Pre-season Match 3

I spent today taking my entrace exams for the University, to determine my exact level of French. I was surprised when I scored so highly on my oral exam, placing me in level 4 (advanced intermediate) out of 6.

I guess having been here for the last two weeks has already affected my oral comprehension and speaking skills. So, even though I FEEL a long way from being fluent, I guess I'm understanding a pretty decent amount of Frech.

In the afternoon I took my written exam, which was 4 pages of grammar excercises and then two hour-long essays. I felt OK on about half of the grammar excercises (I think I bombed one section though), and fairly good about my essays. They aren't terrible complex, but I think they turned out OK. We'll see, if I do OK I should stay at level 4. If my grammar was really bad, maybe I'll have to drop into level 3, I'll have to wait another week or so to find out.

The cool thing about spending the day at the University taking exams is that I met a bunch of people; a few Americans, an Austrian, and some Norweigens. They were all really cool and I had a fabulous time talking to people in English. I know, I'm here to learn French, but it has been a while since I could actually carry on a conversation with people in English!

So, I'm looking forward to classes starting so I can make new friends and start to have a social life. That will be fun.

Anyway, when I finished at the University, I had a few hours to kill before going to the handball gym. I went downtown and hung out at the Polygone, the big shopping mall near the Place de la Comedie. I was on the look-out for a new school bag and some shoes, but didn't see anything interesting. So, instead I had a smoothie and a waffle with chocolate while I browsed what was "la mode" in French fashion. When did MC Hammer pants become sexy? That is NOT acceptable, and will be another fashion item I avoid along with skinny pants and 80's clothes.

When I finished my snack and had had my fill of nauseating fashion items like overalls and hammer-pants, I headed over to the gym.

As usual, I got lost for 40 minutes before I found it, but at least I had given myself enough time that I could arrive early for practice. We started at 7pm, but only ran through plays and did general passing and shooting warm-ups to prepare for the match at 8:30pm.

I didn't start this game, but went in around 15 minutes at the circle, after the other circle dominated with 4 goals. I didn't feel particularly confident on offense after strugging to connect with my backcourt in the last game against Nimes. I also have a hard time understanding the nuances of the plays, so for the time being, I feel like my backcourts are really frustrated with me. I scored one goal on a nice pass from the right back, drew a penalty on a second, and then hit the goalie in the stomach (arggggh) on the third, which really threw me off.

As a team we were killing the other team- they didn't even score for the first 18 minutes. We finished the first half 16-2, and then won the game 29-8 in the end. I played 40 minutes in total, and actually felt pretty good physically. We were finally able to run the fast break as a team and I enjoyed being on first wave. So, even if my offense is struggling at the moment while I get used to playing circle with a different group of people, at least my defense was solid and I was able to run like crazy through the whole game.

Laurent was pleased to see that some things were finally coming together (I say it is thanks to our awesome team-bonding weekend!). The plays that we practiced earlier in the evening looked good and we significantly reduced our turnovers. It is definitely looking positive for us if we can continue to keep it together.