CISSA

China International School Soccer Association, was the tournament that Jacob and the 5th grade at SSIS participated in today in Shanghai. We left school at 8:30am for our first game at 10am. Much to my surprise, it only took 1 hour to get to the Shanghai American School where the tournament was being held. It was, however, on this side of Shanghai and not the Pudong side (which takes upwards of 3 hours to get to if the traffic is 'normal'). When we arrived I was amazed at how the facility was spread out. SAS is much larger than SSIS when it comes to land from what I could tell. The soccer/baseball/track area was huge! The soccer tournament was held on 9 fields (1/4 of regulation size field) so there was 2+ full size fields plus two baseball fields and a full track. It was interesting that while we were there playing soccer, it didn't feel like we were in China. All I heard was English and there were more people than not that looked like us. It was nice to talk to other moms and hear that they were from the Midwest or other parts of the US where soccer (not football) is played.

Jacob and his class split into two teams, each team played a half (9 1/2 mins). They played 4 games with two bye games. They won 3 games, lost one, and tied one ~ even though he will tell you that they won 3 and lost 1. I took about 500 pics (love the new camera!) most of which were on the continuous mode. I was very happy when during the first game Jacob scored a goal. He was happy also! When the game finished, I texted Scott and told him. I even caught it in pictures (you have to look hard, but it's there).

Jacob's class picture, as you can tell he did not tell us he had to wear red!

As I was taking pictures, I had a flashback to many Saturday mornings on Jodeco Road and our time serving on the Board at Community Youth Soccer. I can't say that it brought a tear to my eye, but I did have a short moment where I missed our "family" at CYS ~ we love you guys!!! It was good to get to participate in a soccer event where I could just be a parent. The event was well put together and I made sure that I told the lead director that I appreciated his hard work.

I will try to post pics to the picassa site later. We have a lot of pictures to upload from the past month or so.