I had been finishing this study abroad survey UT (which really annoyed me with it's repetitive questions) when it asked me to rate how often I do things native to my host country. See I'm in a bind in answering this question because the stuff people do here isn't what I would call a far cry from what we do back home. They go to dinner, maybe the pub, watch sports on TV, awkwardly talk to the opposite sex, and hang out with their friends much like everyone my age in America does. To say the least this hasn't exactly been a voyage where I really really put myself into an uncomfortable situation, that isn't to say it can't be emotionally taxing at times, but I never felt lost in my environment.
Now that whole digression there does have a point, the question about free time reminded me that I had a attended a Rugby match for the world famous Leicester Tigers earlier this week thanks to Charlie's sister hooking the group up with some tickets. It's kind of a strange phenomenon that's hard to explain going to a rugby match. This is, after all, one of the best teams in the country with players that play nationally. Despite the renown, it felt like I was at a Westlake High School football game, only a slightly scaled down version. There was a small food stand, a crackling loudspeaker system that cut in and out, and about 15,000 fans from what I remember (or was able to hear) the announcer saying. The realization hit me, fairly softly I might add, that America is vastly wealthier on an individual level than anywhere else in the world. I played sports in high school stadiums with jumbotrons and one of the best professional Rugby teams in England didn't even have one. It wasn't some divine realization, but it did give me something to think about while standing in the rain.
Now I'm gonna get to the question that everyone here prods me about so far as sport goes. In the far corner of the stadium there was a sign that read, "No helmets, no pads, just balls". This is a big selling point for the sport as, for some odd reason, it seems that football (I'm only talking about the American variety here, not soccer) is rugby's main competitor. Periodically throughout the game a friend would ask me what I thought about it compared to football, which I kinda shrugged off as I hadn't formed a real opinion yet, and then continued to mutter something about "Real men don't wear helmets" or "These are the hardest guys in the world".
As the game continued on, I began to grow bored. I'll admit that Rugby is more continuous than football, but it is by no means faster. The pace of these big guys is really on par with a decent high school football team in the US. On top of that they wore ridiculously short shorts which carried the potential to permanently scar some young children. I felt like I was watching one of those Eighties movies where, for some unexplainable reason, the director spends a solid thirty seconds recording an outdoor body building gym at Venice Beach, only that these guys were pale as the weather here is not quite what it is in California. As the game continued on, it just seemed like there was a lot of hugging and pushing, no real hits. Sometimes a player would get pushed down by a bigger guy and fairly fun fight did break out (a rare occurrence Charlie assured me, the English don't fight they sip tea and litigate to sort out differences of course!).
After the game was over, one friend made the dire mistake of brazenly asking (I say "brazenly" because he was really just expecting me to say how much tougher these guys were than football players) "So what do you think about your American Football now with their pads?" And the honest answer was I couldn't rate rugby to it. The two sports are so different in their basic mentalities that I completely understand why football players wear pads and rugby players don't; these guys do not hit, they tackle. To illustrate the point, this (I was gonna link a rugby tackle but it's too much work to find a link, just imagine a corner back wrapping up a receiver) is what a typical rugby tackle looks like. How can I possibly compare the level of entertainment to this? Flipper came by after I gave my opinion, to the dismay of my friends, and after watching some videos on youtube he agreed. The speed and tenacity of football in America just gives it an extra level of excitement, you simply don't turn away because you might miss something if you do. Rugby is more social, if something big happens you have time to check your watch, read an email on your Blackberry, and then steal a swig of soda before the play finishes out. You know that sign at the stadium I mentioned that was basically trying to validate its sport over football? It should probably be re-written to read "Short shorts, Ralph Lauren Shirts, how's the food?"
I know I chastise the sport a ton, but it is good fun to attend. The guys do tend to get in little scuffles and throw one another around, but the majority of the game seemed to be spent in a dog pile trying to hand the ball off. It was like some weird fully clothed Greco-Roman wrestling orgy where people hugged a lot. I enjoyed myself, but it was more who I was with rather than what I was doing.
On a quick side note, Charlie and I went to see Spiderman 3 last night and I thought i
t was a decent movie. One thing they do well in these films is comedy even if it's unintentional. I think some people in the theater thought I was high because I was laughing through the majority of the movie. Tobey McGuire gets to do some killer dance scenes which had me in stitches the entire time. The story was ok for the third film and all in all it was a good break from writing papers. The fight scenes were well done and the cinematography was crisp, of course Kirsten Dunst sucked but that's just expected of her films (I love the irony of how her character is blasted by critics in the film just as she is in real life), but nonetheless they did a good job of bringing an over-the-top comic book to life. I especially liked the emo/goth scenes to showcase the internal struggle the Peter Parker character was going through, I dunno how Sam Raime got Tobey McGuire to agree to doing his hair like that but he should get an accolade from the Academy just for convincing the guy to part his hair like the singer from A.F.I. or Jared Leto in whatever his band is called.Anyways I'm heading home in exactly seven days and they couldn't come faster. It's not that I don't like it here, but more so that I'm just ready to be back home. I'll miss my friends here, but we've already got Flipper coming to stay two weeks in the fall so I'm sure I'll be able to keep in touch. England really is a lovely place, but it's not Texas.
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