Rugby

Here is a pic of Jesse with the rest of us sneaking in on the side. In this photo I was so focused on trying to aim the camera correctly I forgot to smile until I had halfway pressed the takepicture button on the camera. I swear my normal picture smile is better than that. Unfortunately smiling and taking a picture is apparently too complicated for me.

Hi again to everyone worldwide. This is Brian trying to keep up the momentum of posting regularly. I say worldwide because we are gaining readers from not only all corners of the US, but also South America (hi Brett!) and of course Australia because we of course read our own posts. Right now I am boycotting the waste of time that is team handball. As you may have heard, a week ago I was forced to play the pivot position at our first practice while Jesse and Taylor got to go frolic around on the wings. Then last Thursday after we spent an hour taking trains and buses down to the University for our second practice, we were the only ones who bothered to show up. Fortunately for Jesse and Taylor, they had scampered past the guy at the door of the gym without paying and by the time the guy trailed them into the gym it was apparent we weren't going to play so we left. I on the other hand, trying to be an honorable guy, just paid the $10 fee up front when we got there like they asked. That meant I had to go back to the guy at the front and ask for my money back. The guy started making up some story about how the paperwork had already gone through making it impossible for him to refund me my $10. I was none too pleased, and I let him know it. After about a minute of shouting between me and the guy at the front of the gym, I got my money back and we left the gym for the second time with me in a bad mood. Consequently, I was far from excited earlier this evening to waste an hour of my time trekking off to the other side of Sydney to pay $10 to maybe or maybe not play some handball and then waste another hour of my time stumbling back all sweaty and gross. Instead after Taylor and Jesse left, I read for twenty minutes and then went on a run for an hour at twilight and did an ab workout. After a shower and some lazing around I expect to be able to finish this blog post, have a snack of yogurt, putz around on the internet for awhile (did I tell you we have internet at our apartment finally!), watch some tv, and maybe write a novel before they get back. Like I said, I am not thrilled about team handball right now. But on to more exciting things.

RUGBY

I am going to just sprinkle in some pictures of the event in no particular order here for your enjoyment.

The four of us went out to the Olympic Park to see Australia take on New Zealand in some sort of World Cup prelim matchup. I am not too sure about all the details of the match so I have a link here that has most of that info. What I do know is the roos and kiwis are supposed to be the two best teams around so we were dazzled by some high quality rugby. Though Australia is also supposed to be kilometres better than anyone else in the world so we weren't expecting the match to be very close.

The game wasn't very close but we still had a lot of fun. From the start it was amazing to be in a huge stadium with all these crazy people getting psyched for a crazy sport we knew little about. What I know about rugby comes primarily from my visits to the rugby field at Stanford to watch Hofius and Preston and company compete. The version of rugby we saw last night seemed different in a number of ways. The most obvious to me was that last night there were virtually no scrums. The teams occasionally would get into a position as if they might scrum and then immediately every time the ball gets kicked out and regular play resumes. Also what seemed so crazy to me back at Stanford was when players would lift their teammates into the air to catch inbounding passes. I didn't see any of that yesterday. So the game was a little different but it was still a ton of fun. Hard hits and crazy fans were everywhere. A group of fans next to us decided they wanted to start the wave (mentioned in the article) and worked at it for 5 solid minutes before they got it to catch on. But when it did catch on, it was something to behold. I've seen my fair share of waves before, mostly at Dodger Stadium where fans are known for their tendency to lose interest in the ballgame quite quickly and begin doing the wave to stave off boredom. But let me tell you, this wave was incredible. Such quality. Such coordination. Such huge amounts of trash were being thrown into the air by the 3^rd or 4^th lap around the stadium.

I tried to take pictures of this gorgeous act of fandom but snapshots just couldn't capture the beauty. And in the end, the group of fans just to our right could not have been happier with themselves for starting that thing. I have no idea which team they were rooting for, but they went home happy. They also started chanting USA at some point during the game too which I did not understand at all.

All in all, it was a great night. There was a booth outside the stadium offering free facepainting which we intend to take full advantage of next time if we get there early enough next time. Then we just need to procure some aussie green and gold clothing to be true roo fans.

A few other side notes before I sign off: we now officially have internet at our apartment like I mentioned earlier. I picked up a modem which seems to get decent service at decent prices so I think we will probably stay with it. If we don't like it though we can return it at no charge in the next 7 days. It will be weird to watch what we do online so as to not use more than the allotted 10gb per month, but it was getting to the point where we needed internet at home since we can't be spending our days at the helping people anymore now that we have jobs.

Speaking of jobs, I am officially working part time at both Sahnia's Restaurant on Bondi Beach as well as Elvis Pizza. I will have about 6 shifts a week between the two places and the flexibility to keep or drop either/both as I decide how much I enjoy the positions. I just hope I have time this week to properly celebrate Erin's bday and Halloween. Between those too holidays and job training, things are going to get pretty busy around here. Alright Jesse and Taylor are back and I didn't have time to write my novel. Stupid laundry always comes out of nowhere and demands to be a priority and messes up my plans. Hope everyone is doing well.