Mohammed and I talked about rugby today. I was explaining
that it is in a way a mix of soccer and football. But it was difficult. He is
not very familiar with football. But it is easier to equate rugby to football
than it is to soccer. But sadly I am not very familiar with soccer. So it took
an extremely long time. Since I am just learning the game it was difficult to
answer some questions for me.
Talking to him I learned just how little I know about the
game. I started about 2 months ago, but
I wish I knew more.
We spent almost 30 minutes talking about rugby. Eventually
we started talking about Michigan. He says that he is ready for this semester
to be over so that he can move on to the next chapter of his life. I asked
mohammed. Mohammed has been very busy with finals and being in Michigan often
so he had to leave kind of early. I hope I am able to talk to him a few more
times before the semester ends.
I experienced the same struggle of explaining the reasons behind football to my conversation partner. I think popular sports in America is something we don’t realize how engrained it is in our society until you try to explain it to someone who has no background in our culture. My conversation partner’s questions made me ponder why we do pack into a stadium and cheer loudly when one person tackles someone else violently. I had never thought about what was actually going on until I tried to explain, and the best reason why, I could think of, is because that is our culture and it is what people growing up in our culture think is exciting.
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