Another Holiday Greeting From France:
It’s Thursday, December 19th, better known as Al Kaline’s birthday. He turns 79 today. It hardly seems possible I saw him play for the Tigers when he was 20-years-old and was in the process of winning a batting championship. It’s not easy to win a batting title when you’re 20, especially considering very, very few players ever play a game in the major leagues before they are 21 years-old.
Keaka is home from school today. His lingering cold has taken a turn for the worse, leaving him with a bad cough. We’re trying to nurse him along and get him ready for the Paris trip.
Yes, we went and saw a handball match last night. The Aix-en Provence team is in the French major league (the top league) and plays in a small facility with about 2,000 seats, which creates quite an atmosphere. You can look it up, there’s plenty of information about team handball. We should have read about it before going, but that would have been too easy. It’s a combination of basketball and soccer, though I just read that some view it as similar to rugby, which I can see. I had trouble forming an opinion of the experience, and now, a day later, I’m not any clearer. I liked it, but it was lacking something. It certainly doesn’t take the athletic ability of basketball or hockey. The most athletic aspect of the game is trying to throw the ball towards the net, which usually is done in mid-air, while trying to fake the goalie. It’s simple enough....no equipment, just a ball and two nets. Sound like basketball? I see photos of the game being played on hardwood (basketball court), but the match we saw was played on a floor made of rubber, or at least that compound rubbery like court, which a few colleges in the U.S. use in their basketball arenas. Anyway, team handball is huge in Europe, and they’re talking about building a new arena here in Aix-en Provence (there really isn’t a true arena) with about 5,000 seats that would have team handball as the primary tenant.
So, back to Nimes (neem). You can look up Roman arenas and see all sorts of photos, so we are not to suggest that our attached photos are the best available, but they were taken by Sophia. Again, there are many of these Roman arenas still existing. And, some, like the arena in Nimes, are still in use, usually for concerts. The enormity of the construction project completed at the time these were built is very hard to imagine. I would say if construction of a Roman arena were undertaken today, using the materials that were available back when (stone), it would be an extremely challenging project. To walk through one of these arenas and imagine lions coming down the ramp to the main floor and men battling for their lives is a bit overwhelming.
Just a few closing notes:
The kids each received a Hewlett-Packard computer from school. I don’t know if that’s the practice throughout France, but it certainly is down south here in the Marseille area. Oh by the way, Keaka informs me to say “ma-say”, as in mom says. I include the “r”, but as always, lots of letters don’t get said. Again, there must be plenty of school tax money for those computers. Speaking of school, the kids are on their third Spanish teacher. I can’t explain. It’s still a bit bewildering that their first class starts at 8:20 and the last class concludes at 5:20. And, there’s lots of “free” time along the way. My American view says there’s a lack of efficiency here somewhere. We were told that drivers in the south of France were terrible. That’s a good scouting report. A high percentage of drivers here drive way to fast and a like number of drivers are rude. I can live with speed, but the rude really gets my blood boiling.
The Wilsons
