Friday night we decided to head to the local soccer field to kick the ball around and play some frisbee. A few people from our group had a really awesome soccer experience the week before when they were invited into a pickup game with the local Greeks. We weren't so optimistic as to think this kind of thing was likely to happen again, but still, we headed to the field content to play amongst ourselves if that was how things worked out.
Getting onto the soccer field was the hardest part. There were multiple groups, each having their own staked claim on a portion of the field, and us Americans had trouble finding open green turf. Finally, we settled for an unattended goal at the end of the field and started passing and kicking, happy to be upgraded from our outsider spot on the dirt. Now let me tell you a little about my soccer skills...they don't exist. Unless you count a semi-organized team of 5-year olds, I have never played soccer, really ever. My hand-eye coordination; it's good. My foot-eye...not so much. Needless to say, I was a fish out of water on this ginormous green square filled with locals who have been kicking a ball since they could stand. So when we were invited to play soccer with some of the local kids, I was terrified.
We accidentally kicked the ball out of our claimed patch of turf. A Greek man who appeared to be in his 40's stopped the ball with his foot and stood there while I ran to get it. When I came up he asked me where I was from. We talked for a minute or so about the U.S. and then he invited Chase, Mary, Lauren and myself to play a game of "football" with his two sons. What surprised me about this interaction was that it wasn't his sons who invited us, in fact, they had no say in the matter at all. Their dad just sort of volunteered them. Still, we were faced with an incredible opportunity, so we agreed and divided up into teams. It ended up being the two Greek guys (they were about 15 and 12) and me on one team, against Lauren, Chase and Mary on the other team.
I warned my teammates (Bill was the older one's name) how much I sucked at soccer but they didn't seem to mind and to my surprise, actually passed me the ball numerous times throughout the game. I ended up scoring three or four goals during the game and even began to figure it out. I really didn't expect them to ever pass me the ball once they realized how terrible I was, but they went out of their way to make sure I got it. Showing all of us up with their incredibly well-trained kicks and fakes and then passing it to me in the gentlest of ways. Here we were, playing soccer with two people from an entirely different country and culture who speak an entirely different language. The game went on for about thirty minutes at which point we were too winded to keep going (I'm pretty sure these guys were laughing at us). We invited them to join us in a much calmer and less exhausting game of frisbee but they decided they would keep playing soccer so we thanked them and went back to our corner.
We played frisbee for another 30-45 minutes and then realized that everyone was leaving the park and took that as our cue to go home. On our way out we ran into Bill and his brother and father once again. They were the ones closing up the park. I still wonder if maybe they own it. Anyway, Bill's father was talking to us again, asking where each of us was from and explaining the ease of learning Greek compared to learning English. We talked for about five minutes during which time Bill's father tried to get us to exchange facebook information. He started speaking with Bill in Greek and, to me, it seems like Bill didn't really want to exhange facebook info. We didn't have paper anyway so we could politely refuse, for Bill's sake.
What really struck me about this whole situation was that everything we did with Bill and his brother was suggested by their father. He's the one that set up the soccer match. He's the one that started the conversation about facebook. To me, it was very different to see a dad so involved in his sons' lives. I mean, it's like that in the U.S., but you'll never catch a parent telling their kids who to play soccer with or exchange facebooks with. I do remember his dad mentioning something about how talking with us on facebook would help Bill's english and our Greek so I wonder if maybe it was a way for his sons to make American friends through which they could learn better english. Their english was pretty good already but I know the pressure to speak fluent English in non-English speaking countries is great, and the skill is incredibly valued, so maybe all Bill's dad was trying to do was encourage fluency.
Either way, it was a really fun experience to play soccer with local Greeks. It really reminded me how incredibly unifying soccer is. It's the most widespread sport in the world, capable of crossing so many cultural barriers. Despite the fact that we came from two different countries and spoke two different languages, we all had a common ground in the soccer game that we played. And soccer doesn't just serve as a connection across cultures, it serves as a connection within cultures as well. As I looked around, there were tons of local Greek kids all joking around and playing soccer. And though they may not all have a strong passion for the sport, they love it because of it's connective factors. It reminded me of watching the Greek vs. Germany soccer game at a local bar in the neighborhood. The crowd went wild when they scored, made offensive gestures to the German prime minister in tandem and shared each other's company. "Football" serves as a common ground between just about everybody in the world. And to see something so unifying in action is incredible.
No comments:
Post a Comment