. With all my gear packed up, my now-empty bags far lighter than when I had arrived, I was interrupted by a request from the boys.

“Profe, ¡mostrarnos sus trucos!”

“Ah hermanos tengo que irme pero tengo tres minutos,” I said.

With a quick warm up of my legs I lifted the ball into the air and completed four consecutive around the worlds. I lifted the ball back into the air yet again, stalling it on the tip of my foot, and looking up into the crowd. “Okay boys this is the last one really and then I gotta go, my Uber is waiting outside already,” I explained.

I flicked the ball up into the air and caught it on my forehead, balancing it there for a moment. An audible gasp filled the air from the boys. I threw a finger into the air letting the crowd know I wasn’t yet finished. I let the ball roll down my forehead while cocking my head back, giving the ball the slightest little besito before letting it roll back to my forehead then down to my neck, flicking it up into the air, letting it come back down to earth back to its familiar resting place on my neck, then doing one single push up while it balanced there before flicking it into my hands.

“Alright I gotta go!” I yelled out, amidst cheers and applause from the homies.

Now, in a bit of a rush, we made our way towards the entrance gate to the field, with a boy, the Madrid fan from earlier, helping me bring my now empty luggage to the front door of Ciudad where my Uber driver had been waiting.

Max had graciously given me a mobile hotspot, so it really was a real collective effort all around. The boy helping carry my bag let go of it for a second and turned to me, “Profe you really like Peru huh?” he asked.

“Of course hermano! La gente, la comida, the footballing talent. I love it here. Your country is very special and it’ll always have a special place in my heart,” I said, seeing one last smile flicker on his face as I bid farewell to both him and the friendly, familiar guard at the front of Ciudad’s campus.