Futbol
So as part of my adapting to life here in Honduras I have joined the local futbol team. For those of you in the states this is soccer, you know that game that Europeans and small children play with their feet. (As a side note it is kind of funny that the Spanish name is literally just a more Spanish way of pronouncing “football”, in fact neither “fut” not “bol” is a Spanish word, if it was a translation it would be “pie-balon”, they also do this for the term “offsides”). This is a pretty new sport for me, in that I did play all through childhood, but have not touched a soccer ball more than a handful of times since I was in middle school. Apparently in the interceding ten years I have lost much of my past skill (what little there was of it initially), most likely to all of my time spent playing hand-sports (for those of you unfamiliar with the sport (aka. Americans) there are no hands allowed in soccer. The lack of hand-sports here means that people generally can’t catch or throw things instinctually in the way that Americans can, thus it’s pretty funny to toss any kind of object with my Honduran friends (though one has to be careful because tossing food is like kind of offensive here even if it is wrapped). Thus it has been a tough three months of acclimating myself to the sport, it was especially hard initially not to tackle opponents as I have been doing in rugby or American football since high school (this has been especially tempting since all of the guys I play futbol with are like 5’ tall Honduran guys who would be really easy to crush).
Despite my early failings I have finally started to get the hang of things after three months of practice. I am part of the official town team and play in the daily scrimmages we have between the two teams in town and the third team made up of high school kids. I have figured out that the best position for me is midfield as it lets me use my size best (note how much bigger I am than everyone else in the picture, and the two guys to my right are like the two biggest guys in town). I have also found that the futbol they play here is pretty rough and a certain amount of jostling and pushing is encouraged, which makes me like the game so much more. I have even begun to get play time in the tournament which we are currently hosting in town, and was able to play 30 mins at the end of the last game when our captain went out with what I’m pretty sure is a scratched cornea (though this happened a few days ago and he has decided to self medicate by wearing an eye patch, we’ll see how that turns out.) Also as a last thought, a number of my team mates have taken to calling Gerard Pique (a Spanish futbol player with a decent beard) for obvious reasons not involving my playing abilities.
