April 13th

Wednesday, April 13th

Today was an exciting day for my project because I finally got some of the responses I had been waiting for! I was worried that no one would respond to my emails, and I wouldn't be sure when to move on and email new people. Luckily, I will not run into that problem because I got 4 responses today! I have set up an interview with Mary McVeigh from Soccer Without Borders on Sunday afternoon. I'm extremely excited to speak to her, as I know she knows a lot about the culture of women's soccer in South America. I also received a response from Ati from Seprojoven, an organization in Costa Rica. She is happy to do an interview, and we are figuring out when the best time to have the interview will be. We will do the interview half in English and half in Spanish, which is her primary language. I'm both excited and nervous to see what challenges a possible language barrier could present, but I have enough confidence in my Spanish abilities to think it will go pretty smoothly. Mike Geddes from "Street Football World" also responded to me, but the news wasn't as exciting. He is very busy right now with his organization, so he doesn't have much time for a full interview. He said he's very supportive of my project and still would like to help, so he can answer any questions that I have via email. I'm interested to see how this will play out in my podcast since I can't get a direct personal statement from him. The final email I got today is the email that I am most excited about. My uncle, who lives in Chile, managed to get someone to talk to the goalkeeper for the Chilean women's national team about my project, and she agreed to do an interview! She only speaks Spanish, so I'm a little nervous, but more just excited! I think it will be awesome to get the perspective of a professional women's soccer player in a country where there is not much opportunity for women to participate in soccer. My uncle said he is also trying to get into contact with the coach of the Chilean national team, which would be an AMAZING interview.

After reading these emails I spent most of the rest of my day formatting questions to ask each participant, and I think I came up with some good ones. However, I'm definitely not finished and I want to make sure I have a second set of eyes look at them before I do the interview. I also went to school today and went to my Spanish class, so I could catch up on the project they were working on and also ask my two project advisers, Mrs. Brackett and Mrs. Mitchell, some questions. Overall it was a good day!