Rogue Sports

Saturday night I witnessed my first rugby union game as the local pro team had a match against Narbonne. My overall impression? Overwhelmed but impressed. I learned that my rugby "knowledge" (by which I mean I know you can't throw the ball forward and it's called a try not a touchdown) was wholly insufficient to understand what was going on exactly 98% of the time.

To attempt to reconcile this to something I am somewhat more familiar with, I like to think that if soccer and American football had a lovechild, it would be a beautiful 7 lb. 3 0z. baby boy named Rugby. He would be a stout little fellow, and would blaze his own path in the sports world... Short shorts and all.

Unfortunately, I was informed that my little metaphor is pretty much totally incaccurate due to the fact that American football evolved from rugby... or was it soccer? Something like that. Either way, it's all backwards. History aside, those are some crazy fools.

Some of the barbarianism I was privvy to included a player getting a knee rammed (that was for you Heids) in his nose and another guy picked up and straight flipped upsidedown, mid-stride. One minute, he's enjoying the crisp September air, the next, he can't remember his own name let alone what sport he's playing... Poor little lamb.

It was another solid weekend for Albi sports and the boys managed to pull off a 28-22 W. After the game was a VIP dinner of sorts for the supporteurs and the lady that gave us the tickets to the game got 4 teammates and me in. What a champ. I somehow forgot that mealtime in France translates to at least 3 hours à table so we finally rolled out around midnight having gorged ourselves on foie gras, bread and yet more cheese. K, actually I hate foie gras and the cheese plate was a little disappointing but I'm trying to maintain an image here.

Anyway I vowed that I'd brush up on my rugby trivia before the next match, and also due to the fact that a bonafide rugbyman is soon to marry into the fam (Sarah - tell Chris to take pity on my patheticness). Unforunately, so far I'm just more confused than before. Maybe I'll just learn the chants the locals were singing all game long in the stands... If that doesn't work out I could also probably audition be one of the fans playing the drums since last time we somehow got prime seats RIGHT behind the "band"... it was 2 hours of incessant pounding and confetti filled delirium... Allez les jaunes et noirs.

Blinded by the light

Nice hair bro

You'd be making that face too if that guy was coming after you...

Cute English-speaking children

Beach Day

Friday morning the teammates and I saddled up for a weekend trip to St. Raphael in southeast France. I was jazzed, and had visions of sipping pina coladas while bronzing my bod the sunny Mediterranean coast...

Instead I got an old gym smelling of spiced meats (Desma pinned it as being of the taco variety) and a shoebox sized, bunk-bedded (?) hotel room. Aah, the life.

Our caravan of mini-buses rolled into St. Raph from Albi around 4 PM and we got the juices flowing about 30 minutes later with a 2 hr practice with/against the locals. Somehow nothing gets me in the mood for volleyball quite like 7 hours confined in a cramped space... Not to worry though, my knees took kindly to the rude awakening that came in the form of rubber-coated cement flooring that moonlights as a court there. And the trip had only just begun. Practice was solid but our libero tore her glut this week so we were a little short on the passing end of things... Luckily I found out my co-middle, aka 6'3" 33-year-old Russian Gisele, also tears up the backrow so she pulled libero duty after straining an ab this week. The woman cannot be stopped.

Practice completed, we headed back to the hotel where the American and I bunked down together. I mean that in the most literal sense, since we opened our bedroom door to be greeted by my childhood favourite - le bunk bed. To make matters worse, I got beaten to the punch and she called Top Bunk so I was relegated to second class on the bottom floor. I soon forgot about my plight, however, since our tiny room was reminiscent of ship quarters and we spent the night telling each other tales of our experiences on the high seas. OK, wow, that quickly took a turn for the lame but you get the idea... Pure, 5-star luxury.

Saturday, I would live out my earlier dreams of beach side glamour after an hour of serve-receive practice in the morning. Actually, the beach trip consisted of a 15-minute jaunt into the sand and back before we walked 40 minutes back to our parking spot, but I felt fulfilled nonetheless.

