Handball, Arles and finally some spicy food

Breaking News: All is good in terms of satisfying my taste buds. I found a restaurant called "El Chivito" (Spanish translation: the donkey) here in Montpellier that serves food from Latin America, including some very very hot salsa, fajitas and empanadas I'm salivating just describing it. I've already frequented twice: Tuesday for lunch and Friday for dinner. After having eaten nothing but baguettes, cheese and croissants everyday for lunch since my arrival I was desperately in need of a different flavor and this restaurant gave me just that. I can already tell that the manager (or owner?) of the restaurant, Roman from Uruguay, knows he can expect me there once or twice a week from here on out. Maybe it was my reaction when he said "yes" when I asked him if they served chips and salsa in his establishment. To go along with all the delectable food El Chivito serves some great sangria for a good price.

There is no gym to workout in at the university but I have signed up to play intramural handball at the university on Monday nights. I showed up last Monday expecting to be overwhelmed by all the rules I was not familiar with and overpowered by all the other French students who, for some reason, I thought would all be 6 foot 2 and posses a cannon for an arm. Turns out though that the majority of the class was made up of scrawny kids and I more than held my own in the conditioning drills that proceeded the scrimmage. While I did prove to be a novice at times during the game I did not have an embarrassing moment....except for when I fouled the other team, resulting in a penalty, after which I proceeded to nod my head when the ref gave me an explanation for what I had done even though I had no idea what he said. The hardest part of handball was learning the positions and understanding what my teammates were asking me to do. I don't know, I guess I must've been absent during the handball vocab unit in my high school French class because my comprehension during the games was somewhere around 1 out of every 50 words. I did manage to score a goal so that erases all the bad I did, in my book. I do realize that towards the end of the hour and a half most of the players started to cut me some slack as they started to catch on that I was American. You tell one person and the whole gym knows within 5 minutes. Since Monday I've basically just been watching handball videos on youtube, so yeah next time I play I expect to dominate....or at least learn how to not give away a penalty.

Wednesday, I went to this underground soccer bar type place called "la casa de futbol" with Isabel, Dan and Sara. Barcelona and Real Madrid were playing that night and most places in town were playing the game but for some reason we decided to watch this game in the basement of this convenient store, probably because we thought they'd serve cheap drinks but that was not the case. Despite that description it was a great atmosphere there were a ton of Barcelona and Real Madrid fans there from both France and Spain and the atmosphere was great.

An another note I think I have managed to become a regular at "Le Huit" a bar in the center of the city with some pretty good drink specials, and its also the place where we celebrated my birthday.I showed up there at half time of the Barcelona game and the bartender greats me with a high five and says "didn't see you here yesterday, where've you been?" I didn't expect that, but I hope I can get some preferential VIP treatment me there or something. Probably wishful thinking.

Saturday a group of us went on a day trip to Arles a city with a couple of roman coliseums and famous because Vincent van Gogh painted a cafe there and he was in a mental institute there as well. I'm not big into art history, but that's cool anyway. There was a market where a few of us grabbed some lunch and wine for a very cheap price. It was fun but exhausting, causing me to sleep in for half the day on Sunday.