French Volleyball

Jeremy: "How is French volleyball different from American volleyball?"

Me: "It's the same, except for you can't understand what they're saying."

Picture this: Old-school gym. 6 sweaty French men. 1 tomboy French woman. Two months into the season. Ear-slapping spikes, serves, and hits. Lots of French.

Add two timid foreigners (an American and a Canadian), whose level of French is almost as bad as their level of volleyball, and you've got tonight's adventure in a nutshell :D

The start of our rendez-vous with the "beginning level intramural" French team in Villeurbanne was so awkward you could bounce a volleyball off the tension in the air. Megan and I kept giving each other big eyes and mouthing, "This is so awkward!" But we stayed, determined to do what we had come for: to play volleyball.

Eric, the player/coach with tight shorts and a beer gut, made us warm up with the most logical drill possible: slamming a ball into the ground as hard a possible. "To work out the arms," he said (in French, of course. This was about the extent of my comprehension for the night).

Okay. Jogging warm-up, ball-slamming, volley-bump passing, spiking, serving done. It's time for an hour-long game. I've never played so much volleyball in my life. Luckily, I had played volleyball before in my life, so I could pretend like I knew what I was doing.

The whole game, the only thing I could understand was "Out!" The rest of the time, I'd smile and nod, occasionally looking over to Megan and laughing at the realization that we were two foreigners, with a bunch of random French people in a gym, playing volleyball. It was awesome.

We managed to get outta there uninjured, minus some sore arms and dampened egos...but it was totally worth it. Who wouldn't want a chance to hang out with some Frenchmen in their 30s who've never heard of deodorant?