I wish I was you **ON HOLD**

Chapter 5

Walking into camp was pretty nerve-wracking knowing how many great players were in the building. Viv looked over at me and smiled. "How're you feeling?"

"Pretty nervous to be honest."  I replied. 

"Oh don't be." Jill said draping her arms around me. "The girls are going to love you."

"Well I hope they do." I said. Meeting the other players wasn't my main concern. My main concern was impressing the coaching staff. 

As we entered the building we saw a few players in entrance talking. The other girls all went straight to greet each other hugging and catching up. I hung back slightly not really knowing what to say or do. After a few minutes Daan waved me towards her and the group around her.

"Hey guys, this is Rhaina, she plays for Arsenal and she's probably one of the tallest teenagers I know. Oh and she's probably the faster person I know too."  Daan said introducing me to the other girls.

"I mean you got the tall part right." One of the girls said. "She makes you look like a toddler standing next to you."

"Well I mean doesn't everyone make her look like a toddler when they stand next to her?" Another one of the girls said laughing. Daan glared at the two of them and attempted to smack them. 

"Well obviously these two are very mean. I'd advise you to stay away from them." Daan said rolling her eyes.

"Sorry Daan, we're just saying the truth." The second one said. "I'm Jackie by the way."

"And I'm Steph." The first girl said. The other girls introduced themselves too. They seemed like a good lot. 

We then got rooming assignments and I ended up being put in a room with Jill which I was glad about. I was afraid that I would get paired up with someone I didn't know. 

The rest of the day went pretty smoothly. As the other players trickled in Jill and Viv introduced me to them. We then had dinner followed by our first meeting where I officially met everyone and the staff. We went over our schedule for the next week and a half then went our separate ways. I headed up to my room to finish some school work then headed to bed. 

The next few days of training were good. We started off easy to help us recover from our long flights but I was glad that we started training right away. We typically had two training sessions a day and occasionally a gym session too. A typical day for me went, wake up, go for my run, breakfast, prep/activation, morning training session, lunch, media session or meeting, afternoon session, free time, dinner, occasional team bonding, bed. We went into town a few times which was neat. As I had left Holland when I was only 5 I didn't remember much so it was very cool getting to see everything. I had to do some media things such as pictures in the kits and a few videos with the other girls but I tried to avoid them when I could. 

Two days before our first game we were told that our afternoon session would be an open training where the fans would watch us train. I was pretty nervous when I heard this as I hadn't interacted with the Dutch fans before. Viv told me that it would be fine and that the fans were great, I hope that she's right. 

As we walked onto the pitch I was surprised to see how many fans had gathered to watch us train. The training session went pretty well, we did some rondos and other warm up activities then headed into some shooting and passing drills and finished off the session with a small sided tournament. My team ended up beating Viv's team in the finals. My team had Sari as keeper, Steph and Kika as defenders, Vic (Victoria Pelova), Jackie and Jill in the midfield and me playing as the 9.

After our session we went around taking pictures and signing autographs for the fans. I was hesitant first not really fancying the idea of mingling with strangers and letting them take pictures of me. But Jill dragged me over and had me go around with her. After that we biked back to our hotel/team building.