wait. make that "handball, 'zidane', and all that gasgas..."

guess you won't be waiting long enough for a rollicking sweet entry about another stint of 'PE with dummies', 'coz this time i'm giving life and limb (literally) for handball.

handball, for all who have encountered such a word for the first time, is a team sport that is a crazy mix of 'basleyccer' - basketball, volleyball & soccer. the element of basketball is particularly evident, what with the passing of a medium-sized gamossa (sp?) ball using the hands (but of course) to team members, dribbling (within 2 counts), and shooting. and most of the rules of the hoops apply to the hands too. the soccer factor comes in with the goal net (the visibly obvious hint) and the opponent goalkeeper who's standing guard. as for volleyball, it probably comes in with catching & scoring. handball is an official sport that's part of the summer olympics, and various other athletic competitions. it's primarily popular in european countries -- although less well-known in many parts of the world, where we all know what the chief is. i for one, have never heard of this until last year. but anyways, i signed up out of curiosity (and lack of enthusiasm for nearly everything else) this semester, et voila!

our PE sessions started quite late, as the weather cooperated badly with our schedule for the first 2 months, since we play it on an open court. (eww! UV rays! *loco*) as a result, after a session on practice throwing, we basically thrusted ourselves in the cement with little know-how for the games... especially for people like me who can't score a goal to save her life! for the games we were divided into inter-college teams, and are assigned uniform colors. (ours was red.) uniform consisted of a jersey and knee-length shorts. wearing them for the first time made me feel kinda naked (!) because i wasn't accustomed to showing my legs after being used to wearing pants to school daily. and so we trudge on...

i'm blessed that our 8-man team are equally distributed -- the guys are tall and strong enough, while the girls are agile and gung-ho (i don't fit anywhere. hmm) .. so in case i suck, they could more than make up for it. the main highlight would be our anointed star player, a korean (yes, as in imported kimchi *hee*) who is so spectacularly good at scoring goals i'd like to call him the "zidane of handball". it helps that he comes from a football-crazy nation and is good at basketball too. our goalkeeper is also as manic at blocking as we'd like him to be, and because of all this sweet luck, we win our matches! =)

and as you have read in my previous entries about all the blah i've been going through, handball was not spared from the deluge. it happened last week: i knew i was not in the best of spirits that time, and add to that the exhausting heat which wore me down even before the game. i tried to be confident and planned to make up for my half-a*sed efforts from the first game. when the game started, i thought i was doing well with running and playing offense (oh yeah?), but then WHAM! i slipped and slid to the hard pavement, causing a horrible scene (complete with audience shrieking and commotion). my right knee was brushed with dirt and blood. it was partly pitiful and fully craptastic... i slipped for a lame purpose! i wonder what people thought of it (i wanted to disappear). and so i was excused from the game, and our zidane got in. actually i felt sorry for him more than myself, because he's supposed to be the substitute (less playing time) in the game as he had an minor ankle sprain from the last match. i couldn't bear looking at my teammates.

as the wound swelled, i was 'escorted' by 2 classmates down to the health service, which was a bit of a stretch. i have never been to the hs for any other purpose than for the one mandatory checkup i had back when we were freshmen, so i didn't know the procedure of securing a slip. oh well. it's terribly bureaucratic inside the place... i was glad to have company with all the waiting. (look madam, i've got a friggin' blood clot here! ;p) sometime after 10 minutes was i received by the nurse, who said my scab-looking wound was an abrasion, and took me to the other room to have a nicely-packed bandage. boy, i seemed to look like an injured parakeet! =D the PE session had ended when we returned, and the good thing is that our team won without me (7-1! don't know whether to call it a blessing in disguise...)

the days after the incident were punctuated with aches and more oozing and swelling. it was a bit hard to me to walk straight, though now it's quite alright -- i just can't bend my right knee with the still open wound smack in the middle of it. luckily again, just this tuesday we didn't have PE! so i think by the 12th the abrasion will be almost healed and i can play... if i want to! :)

(i'm boring you out, am i? hahaha! posting for history's sake Xp )

---