games

Flashback: Brazil

October 6, 2011 By Jillian

Truco!

We shouted over and over again. Truco! Truco! Truco!

It was as though no time had passed from our first meeting a year before. Just as we had before, we sat around a table playing cards, unable to peel ourselves away from the game of tricks.

Truco is a popular card game in Brazil, Uruguay, Argentina and Spain. Designed around trickery (truco means tricks in Portuguese), the game revolves around bluffing and distraction. Cheating is not the name of the game; rather the idea is to distract your opponent through fast play, loud conversation, funny stories, etc… The game is fast and furious, at least when you get a hang of it – it’s the perfect game to play with a group of friends over a round of drinks.

And that’s how we found ourselves, a year later, in the exact same position as we were in DC- sharing jokes, telling stories and generally trying to distract each other from the game.

Visiting with these friends- who had couchsurfed with us in DC -was our first opportunity to have a sense of “normal” on our journey through South America. We had rushed through Eastern Bolivia to get to a tour we had won in the Pantanal and then flew to Rio de Janiero in time to celebrate the Jewish New Year. Brazil up to that point had been a bit of a whirlwind so slowing down to take the time to play cards and enjoy the company of others was a nice break in our routine. They were the first couchsurfers we visited on our journey that had stayed with us and for a few days we had the comfort of not only a great place to stay, but also of friendship. We wrote about how important it was to us at the time, but even now, looking back on it, I know our time in Brazil wouldn’t have been nearly as fun or memorable without the days we spent together.

Sure we visited a few museums and sites, and spent a whole day at the largest Oktoberfest outside of Germany (hehe), but mostly our time was spent hanging out, enjoying each other’s company and playing truco. Our couchsurfers opened their homes to us and although we played a lot of cards, we also got to know their families and share stories and be normal. It was the exact break we needed, a little truco to revive our travel mojo and get ourselves energized again.

Photo Credit: #1 courtesy of flickr user ccarlstead via creative commons licensing. Other photos property of IShouldLogOff.

Sharks vs. Chiefs

February 18, 2010 By Danny

Opening game of the season, the Sharks of Durban taking on the Chiefs of….New Zealand?

Yes, thats how sport works outside of the USA. Sure you can play against your countrymen but that isn’t nearly as fun as mixing in the other countries as well. The Sharks are one of 5 South African professional teams that play not only for the domestic championship (alongside several other lesser teams as well) but in the Super 14 League of teams including Australia and New Zealand. (Argentina is due to join shortly bringing the number of teams even higher)

The game opened up as a rather boring game with each team kicking the ball back and fourth and back and fourth…it actually seemed as though we were watching a soccer match. The reason for all the kicking was that it was pouring and kicking in the rain is easier than catching and throwing the ball. No one could make it to the end zone instead kicking it through the uprights on penalties twice each, leaving the score at an even 6-6 at halftime.

The stadium was pretty similar to any NFL stadium. Perhaps a bit smaller, and with a much lower ticket price, it was every bit as enjoyable. The food for sale was generally the same, plenty of beer on tap, but men walking around with biltong instead of cotton candy. The stadium was in the shadow of the new world cup soccer stadium across the way, and there were jerseys for sale in the stadium shop.

After the half the game was very different with each team running and rucking the ball. The sharks never made it into the try zone but managed to kick three more times making the 15 – 6. Then a break-away and suddenly the Chiefs were threatening to put a try on the board, the Sharks held though and kept holding, eventually kicking the ball away in what could be described as a brilliant goal-line defense. Eventually though, there was another break-away and before we knew it the Chiefs had scored their try, made their conversion, and were leading by one point with 2 minutes remaining on the clock.

The next minute and a half was flurry of rugby and somehow, with 30 seconds remaining the Sharks (that’s the home team, remember) drove most of the way to the goal, were awarded a penalty kick, and were suddenly ahead by 2 points. The crowd was wild and rowdy, the rain still pouring down and as the final thirty seconds ticked down…game over! But wait. After the clock expired the referee was there, on the field, blowing his whistle awarding those Chiefs a penalty of their own…they kicked and it was good…leaving the crowd boo-ing the Aussie ref out of the stadium as the Chiefs took the win in “overtime.”

Invictus

February 17, 2010 By Danny

Before seeing Invictus, the new movie about the 1995 South African rugby team, I would have told you that Rudy was the greatest sports movie ever made. Having now seen Invictus I still think Rudy is the greatest sports movie ever made….not because Invictus was worse, but because Invictus isn’t a movie about sports, it is a movie about South Africa.

For those of you who haven’t seen the movie, I won’t spoil it for you but I will offer a small summary. Starring Matt Damon as the captain of the Springboks (the national rugby team of South Africa) and Morgan Freeman as Nelson Mandela (if you don’t know who he is then shame on you) the movie describes how the Springboks were lead to an improbably Rugby World Cup victory (this is history, you can look it up, I’m still not ruining the movie) just one year after South Africa became a democracy in 1994.

But like I said, its not a sports movie, its a South African movie.

