Our Blog - Spring, Basketball and Handball

This blog will be a little bit of a few things. Spring seems to have come to Toulouse and it has been fairly mild. Here are a few pictures in the park just behind our apartment. One of the things I think is great about Toulouse is that they seem to do a lot of improvements to the city. In this case, there was a 2-man crew that was replacing the park benches. It looks like they take the old ones (normally with the wood slats damaged or missing), replace the wood slats and clean/repaint the metal frame. Then they unbolt the old ones and replace them. They did a set of them this morning as we were walking around. You can also see the daffodils in the park .... some blooming and more that should be blooming in a few days.

It is also Basketball season, and we have 2 professional teams in Toulouse. First up, the men's team. We caught the beginning but left at half-time. Every game, the teams come out with a set of little kids, and usually the kids play a little scrimmage at half-time (co-ed teams). The Toulouse team is in white.

Then the ladies team. We actually enjoyed watching the ladies play more than the men. I'm not sure if I will explain this well, but they play the game more like what we remember. Now, it seems like the men play for 2 shots: 3-pointers and right under the basket. They don't seem to shoot from anywhere else, and it gets somewhat boring. With the ladies, there seems just to be more action, more different shots, more strategy and tactics. Anyway, here are the ladies coming in. Interestingly enough, we see quite a few of the ladies every week heading to and from the arena, which is next door to our hotel. The 2nd picture is an American named Mandy Coleman, who played her collegiate ball at Oklahoma State.

Before the match, they talked about Kobe Bryant, as the crash had recently happened. You can see Kobe and his daughter in the upper-right of the scoreboard.

And then the tip-off!

It is also Handball season and we also have a professional handball team here. We went to a game a couple years ago when our neighbor was on the handball team, and so we decided to go again this season with some free tickets we received when we donated blood. A couple pictures of the start, and the mascot, and then I grabbed a quick video to show the action. Handball is an interesting sport for us, since I hadn't really ever seen it before coming here. It seems like a combination of basketball and soccer but the rules are much different. You do try to score and have a goalie to try to deflect the ball out of the net, which is similar to soccer. But then you can pass and dribble the ball like basketball. However, there is a lot more contact allowed, with people grabbing shirts without penalties being called. There are some penalties or illegal moves, but we don't really understand enough to pick them out.

The two videos, the first shows some of the contact and the second is the goal.