Frodo: You’re late.
Gandalf: A wizard is never late, Frodo Baggins. Nor is he early. He arrives precisely when he means to.
…
Frodo: What happened, Gandalf? Why didn’t you meet us?
Gandalf: I was…delayed.
My apologies, dedicated blog readers and followers, for my negligence of this blog for the past 2 weeks. Although I wasn’t trapped in Isengard fighting evil adversaries, I have been quite busy living, learning, and breathing rugby. The internet and power outages haven’t helped either, but I can’t blame them – I’ve dropped the ball. It’s harder for me to write comprehensive blog posts than to post a few small updates here and there so as a reminder,
- Here’s our daily academy schedule that I update at least every 2 days
- My Facebook, which has a good stream and collection of photo highlights
- Twitter and Instagram
I’ve been updating each of these more frequently than this blog, especially the “Maties Dailies” page. On the daily schedule spreadsheet I also threw together a list of reffing gigs we’ve had in the past 3 weeks. For me, I’ve officiated 32 match-ups (since they’re not full 80 minute games) in 3 weeks! WOW!!!!! SA has an AMAZING rugby culture.
Since it’s getting pretty late tonight and I have to be awake in less than 8 hours for a morning stadium stairs (“trappe” in Afrikaans) fitness session, I’ll keep it short, but I promise to update more often for the rest of my South African adventure! Perhaps I’ll stick to highlights instead of comprehensive recollections about every single day? Here’s a quick preview:
Week 2 highlights:
- Went to Cape Town, visited the Springbok Museum!
- On-field vision session
- Ran Bergpad (4k mountain trail) in under 20 minutes
- Got a record (among the 5 of us academy refs) on the Micro machine in Vision Lab!
- Fantastic time reffing youth tournament in Durbanville and chatting with the kids
- HYPE FOR SATURDAY
Week 3 highlights:
- 3 day U15s Tournament with best teams in the country
- Reffed 1st club game in Western Province
- Went to the beach
- A lot of improvement in long term shoulder injury (AC joint)
- Collected TONS of data!!! (Film, audio, feedback)
- AR’d SA U20 Junior World Cup team trials
- TV, Rainbows, New friends
- It’s been 1 year as of Sunday April 6th since my very first game as a referee!!
More details to come soon so stay tuned! Here are a few pictures that add a little more flavor to SA than my typical photo of a beautiful pitch and beautiful weather :)
[…] (Reblogged by Emily from here) […]
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Hey Emily, this blog is amazing. I love your humor and all dem LOTR and Pokemon references :P Seems like you are getting tons of XP with reffing so many matches and training all the time. I’m impressed by your packed schedule and everything that goes into officiating. Keep it up and continue to #WorkForIt :)
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Hi Michelle, THANKS! Hahaha I do feel like I’m getting tons of xp :P I’ve been reading (and mouth watering at) your blog as well and it sounds like you’re getting tons of food, rugby, and FUN XP in NZ too! You make me feel better about taking pictures of food all the time. And pictures of everything in general… I can’t help it – Asian tourist instincts takeover sometimes!
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I’m sooo glad you enjoy the references too and it’s not just me laughing to myself as I think of them. I’m a little disappointed in myself because I just realized I don’t have any references in my most recent update oh no!!! I guess there was so much to say about rugby that my brain forgot to spice things up with my nerdy nonsense – maybe you know the feeling being in NZ where the rugby culture is SO awesome and stalking passerbys to random practices totally works. But if I were in NZ you know the LOTR references would never stop!
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