North America at large...

The Sleeveless Polo. So hot right now.

I'd also just like to throw this out there - Who rolls around the French Riviera in a convertible, with the top down, and an IRONING BOARD riding shotgun? The American and I thought our idyllic vision of life on the coast had come true when we mistook one passing by for a surfboard. Turns out the driver was just really proud of their laundry gear...? Thankfully, right after Desma called out "Suuurf board!" in her best California accent, the assistant coach kindly corrected us. So much for seamless integration into French society.

Anyway, our pride was restored, as the day ended well with our team taking home the W. We could've played better but I guess that's what pre-season is for - workin' out the kinks and middles playing libero... My turn comes next weekend so be sure to tune in for a full recap of the carnage...

My bad.

Sometimes I just drop and crab walk mid-rally...

Desma also took out an unsuspecting child on the sidelines. Luckily it was captured on film...

Before

aaand after...

Weekend Update

We had our first tournament this weekend and I'm happy to report it was a rousing success. That's if you can call lime green spandex and 2nd place rousing.

I saw many a thing I thought mine eyes would never behold, for example high top volleyball shoes and many a player sporting only one knee pad (the partner is too much?). The highlight of my weekend came in the form of a grown man sportin' belted denim overalls, chanelling the always timeless farmer look. In my opinion the belt was a trifle unecessary since I figured the pants weren't going anywhere... what with the straps and all... but he did have 'em crisscrossed in the back (holla back if you sported this or the one shoulder look circa 1996) so I guess he was livin on the edge. Who am I to judge. After all, I'm the one in black kicks.

Anyway, as you can see below, I'ma be sportin' #6 this season which is somewhat traumatic since I've broken my record of being #10 since about grade 7... but I guess that's what happens when the foreign kid doesn't get the memo about requesting her number. I'm finding a way to cope. In the meantime, I have bigger things to cope with such as the flattering color of my team's spandex and the fact that GÉANT is written in huge letters across the butt. This is important when you do the math...er translation, and realize that Géant means 'Giant' in French. Oh the irony.

I only wish I was kidding.

Pre-gamin'

Note the unfortunate state of the Maple Leaf.
I see how it is here.

Almost wishing I had red shoes too...

Desma usually makes this face at me before I serve... It's our good luck charm of sorts.

I could barely hear myself think over the roar of the crowd.

Free lesson for the kids -
A block like this will make you no friends... Least of all with your back row.

It's A Good Thing

Martha would approve?

Last night the American and I decided to embark on a what can only be described as an epic quest to bake the perfect chocolate chip cookie. Those familiar with the glories of French dessert are aware that they have an abundance of croissants, pastries, chocolates, gateaux and a million other little delights my mind dared not conceive before I got over here but sometimes you just need a real cookie. As such, we decided to take it upon ourselves to christen my new oven with our own fresh batch.

Similar to last week's Mexican fiesta meal that fell a little short, the cookies wanted to be good but something went awry somewhere along the way. A few possible reasons why...

First off, we had to find a recipe using only baking powder since baking soda is pretty much non-existent here. Ditto for chocolate chips, which run at about 10 bucks for a postage stamp-sized bag... that is, if you can hold out long enough on the scavenger hunt to even find them at all. Rather than face the prospect of selling my firstborn child for a decent amount, we decided to buy cheap chocolate bars smash them up instead. This might have been more trouble than it was worth but we really really wanted cookies. Oh and we also had no brown sugar.

We pressed on. Only to come to the realization, once we were already home of course, that we had the wrong kind(s) of flour. Apparently we needed Type 65 and had only types 55 and 45... Say what? Mom? So we decided to buck up and use what we had. Well actually, we had no choice since the grocery store does in fact, posess food but isn't actually trying to sell anything by being open for a grand total of about 5 hours a day. Maybe 6 if it's Thursday which is made up for not being open at all Sunday or heck Monday either. Throw your hands up for a 4 day weekend. Before you think I'm complaining, we knew all this before, but were just pissed that somehow didn't take precautions and buy every kind of flour available. Anyway, long story short - we later found out the 65 flour was pretty key when the cookies came out the consistency of dog biscuit.