One of our first posts to this blog after we arrived here in South Africa was about Apartheid and our initial impressions. Despite it being the Christmas season, we posted it anyway as it was something that was “in our face” and so we felt we should put it out there right away as such. We see its affects when we talk to whites who were passed up for jobs on account of the South African version of Affirmative Action (called Black Economic Empowerment) and when we meet blacks and coloreds who still hold deep hatred in their hearts for all things white.

Sure the ANC (Mandela’s political party) still holds power over the country but that doesn’t mean the average black has the same opportunities as the average white. When we see the nice cars, its the whites behind the wheel, and the blacks walking down the to clean a house or stand as a security guard. This is the division that still exists today and it is far from unique.

The movie Invictus shows us this disparity in a way only a movie can. At the start of the movie we see white boys at a prep school playing rugby while black boys in rags play soccer across the street, two worlds apart. At various points towards the end of the movie we see whites and blacks playing rugby together. This is the coming together that South Africa continues to grow from in a way that IS unique.

This is a movie about coming together as a people: Not red versus blue; not black versus white, not Jew versus Muslim, and not Montague versus Capulet. It is a story of what can be accomplished people who choose to work together rather than against one another.

Rules of Rugby for Americans

February 16, 2010 By Danny

We’re talking about Rugby this week so it seems right to actually explain how its played. No, Rugby is not Football without pads. Yes, it is rumored to have its origins on a soccer pitch at Rugby College in England. Actually, versions of the game go back hundreds of years despite only being codified in 1845.

Despite being even less popular in the USA than soccer, it is a surprisingly simple game to be able to follow as a spectator. The best way I know to explain it is to imagine 30 grown men, on a big field, playing an organized version of kill the man with the ball. The basics are simple. With the ball in your hand you can run wherever you’d like, generally your teammates will be disappointed with you though if you run any direction other than forward toward the goal (called a try) zone. You can kick the ball forward as well but you can never throw the ball forward, only backward. You’re free to kick the ball backward as well but again, your teammates will be very angry with you if you do that. When you have the ball and are tackled (again, your teammates will have preferred the ball to have been passed backward to someone else) you are allotted one quick motion and must let go of the ball almost immediately. If no one is around you are more than welcome to pick the ball up again and continue running but chances are that this is not the case. Some of your teammates are probably right behind you (having been looking for that pass) and some of the opposing team are in front of you as you lays helpless on the ground. Pretty soon these two groups of big, burly men will run into eachother, forming a ‘ruck’ right above you, as you lay trying to protect your helmet less head and face from the array of steel-toed rugby cleats.

One group (hopefully your teammates who if your lucky have forgiven you for not passing the ball and making them ruck/work) will push the other out of the way and someone else will pick up the ball and the cycle will start again, hopefully with a little more passing this time.

This is how the game is played. Cycle after cycle, ruck after ruck. It is grueling but it is a good time, exceptional workout, and a phenomenal way to geft out frustration. At any time, any player on the field can carry the ball, tackle, ruck, kick, pass, or bounce the ball to drop-kick it through the uprights for a 3 point field goal. To score a 5 point try you must not only get the ball to the opposing teams try-zone (just like in football) but you must also touch the ball to the ground. If you get tackled first, tough luck. If you touch the ball way out by the sideline, guess what, your team’s kicker has to kick for the 2 point conversion (think extra point) from just as close to the sideline as you touched the ball down to the ground. This means that merely scoring will not leave your teammates happy with you if your team needed all 7 (that’s 5 and 2) of those precious points.

But that’s not all there is to the game. Sometimes the ball goes out of bounds and needs to be thrown back in. To do this in Rugby the team that didn’t take it out of bounds gets to throw it but the thrower must throw the ball straight down a one meter “tunnel” between the two teams. The thrower must throw it straight, no favoritism, but can throw it as far as he wants which means only his team knows how far its going. Both teams will hoist players into the air to fight and contend for the ball with the ground remaining far below. Sometimes players do stupid things like throw the ball forward, or just miss catching it and knock it forward with their outstretched fingers. There are tons of penalties that can be called and when they are one of two things happens. Either the other team gets the ball with a free 10 meters to run before the offending team can touch them, or there is a scrum. A scrum is a more organized form of the ruck where half of each time literally butts shoulders with the other. Like I said, this is organized even though it might not look it. One player, the scrum-half, on the team awarded the scrum (the non-offending team) places the ball into the middle of the scrum on the side of the scrum that gives his team the advantage in hooking the ball. The player front and center of of each teams scrum is the hooker and the hooker with his leg hooks the ball once its thrown into the scrum toward the back of the scrum. In the back of the scrum the scrum-half again is the one to touch the ball, taking it out and passing it to his teammate when he sees fit.

Generally, Rugby is a surprisingly simple sport to both watch and play. It can get confusing when watching scrums and line-outs (the ball being thrown back in bounds) for the first time but hopefully this far from complete outline helps you to think of rugby as more than just football without pads.

Flashback: Brazil

Sharks vs. Chiefs

Invictus

Rules of Rugby for Americans

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