The Road To Dubai (not the golf).

It all starts tomorrow morning folks! I leave the campus at 6:15am to go to State College and then it's a long bus ride up to New York City. I hang there until early Sunday morning when my flight leaves for Dubai with a one hour stop-over in London, Heathrow Airport.

I really can't wait to get home to see all my friends and family. In a weird way, I'm going to miss campus life though. Yeah it can get boring at times but it's a laugh, and that's what I was looking for in a college.

So thank you people of the Mount. I've loved my first semester - well the soccer football and the people anyway.

I want the next semester to fly by so that I can get playing again and get more goals. We ARE making play-offs next year! I'd like to wish good luck to the two seniors, Luke Fragello and Kevin Wheelden, who had their final season this semester. I'd also like to say good luck to my striking partner in crime, Na'im Bashir, who's transferring out. Finally, a big thanks to Coach Ali for being a great manager and setting us in the right direction. The team can go far under you're influence, I hope you're still shouting at us from the sidelines next year! Good luck guys! Never forget the famous Mounties!

Football, Not Soccer.

Ok then, so I guess it's time for my real first entry which actually relates to the subject of the blog.

A "real" football

I've been living here since August, so about 5 months now. I didn't experience the "cultural shock" that was a term thrown about by other ex-pats who found it difficult to settle in. I think this was because I was fortunate enough to speak the only language known on an international scale - football.

Well, I call it football, along with the rest of the whole world, apart from America. Which leads me into my main point. Where did the yanks get the term "soccer" from? This football/soccer dilemma was the first major difference that hit me, besides the fact that everyone sounded different to me and kept saying "Wow, I love your accent!"

I chose to do my Cultural Literacy Studies research project on the reasons why Americans did not adopt the world's most popular sport as their primary pass-time. I mean, they're American, so wouldn't they want to be the best at it? They have such driven and determined attitudes in all sports, so why not this one?

I'll spare you the boring, historical reasonings behind the lack of "soccer", but it was mainly to do with a lack of success, new sports arising (baseball, basketball, American football and ice hockey), and the fact that they were unable to change the rules to their liking.

Despite my thorough research (total lie there, I spent amount twenty-five minutes searching on Google and bluffed a reference list), I never came across anything relevant to origination of the word "soccer". I'm sure it's very easy to find out, but I really can't be bothered doing anymore research.

So my American muckka's, where's it come from? And don't even try giving me the whole: "We play real (American) football!"- because we all know that's just a pile of crap. The "real" football is the one played with our feet, which is why I guess we called it "foot"ball.