My first rubgy practice...and still not homophobic.

Well...today was eventful.

I normally carry shorts in my backpack to school cause we have to wear pants but it gets really hot in the afternoon. So when my friend Nacho told me, ``hey, you´re coming to rubgy practice with me today. You are going to try out being on the team,`` I decided to be adventurous and go play rugby for the first time in my life...amidst a bunch of hardcore Argentinian adolescent males. Rugby is big here.

After school I trolley`d back home, put on my cross trainers and a pair of tennis shorts, and went out not knowing what the hell to expect. When I met up with my friend Nacho at his house, he took a look at me and burst into laughter. ``you can´`t play with those shorts, chè,`` he said to me. Well why not, I answered. ``Because they will get ripped off your body and torn to shreds...`` Wonderful. A beautiful image get me excited for rugby. He loaned me a pair of shorts....more like mid seventies tennis thongs. Apparently the correct apparell for rugby consists of shorts that are smaller th an American boxers. All the guys here wear short boxer briefs...but I wear boxers. So about an inch of my boxers poked out from the bottom of my shorts. Including my Americanly white legs. Beautiful. Already feeling a little...weird, we headed out for practice.

Practice is two hours long. For the first hour, we ran. I dont mean we just ran, we worked. First we did sprints on the field. Then we headed for the stairs. I thought we were just gonna run up and down a few times...I was wrong. First we sprinted up and down 10 times. Then without a break we had to jump without movnig our feet apart up the stairs and down the stairs ten times. That is really, really hard. After that, we had a three minute break, then more...Next we partnered up and sprinted up 6 stairs and back down as many times as we could in 6 seconds. My recordd was 3, the normal. Then when our six seconcds were up we had a break for about 10 seconds while the other group went. Then more. We did this for 10 minutes. Then we sprinted up and down, and tagged our partner. This we did 10 times. Next more jumping, and we were done. I was exhausted by the end of it, but the great thing about those kind of warm ups is that your body goes into super drive. Five minutes later I had adrenaline pumping through my body and I felt like I could run forever.

They sent me to train with the forwards. If you don`t know what that is...its complicated. We form a line, and lift someone up between us to catch the ball as its thrown inbounds from out of bounds. The peculiar part about it is...how we lift each other up. The coach decided to show me. He told me to stay still, and then disappeared behind me. The next thing I knew, he grabbed my ass, literally, and threw me into the air. I landed on my feet, but barely. The way we actually throw people is the jumper stands in between two guys. The one in front pushes up on the things and the guy in back pushed up...well he pushes up on the ass. No joke. So they made me try lifting from the back. I decided not to say anything, and for about 10 minutes was roughly lifting other boys I didnt know by their butt cheeks. Super duper fun. Then I got to be jumper. What you do is begin to jump, and then when you are in the air they push up on you, and you get really high. I caught every pass and simply tried to ignore the hands pushing me up, and where they were pushing from. When you land with the ball, you have to go into a huddle like thing. Basically everyone grabs onto you by whatever body part is availabe, again sometimes uncomfortable, andp pushes. Then you drop the ball to the back of the huddle, and it gets chucked to a side where we start running around making more little huddles. All in all, it was fun. A lot weird at times, but I feel I´m not homophobic and its part of the sport so it´s all good.

Then we played a scrimage. I can undestand spanish pretty well in conversation when people are talking with me at a reasonable rate. But when coaches are screaming at me random words very specific to rugby in spanish I can´t catch anything. So I ended up running around like an idiot randomly attempting to tackle people and at points getting the ball and getting slammed by three people at once. Or rarely I passed it safely away without getting hit. But I thought the game was really fun and I hope to keep trying it. My schedule as is...Work out monday, wednsday and friday, and go to rugby tuesday, thursday and saturday. Chau