Tuesday, June 13, 2006

Soccer fever (Yes, I know, it's "football" for my Brit friends!)

The World Cup completely surrounds me right now. My sweet, darling husband who didn't watch one single sports event voluntarily in our entire 3.5 years together in the U.S. suddenly turned into a soccer fan last year when we moved to France. I've enjoyed watching him watch the games, though, and I've apparently picked up some of the lingo (yesterday I found myself blurting out, "Vas-y -- fonce!!" at the television, and I canNOT tell you where that came from). He's not too bad, honestly, as he let me tape a game and watch Nouvelle Star instead when our sole programming fixations came into conflict one evening. That's gotta be love. Anyway, the only problem I've ever had with watching soccer is when he leaps off the couch and yells "Buuuuuuuuuuut!" ("Goal!") with his fists clenched over his head, Rocky style, usually startling both me and the cat. A few times his outbursts have resulted in slight injury on my part when the cat was dozing in my lap.

In the stores recently, I've seen soccer candy, soccer DVDs, shirts, CDs, you name it. I forgot to check the bags of salad to see if they've come out with World Cup salad (my favorite example of weird commercialism in France is the holiday salad), but I wouldn't be surprised to find it. One of my girls in my BTS class yesterday wore a skimpy Brazil shirt, and the French students at the institute were running around in face paint. Apparently loads of people skipped out of work early because it was the first game with the French team and Jacques Chirac was holed up somewhere as well. We've been watching a few games each night and I find it easy to watch. It's amazing in many ways, actually. I think I've tried to kick a soccer ball around once or twice and am just not coordinated enough to do it all that well, so it's not difficult to appreciate the level of skill seen on the field. And I have to admit that I love the lack of commercial breaks!

In completely unrelated news, we'll be attending a family wedding on Saturday. One of my co-workers offered to sub for my last teenage class, so S. and I will be heading south Saturday morning and returning Sunday night. I'll be attending my first mass and then the plan is to party outside until we drop. We'll even be breaking out the tent for the night. I've cut out alcohol recently in hopes of...well, you know...so I'll have to do without the champagne, unfortunately. I'll let you know how it goes!

2 comments:

leon's life said...

Good luck at the wedding, the "messe" bit tends to be very, very boring. However the party makes up for that, especially in the South (my husband is from Beziers and I've been to tons of southern weddings and got married there myself) Things go on until early morning.

Good luck with the no champagne campaign

Anonymous said...

Well, well, it's good to hear about the soccer fans. Hope your team wins.
Have fun in the south and don't get sunburned.