These problems were child's play compared to the fact that we don't have measuring tools of any kind. We tried to buy some by miraculously making it to the store during operational hours but alas, sold out. Sweet. So we improvised by conducting a complex experiment using a bag of rice and a mug. Ah science. We poured out the last 150g of rice into a mug and estimated that the mug was roughly double that, so we had one 250g container. Which makes what in cups? Your guess is as good as mine... Your guess is probably better actually, based on the amount of sugar we thought was supposedly correct... Dang it, where are my grade 7 fraction skills when I need them!?

Last but not least, my oven thermometer is only in celsius. Luckily my Canadian heritage saves the day again as I'm familiar with this unit for reasonable outdoor temperatures, usually on the far negative end of the scale in the Motherland. Unluckily, it's fahrenheit all the way for baking. The American was obviously useless in this domain as well. So we figured 190 was a nice strong number and hoped for the best.

8-10 minutes later, choirs of angels sang as we opened the oven door.
15-2o minutes later we contemplated rolling myself down the stairs to throw up the dozen & a half cookies just eaten.

Despite all the stumbling blocks, our attempt was a reasonable success. The cookies were flat, really crunchy about 40 seconds after cooling and way too sweet. But pretty good. Tonight we're going for creme brulee.

My oven doubles as a dollhouse

Missing the "dough" in cookie dough.

The carnage from the rice/mug measuring experiment

Objects in photo are not as delicious as they appear...

16 crunchy wonders of creation

The aftermath

My stomach says no

Things I Learned Today

Rather than pretend my week/weekend was exciting and attempt to write something half-decent, I'll let the pictures do the talking.

Yesterday, Desma, her boyfriend Benoît and his friend Benoît (I know. Either it's a popular name or French people just roll in twin-name crews) and I went to Toulouse to Ikea, volume 2.

It also kind of inadvertently turned out to be a makeshift International Day since we started out with a solid Canadian breakfast, followed by a Swedish lunch and an attempt at a Mexican dinner. The French chocolates didn't disappoint and did us right as well. The festivities ended with a bang thanks to our discovering an authentic Cuban straw hat at Benoît's straight off the streets of Havana.

Enjoy.

Breakfast of Champions



Nothing starts the day off right like a little taste of home...
O Canada.

To all the haters:
ya'll can see that I don't dance for a reason...I'm tall & gangly and it doesn't end well. To those who have been so unfortunate to have seen my mom cut a rug at any a wedding, you understand.

Today I learned that French people are very obedient:
Take a stack of pylons out of your trunk and throw down on a busy road... Cars will merge and voila - instant traffic jam.

Doing my best 4-year-old on Christmas imitation...

Unfortunately, children's furniture - while cute - is best left to the smaller folks out there.
(See mini Benoît on left)

Modern day Goldilocks?

After a nap, I recommend enjoying tea while sitting in chairs that bend your legs at sharper than a 90 degree angle. Curse my giganticness.

Between training, I'm considering moonlighting as a Swede.
Then again, maybe not if I ever make that face again...

I learned our club has sick scarves a la Euro soccer teams...
To all the Canadians - order yours today. Nothing protects against a brutal Canadian winter, or says warmth meets style quite like a polyester blend.

I learned this the hard way:
Though you think you might have found the equivalent of Cheddar, don't be deceived. It's not the same, nor will your taste buds be at the end.

Sadly, an attempt at Mexican food falls pitifully short when the "fajita mix" tastes disturbingly of cat food.
The look on my and Benoît's face are proof enough.

I also learned that French TV sucks sometimes.

French headgear on the other hand....

I'm more inclined to a Cuban piece myself.
Havana Noche? It's the title of the next Bond film I'm working on.