Orientation Day and Day 1

Orientation Day and Day 1.

To begin with yesterday, I was able to explore ol' highway 192 in a 12 dollar taxi cab to Wal-Mart. I think it was Uncle Brad who said, "If they don't have it at Wal-Mart, you don't need it." I was able to buy snacks, fruit, water, a blender, and (Sascha laughed at this) a pull up bar that sits on the bathroom door frame. I figured I'm here for 33 days so better make it Home. Very similar to a 1 bedroom Studio I live in on the other coast....
Orientation was at 6pm yesterday. We were introduced to all staff members, including Mr. Jim Evans. Jim is a shorter man with a friendly face and seems to be an extremely intelligent, personal, funny and dedicated person. He has an incredible passion for umpiring which pours out his mouth with each story and metaphor he explains. He is a down-to-earth guy who has happened to have great success in umpiring as a career (umpired one of Nolan Ryan's no-hitters) and umpiring as a business (various academys). The structure of Evan's teachings is to learn the rules and positioning in the classroom, then make them applicable to a situation on the field for his students to try and perfect. Orientation meeting was from 5:00 -11:00 PM. It was at this point I confirmed that this month will be no vacation.

Day 1 began with Breakfast at 6:30, report to class at 8:00 am. Class ran today until 12, lunch after, then field work until 6 PM. I can honestly say that I feel like a rookie umpire after today. The philosophies and qualities I have always appreciated (and hopefully begun to practice) like integrity, honesty, decision making, being a leader, and being professional are still the foundation of umpiring here, but almost everything else is new. New stances, new positioning, new signals, new rules, new areas of soreness- just to name a few. If you consider days of doing new things wrong all day a success, then I would consider today a success, and I do. Growth comes from feeling uncomfortable. Tomorrow will be a day of tuning the skills we learned today, and adding more techniques and twists into this crazy game called baseball.
At orientation an announcement was made that there is a Worship group that gets together on Wednesdays. I've begun to learn that a love of Christ is common in many umpires- maybe its because of the strong morals and character they must possess to perform in this occupation.....
There always seem to be ways in which I can improve my life after reading the Bible. I continuously learn (and fail). Here is what I learned over the last 2 days in my readings:
Give to man what is man's and give to God what is God's.
The top Commandment of the world is to love your God with all your heart, soul, and mind. The second is to love your neighbor as yourself.
Whoever exalts himself will be humbled, whoever humbles himself will be exalted.
His words will never pass away.
As you can see, I have so much to work on!
Adios, Gracias.