A taste of home: Basketball games :)

With my brother and sister both being avid basketball players, I naturally spent a decent amount of my life at home sitting on the bleachers, cheering on my siblings and their teammates.  When I Skype with my parents here in France, it's not uncommon for them to tell me the outcome of the latest game(s) and for me to express how much I miss being their to support the team.  Lucky for me, though, this last weekend I got the opportunity to watch not just any youth basketball game- but part of an international tournament, right here in my host city.

The very beginning of the Montbrison vs. Prague game.

 

The game was fantastic- Montbrison was in the lead 51 to 49 with two minutes left, and we ultimately ended up winning 55-51. 

 

Towards the end of the game: Montbrison in red, Prague in blue

 

It might be kind of dumb and cheesy to say this, but I still feel like it needs to be said: you really don't realize how small the world is until you experience something like this.  Maybe not a basketball game in particular, but just being in a foreign country, living a different life, and experiencing something so strangely familiar, and sort of reaching that realization of "Hey, we're all different, but not that different."  I was watching these French and Czech kids play basketball the way I might have watched Hollis and Amherst play.  It was a game, with no visible concern for the language barrier, cultural barrier, social barrier that separated these kids.  They were just a bunch of boys out on the court, doing what they were used to doing, playing the way they always played, united by the quasi-universal language of basketball.

 

It's strange to say, maybe, but it was really kind of incredible and touching for me, even if it was just a game.  It's kind of the same way I feel when I'm spending time with other exchange students.  There's really nothing political about it, and while we certainly don't avoid difficult subjects, there's sort of a mutual indifference toward politics, class issues, economics, and so on.  We're not at all blind to our differences, but we generally all find a way to just respect each other and get over that kind of stuff.  This is really one of the reasons I hope everyone who can will go abroad at some point in their life, or develop a close relationship with someone from a foreign country.  It's important to be to that disagreement, even on major issues, isn't at all a reason to dislike someone or to spend less time with them.  I feel like that's really kind of been a big, overarching message throughout this whole year.  Yeah, we're different, but still, everywhere in the world, there are teenagers who play basketball, and kids counting down the days to their favorite holiday, and friends who will give you a ride home when it's raining, and people who know just what to say to make you feel better.  Everywhere in the world, there are families, and nice people, and not-so-nice people, and funny stories, and embarrassing moments, and those days you wish you could relive forever and ever.  And it's always going to be like that.  It all just fills me with a deep desire to know the world- not just to know about things, but to be there, living them and understanding why things are different and how another way of doing things can be just as valid as the way I'm used to.  I feel like this is really the goal of the entire youth exchange program: not only to immerse us in one culture, but also to give us a deeper understanding of the cultures we are yet to know, and an open-minded interest in them.  It sounds idealist when put this way, but truly, if we ever want to work together to achieve anything in the world, we need to start thinking this way.