Mud
After several failed plans of playing American football with guys from Vintage, this last Sunday we got our act together and met up to play in front of Les Invalides in Paris. There were 10 guys: 5 Americans, 2 Frenchmen, a German, an Australian, and a Kiwi, all joined together to play America’s vulgarization of ‘real football.’ As luck, fate, or God, would have it, it began raining basically the second we started explaining the rules. It rained quite hard. The French “football” players on the other grass fields at Les Invalides left when the rain started, but we, as hardcore as we were/are, stayed. What took place constitutes the greatest hour or two of fun I’ve had since I’ve been in Paris. I was either smiling or laughing out-loud the entire time. There’s something about the combined effects of having no traction whatsoever, not really being able to feel your hands, falling every time you start to move, and being completely soaked in water and mud that takes a friendly game of football from fun to ridicu-fun. After a good amount of time playing football, and a short banana break, we turned the tables on the Americans and switched to playing Rugby.
Obviously, playing rugby favored the French guy who played for Harvard, the other French guy who played a pretty high level club rugby, and those from the southern hemisphere (Paul and Garth) who, although never playing on teams, played it at school like we play football or baseball. Rugby is amazingly tiring. It’s also tiring on my brain when I constantly have to tell myself to stay behind the ball as opposed to in front of it. No matter my problems with the strategy or flow of the game, Rugby was just as fun as football, if not more, as it was full contact (we just played flag football, but even that was basically full contact, as there’s no way you can really stop forward movement in the wet mud). Also, by the time we started playing Rugby, we had in effect completely destroyed the field we were playing on. There was no grass to be seen. I’m glad the cops didn’t come by, although we could always claim ignorance and say that we neither saw nor comprehended the sign that said “no ball games on the grass.”
We were the center of every passer-by’s attention. People came up on the grass and took pictures of us. Every person that passed by stared at us thinking “what in the name of Jacques Chirac is going on over here.” My favorite was when the Open Tour bus passed by with tourists all on the seats on top, and they cheered for us.
After we had worn ourselves out completely, I was in the predicament of “what do I do with my mud-caked body/clothes before I go to a birthday party in a few hours.” I was without the option of returning home, as I didn’t see me waltzing into the apartment saying “heyyyyy host mom, you got some laundry to do, and here, while I’m at it, I’m going to track mud all over your floor” so I had to ask Andrew (good friend, English teacher) if I could shower at his house and if he would wash my clothes. Which he did, thanks Andrew!!
I went to the birthday party with no socks, wet shoes, and a wet jacket. I was cold. More so when I had to wait outside a metro station for about 40 minutes before all my friends got there. I could barely move most parts of my body. I was cold. I wanted to go home and sleep. So I did.
And that’s my story. My weeks been pretty good besides that, had a rotary lunch Sunday, grabbed a beer with Andrew Tuesday, saw the movie Bobby Wednesday with Leo (brazilian exchange student), and I highly recommend it. Yesterday I got my Christmas presents (finally) as my friend Nikki brought them from FoCo for me. Yay! 
Also, today there was a revolution in my life. I realized my Professeur Principale (head teacher) doesn’t hate me. In our lab she was talking to people about what they were doing next year, about which Prepas they want to do (Math, Math/Physics, etc, the French higher education is really complicated), and I told her I was going to just take Chemistry, because it’s my favorite. She said she’s noticed that (obviously sarcastic) so I got to talk to her again about how I don’t understand because I’ve never really taken it etc, and she was like “ya since you don’t have the same base it’s probably like reading Chinese for you.” My head response was “Wait what, you are being understanding, where did that come from??!! Then I started talking to her about what I really was going to do next year, and kind of explained the American education system to her. She said, to my complete surprise, that she was going to give me her email so that I could fill her in from time to time on how I was doing. Wow. That’s all I can say. Things are looking up people. She doesn’t hate me.
The end.
Brent
2 comments:
Oh yeah?! Well guess who doesn't not hate you. Me!
Well written article.
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