CREPS

This past weekend I was at CREPS near Lille, it is a sports training facility. Some people live there and train, and at other times sports teams go there together for a weekend, a week or longer to train. About 90 people from my school all went together. It was very interesting, the culture there, for a non-French student. The whole group had a lot of songs they new. Some of these songs are old traditional French drinking and sports songs, while others are ones made up by previous students themselves. They are nearly all very vulgar though needless to say. At one point on the bus everyone started singing and chanting... I had no idea what was going on... but soon enough I did as a guy walked up the bus, and not too far ahead of me proceeded to completely strip down. I was lucky to be on the back side, but apparently this behaviour is normal here, and on the other bus a lot of people got naked to different degrees.

The actual sports training was pretty intense. We woke up at 730 am and kept playing until about 1am with breaks only for eating and a big (and intense) Rock/Paper/Scissors tournament. It was a lot of fun though and gave the teams a chance to bond.

Next Thurday my volleyball team has to go down to Lyon to play a game for the Championnat de France. And at the end of the month we will play in the CRIT -- which is a HUGE (re.3000 people) sports tournament between the IEPs around France. Wish us luck!