Le weekend

Although by no means strenuous, I had a fairly productive week last week, so I was definitely looking forward to the weekend. Friday night I ate dinner with my host family and watched the opening match of the Rugby World Cup, with Argentina beating the French in a very fun game.

I had plans to go back to my apartment and finish unpacking after the game ended, but instead was lured into my bed to begin watching the first season of HBO's Rome, which has turned out to be totally addicting! So, I left the mess in my apartment for another day.

Saturday morning I woke leisurely, made myself some tea, watched an episode (or two?) of Rome in my bed and then finally motivated myself to put my apartment together. A few hours later, all of my clothes were unpacked, and my room was clean, and I finally felt like I had a home. It is sooo cute!

I decided to enjoy the rest of the day by taking a walk downtown and buying some bread at the bakery and a few items at the local store. It was really nice outside, very sunny, but not too unbearably hot. I enjoyed the walk around town, it also felt good to stretch my legs a bit which were still sore from the games and practices of the week.

I made my way back home and then got ready to go to my handball game. I left "early" so I could have some time at the gym to get my mental game on, but when I arrived, the game was already in progress. I totally flipped out! Apparently I had misunderstood what time we were supposed to be here. My coach had said "dix-huit et demi" (which is 18:30, or 6:30pm) and I just heard the "huit heure et demi" (8:30pm), thus, I arrived at half-time.

It was the worst feeling EVER. I couldn't believe that I had missed half of the game because of not understanding French correctly. I was extremely upset, but sat on the bench and cheered my team on during the second half. We ended up winning 29-16 against the Spanish team, which was a nice victory, but I couldn't feel too happy because I had made such a terrible mistake.

Thankfully the girls and my coach were super nice about it- they realized how upset I was and told me it didn't really matter, it was just a friendly match. But I still wanted to crawl into a hole and die. After the match there was a barbecue and then a bunch of the girls decided to go "en ville" to party a little bit. I was excited when they invited me to come along!

So, my crappy night had begun to improve as we set-off for some wine and snacks at one of my teammate's apartments. After chit-chatting and having a glass of wine, we headed into downtown Montpellier to go to a bar. It was a lot of fun to be "out" and it was my first real night in my new town.

After hanging out with my teammates (who spoke progressively more English with each drink) and meeting some fun foreigner's who also spoke English (a Canadian, some Swedes and a Swiss guy), the bar closed at 1am. Since I had agreed to play in a tournment with the younger team on Sunday at 8am, this is where I called it a night, much to the disappointment of my teammates who wanted me to come party with them at the disco until 5am!

Sadly, because everyone can smoke in the bar, I had to take another shower when I got home at 1:30am. Haven't had to do that in years, since maybe I was a freshman in college and smoking was still allowed indoors? Crazy! So I showered, put my clothes outside to air out and finally hit the sack.

7:30am came around early, and I really had to drag myself out of bed and into my handball clothes. I arrived at the gym around 8am, and there were very few people there, so I had the gym and the goals to myself. Since I am working on improving my shot technique, I spent 30 minutes or so shooting from different places on the six-meter line, trying desperately not to lean too much.

The day went by fairly quickly, and I played four games. The level was not nearly as strong as with the first team, but it was good to build my confidence. I could be a little more agressive and try some new things because there was nothing to lose. In between games, when the court was free, I practiced my shot, so by the end of the day I was completely exhausted and my shoulder was ridiculously sore.

I left the gym at 5:30pm, showered and enjoyed the rest of my Sunday evening relaxing and taking it easy.

French vocabulary lesson of the weekend: Trompe l'heure (to screw up the time)