Le Foot

Salut!

Things are good! This school week went by so fast! If I'm not careful the whole year will fly by! It seems like class time this week was minimal, but we finished the first half of our first unit in French, we are starting Liasions Dangereuses on Monday. But the highlight of this week was Le Foot! Yes, I did indeed manage to make it to 2 soccer practices with TFC. Tuesday night was cancelled because of the world cup game, but we went on Wednesday. Wednesday night was perhaps the most frightening soccer experience of my life....Sarah and I realized that the women who were wearing the French National Team warmups didn't just buy them, it meant they were acutually on the national team. The first half of the practice was conditioning, and that was the same as I've done before, so I didn't know what I had gotten myself into, yet. The 2nd half was just playing 5 vs 5 games, but I was scared when they shot the ball and played because they kicked it so freaking hard! I would have rather watched in awe than running around in circles panting. I did manage to get the ball a couple times. The coaching method was a little different, I guess when you play for a pro team and the classement in the league is the most important thing, you are allowed to yell. But I thought the coach was going to lose his voice! Oh well. Afterwards we learned that the 30 women made up the 1st and 2nd teams of TFC, some of them were my age while some looked more like 30. So we went back last night, Thursday, and played with the third team. Sarah, unfortuneately, hurt her ankle at the beginning, but I stuck out the whole practice. The girls were all high school age with a couple older ones and they were all nice and talked to me. One even is in 1° at Ozenne too and knew about me. They said they had a small team, so maybe they need me! We did sprints for the first half, then since we were on a field with out lights, we moved to play on a gravel field. It was actually kind of tight. Really fine gravel made up the whole field and it almost like playing indoors except it hurt worse when you fell and your shoes get really dirty. We played the rest of the practice jsut keep-away with like 6vs6. The speed of the game is way faster than I'm used to, but I tried my best to keep up. It was only about 40 degrees, F, outside so the weather was alright. I'm def. true that if I play with them I'll improve. I learned that they practice Tuesday and Thursday 7h30 to 9pm, and next week is the last week in the suburbs before we can go back to the Stadium (the rugby world cup occupied it for the month). This coach was pretty nice, and yelled a lot too. He said he would see us play next week and they deceide if we could join the team. It's true it'll different being on a really competitive club team, where everyone really tries their best in practice if they want to play in the games, plus since practice is only twice a week, with games like every other sunday for the rest of the year. But it would be cool being on it, I would make good friends and get tons of Lotto gear (TFC is sponsored by Lotto and not Adidas or Nike). I really hope I can. I can lose the weight I've already gained! This morning I could barely move my legs I was so sore and my oblique muscles were sore, never knew that could happen from soccer. This picture is from last Saturday when I went to the TFC game at the stadium, before the game started:

So I hope it works out! Fridays Liza, Sarah and I only have school from 9-11 so we decieded to go shopping and profit from this great city in the afternoon...after waiting till noon to eat a delicious lunch at the school cantine. We went on the community swingy chairs in the little park byt the Capitole and here are the pics of the colorful benches and stuff...they were still being constructed when I got here...so they are only like 2 weeks old!

Then we heard that the All Blacks, New Zealand rugby team who are favorites to win the world cup, would be making appearance a the Place de la Capitole at 2h30 this afternoon, since they play here tomorrow in Toulouse. We got there at 3 and we were pretty close to the front. We waited till 4h30 and FINALLY they came and it was this big Adidas campaign too. They had break dancers and they some of the players came out. There were bunches of New Zealanders too all around us, following their team around france, so they were fun to talk to. Heres a pic of us waiting for the hour and a half in the crowdedness. None of my pics really came out that well since Im not too tall and there was really a lot of people.

So à tout à l'heure for now! I have an exciting weekend planned. The weather has been kind of weird. It was so wonderful since I've been here till Wednesday, then it got colder. Yesterday it was like 40 and drizzly all day long, really cold. Then today the same but sunny. I want to buy a leather jacket/coat like everone here!

Lots of Love,

Leez