A reintroduction to grass

Grass, Malcolm. Malcolm, grass. Ah, pleased to meet you my long lost friend! (If you're in a rush, skip to the pics at the bottom).

Weekend before last I headed out of town for a weekend camp with Javi's church and in the process was reintroduced to something I take for granted in NZ. Unfortunately in this city, grass is a very rare commodity, and where it is, it is not looked after anywhere near as well as back home.

Anyway, to keep it brief, here's a few of my observations:

The people
There was approx 40 of us, which was a nice size, not too overwhelming for this spanglish speaker. It was an interesting mix of people from both lower and middle class backgrounds. Ex drug addicts, troubled teens and a mix of middle class types. Predominantly European though, as is most of BA.

With a lack of language and cultural understanding, its hard to know whether the jokes are funnier here or people just laugh harder but a good time was definitely had by all, late into the night. I get the feeling that this culture is generally a bit more “extroverted” than home.
But thats hardly going to surprise anyone! They were very welcoming and I immediately felt at home, which was nice, in only my 2nd week.

The time
Things run later here. Start later, finish later. I like.

A good example of this is Sunday arvo. After we were packed and tidied up, we sat around for a couple of hours and waited for everyone to finish, so we could take a group photo and all say our goodbyes (combinations of hugs and kisses).
I was sitting there for a while trying to comprehend this. Sure, I have lots of time to sit around and enjoy the slow pace but I couldn't imagine this happening back home. Don't you guys have to get busy or something...? Don't you have “stuff” to do? You know all that weekend biz to catch up on? No? But you're back at work tomorrow and you're prolly going to be commuting for hours... No entiendo, una papa (see Ultimate Phrase blog).

The futbol
Of course I couldn't pass up a chance to play the beautiful game and connect with the locals. They have an annual singles vs marrieds game at the camp but the English speakers were all married, so I swapped allegiances. Despite my football ignorance, lack of fitness and general language inability (who knows if they have terms like “man on” or “line” in Espanol, or who they were telling me to kick it too...), I managed to have a good time!

Fortunately my standard strategy paid off. Stay at the back, get in the way of any one attacking and pull off the occasional successful tackle (since the place was pretty wet, the more splash the better!). One tackle that got me particularly soaked had the crowds roaring with delight!
Well, crowd of 10 anyway, I can dream.
Afterwards one of the opposition teens attempted to tell me I was “good” and via translation, I wouldn't let him play his game, combined with various pats on the back. Haha. Yuusss. Little did they know...
or maybe they were just being nice. Its fair enough though... with the All Whites somewhere below 100th in the world, there would be no expectation that a Kiwi could actually kick a ball.

The time factor mentioned previously did come into play here too. I asked one of the marrieds when we were going to finish the game (at this stage I was about ready to crash!). The reply was something like "when we win..." ha! Eventually with some more questioning from me, there was some chatter and movement amongst the players...
Half time.
Oh great! Half time. Just what I need.
Yes... I get the feeling things works a little different here.