The Story of a Jersey

This is my Xavi jersey.  I bought it in November 2008 from the FC Barcelona official online store.  It's women's cut, with shorter, cap sleeves and a deep v-neck, and is taken in at the waist, so it hugs my body nicely.

It is also the last Barcelona jersey that I bought.  I bought it thinking that I'd be buying one jersey a season, and oh how wrong I turned out to be.

It's probably my favorite article of clothing that I own.  My favorite team, my favorite player.  It looks good on me, it feels good on me, and I've had so many memories made while wearing this shirt.  When I bought it, I had no idea that this would be the season we'd win a treble.  I bought it during a time we weren't doing that hot in the league, we hadn't even played Real Madrid yet, and even Xavi was still far more underrated than he is now (you could argue he's not underrated at all, but I guess that depends on the circles you run in).  He hadn't even been nominated for a Ballon d'Or/FIFA World Player yet.

With this jersey, I've seen Barcelona beat Real Madrid 2-6 and 5-0.  I've seen them sneak past Chelsea to score a goal in the 87th minute to qualify for the Champions League final.  I saw them win a treble in this shirt.  I met up with a guy I had a massive crush on while in this shirt and we talked about football for a couple hours.  I visited Camp Nou in this shirt, and got cat-called to cries of "Visca el Barça!" and "Visca el Xavi!" in this shirt.  I've been on delayed and cancelled flights in this shirt, and I've been in three different countries in this shirt.  I wore it when I went to Manhattan to meet up with my best friend in person for the first time to watch the 2010 Champions League final as she donned her Real Madrid jersey.  I wore it to watch Barcelona games at a bar in Toronto and felt like I gave Xavi an extra stroke of luck whenever I wore it because he scored in three out of five matches I went to watch in this shirt.  Hell, 95% of the Catalan I know I learned while owning this jersey, not to mention that I spoke with some of my favorite radio people in Catalan while wearing this jersey.

I'll be honest.  I still want to get another Barcelona shirt when I have the money.  But whenever I look at this one, and think of all the things I've done and seen while wearing it, I can't help but wonder if this is the only jersey I need.

Sometimes I spend money.

Very few people are going to care, but as I have nothing else to really talk about, here are some pictures from my latest hauls.  Note: I still don't have a job, but I'm starting to get some kind of allowance from my parents (in cash) just so I can buy a few things I need (mostly clothes), and I also have a few gift cards that I need to use.

B-b-b-broken record

Here I go again, talking about language issues in Spain, particularly dealing with Catalan --Basque is just not as big an issue--, but if you read my blog regularly this is kind of my "thing" and should surprise no one that I'm talking about this.  And I'm actually kind of late with this one, like two weeks, but I've been out of the loop for a while.  Don't mind me.  Anyway, here's the topic.


I just finished reading a blog entry on the Ara.cat webpage (one of my favorite news sources, won't even lie) in the Sports section about the Chinese journalist who asks FC Barcelona coach Pep Guardiola questions in Catalan despite only being in the country since last summer and being able to communicate perfectly well in Spanish, and the Italian journalist who also asks questions in Catalan (by the way, all the links lead to Catalan articles) and was pointed out by Guardiola himself as an example of "linguistic immersion" as he's also been in Catalunya less than a year.

One of the points the author of the blog post makes that I find incredibly relevant is how in Italy, no one even bothered to ask Francesco Canale, the Italian journalist who asks questions in Catalan, to ask Guardiola the same questions again in Italian, which Guardiola does speak.  And yet, in the rest of Spain, players who answer questions in Catalan are often asked to repeat their answers in Spanish.  It's the idea that because the Catalans speak Spanish, they shouldn't need to translate anything in the broadcast.  So besides the fact that there's a state of shock anytime a non-Catalan speaks Catalan, regardless of how much time they've been living in the region, there's also that element of "Why doesn't the rest of Spain get it?"

Honestly, I don't know.  Catalan's not that difficult a language (though the verbs and certain parts of the grammatical structure are kind of a bitch, I give it that) and it's not like anyone's trying to convert anyone to another language.  Speaking Catalan doesn't automatically make someone a Catalan nationalist/separatist (just ask Andrés Iniesta) who brings estelades to every meeting.  If foreigners, many of whom already speak Spanish, and many of whom don't, can get it and learn the language, why does Madrid still treat it like the spoken version of the Spanish flu?

Nostalgia's going to kill me

About a month ago on Spotify I created a playlist called "Spain 1997-2000" for the sole purpose of archiving the songs I used to listen to all the time back then, when I would sit in my room with my tape recorder (how old school! xD) with Los 40 Principales on the radio and I would press "play/record" whenever a song I liked came on so I could stick the tape in my Walkman (gotta love the late '90s!) and listen to my favorite songs from the radio as I walked the twenty minutes to school and the twenty minutes back.

The truth is, I haven't really listened to the playlist until just last night when I decided to put it on again and put some more songs onto the playlist.  I shuffled through it when I first made it but skipped each song after about thirty seconds so I knew which songs were in there.  And it's crazy, because so many of these songs I literally haven't listened to in years, and by years I mean ten, eleven, twelve years.  So naturally, because music is an incredibly powerful mnemonic device for me (personally, music works far better than scent for me; scent loses its memory powers after a while, while music...something always remains of those memories for years on), when I listen to songs like "Summer Son" by Texas or "Depende" by Jarabe de Palo, or "Fly Away" by Lenny Kravitz I can see myself sitting on the wood floor of my bedroom, looking out towards Artea and the highway running from Bilbao to Algorta.  I can also still smell the Bilbao Metro when it was still virtually brand new: frosted metal, plastic, and faint velvet upholstery.

