First Handball Experience

Yesterday (Saturday) was another day off, and our city's handball team was playing at home, so we decided to go watch. The handball team is in Series A, so they are pretty good and get a lot of people at the games. Well, I know nothing about handball and therefore the game was very interesting to me because there are always whistles being blown and apparently physical contact is ok. Lynnea and I were trying to figure out what physical contact wasn't allowed because the whistles would blow for some contact but not for others, so we were very confused throughout the whole game. The game was very close the whole time; the scoring seems to go back and forth, the goalies don't seem to stop a lot, the score was 31 to 30, we won! It was exciting to see how supportive the fans were, they brought noise makers, and a big stuffed panda dressed in a jersey. They cheer very loud and yell at the refs whenever they don't like something, they will even yell at the players of the other team if they do something they don't agree with. Last night I witnessed a man running to the edge of the railing and spitting on one of the players that got a red card as he was leaving the gym. The crowd was going crazy, and I couldn't interpret why because it didn't look much different than the other actions going on in the game. It was just an all out crazy game, players throwing players around, coaches walking off of their bench over to the other bench yelling at players, fans yelling at refs and waving their hands in the air, noise makers going. It was just so intense and exciting, I still have no clue of the rules, and Adri couldn't really explain them to us, but it was fun, and I will definitely be going to another game.  Here are some videos that I took...

Me and Lynnea

After the game, we came home and ate dinner then headed to a little pub with Maria and one of our other "sometimes" teammates, Fabiana.  I use the word "sometimes" because she practices with us every once in a while, but doesn't play, or dress, or even sit on the bench during games.

Simona (teammate) and me

We went to the pub, met some of our other teammates, then went to Terracina, the next town over, to a disco. Good thing we had VIP passes because they don't seem to have a capacity limit of how many people they let in, and the  main floor was packed. And of course the typical house music was blaring, and people were fist pumping the night away.

Italian word/phrase of the night: siete pronte? "are you ready?"