It's nuts.  So many memories.  Memories of walking to school at eight in the morning, memories of driving to Burgos to play in the snow (it rarely, if ever, snows in the Basque Country so we used to drive to the border with Burgos and the mountains to see it), memories of driving to Urkiola and other parks, memories of rainy days in Bermeo, memories of driving to Bermeo with a friend from camp because she was the only person besides one to be in town for my birthday and I was invited to spend some time with her family, and then being told "Oh by the way, just so you know, we usually speak Euskera at home but for you, we'll speak Spanish!"  Memories of paying 500 pesetas to go the movies on Saturday nights with my friends at the Puerto Deportivo in Getxo and the trip to the Aquarium and beach in Donosti.  Of walking from our school out into Berango and over the hills, getting muddy and enjoying the scenery on a Physical Education field trip and not feeling tired until I was on the final stretch home.  Of youth retreats in Estella and hikes in the Sierra de Urbasa as well as trips into the city.  Of how when my best friend would talk about going to her pueblo in León I decided Estella was going to be mine.  Of sitting in the Brussels airport for five hours waiting for a flight to Oslo on a family vacation.

I honestly believe that some of the best years of my life were 1998-2000, and listening to music from back then confirms it.  It's better than having pictures to look at, because as long as I still have something to jog my memory of crazy events from my childhood and remember things I did, places I went, friends I hung out with, and other random things that I probably wouldn't even think about unless I had something to remind me about all those things.

This is why music is my drug of choice.  It keeps creating memories for me, and I'm going to keep creating playlists of my life.  And I'm going to listen to them whenever I feel like I need to take a step back and remind myself of the good times I've had.

El Meu País

I was looking up poetry last night and discovered this beautiful poem by Catalan poet Miquel Martí i Pol (1929-2003).  Below is the original Catalan, and beneath the cut is an English translation.

El Meu País

Tots els anys que he hagut de viure
allunyat del meu país
han estat una nit fosca,
un camí ple de neguit.
Penso en tot allò que enrera
vaig deixar quan vaig partir
i amb els ulls de l’esperança
torno encara al meu país.

No estimo res com la dolcesa
del cel blau del meu país;
ara en sóc lluny,
però me’n recordo
dia i nit.
Si un dia hi torno, el vent que em rebi
esborrarà tots els neguits
i oblidaré els anys que he viscut
tan sol i trist.

No hi ha res que no em recordi
cada instant el meu país,
tot em fa pensar en els dies
que hi vaig viure tan feliç.
Quan camino el vent em porta
veus que el temps no ha pas marcit;
si m’adormo el que somio
és només el meu país.

No estimo res com la dolcesa
del cel blau del meu país;
ara en sóc lluny, però me’n recordo
dia i nit.
Si un dia hi torno, el vent que em rebi
esborrarà tots els neguits
i oblidaré els anys que he viscut
tan sol i trist.

Abans que la mort m’arribi
vull tornar al meu país;
trepitjar la terra amiga,
caminar pels vells camins.
Vull sentir les veus que estimo,
vull plorar pels vells amics
i morir quan sigui l’hora
sota el cel del meu país.

No estimo res com la dolcesa
del cel blau del meu país;
ara en sóc lluny, però me’n recordo
dia i nit.
Si un dia hi torno,
el vent que em rebi
esborrarà tots els neguits
i oblidaré els anys que he viscut
tan sol i trist.

A Trip Down Memory Lane...

Google Street View is a fun way to relive memories.  I recently looked up Leioa, the city where we lived when we first moved to Spain in 1997.  There's a park on the mountain, Unbe, behind Loiu, where the Bilbao airport is, where we used to go with our church and once with my class at school (we walked up).  It has some beautiful views of the Nervión valley, though they don't show up on GSV.  Here's a little walk down memory lane, courtesy of Google Maps!

Maite zaitut, Euskal Herria

Bay of Biscay, looking towards Sopelana and Urduliz

It should be no surprise to anyone, at least to anybody who knows me well enough and follows me on various blogging platforms: previously LiveJournal, Tumblr, here on Blogspot... that I have incontrovertible, biased pro-Basque tendencies and opinions.  I may have only spent two and a half years living in the Basque Country, but everything I experienced, learned, and saw has affected me forever.  When my family moved to Andalusia in 2001, just after I started school in Germany, they came face-to-face with the opinions and beliefs of those from outside the Basque Country.  My parents have stories of talking to people in Málaga who, when explained that they'd just moved there from Bilbao, asked "How in the world could you have lived with those terrorists?"  Another time, my dad was yelled at by a police officer at the parking lot of the Rosaleda stadium, home of Málaga CF, where he was doing repairs on our van, which still boasted Bilbao license plates.  After that, he applied to get new ones, which eliminated any regional association as the new Spanish plates had nothing denominating them from a certain province as the old ones had.

Yes, I am still stuck in 2010, what of it?

I just discovered the photo editing software on Google+ (damn it, Google, I love you) and had a little fun this afternoon.  Don't mind me.

Las Arenas & Algorta, Getxo, Bizkaia

Playa de Arrigunaga, Punta Galea, Algorta

Punta Galea, Bizkaia

Camp Nou, Barcelona

Masia Freixa, Parc de Sant Jordi, Terrassa

Masia Freixa, Parc de Sant Jordi, Terrassa

Masia Freixa, Parc de Sant Jordi, Ca n'Aurell, Terrassa

Barcelona 

Downtown Toronto

Rogers Centre, CN Tower, Downtown Toronto

Expatriation at its Worst

Mijas

The problem [of money issues in Costa del Sol cities] is made worse by British and other expatriate residents.  Most cannot be bothered to register as citizens of their new home towns, robbing the area of other funds awarded on the basis of how many people live there. Some 300,000 Britons are estimated to live [on the Costa del Sol].  That makes this Britain's fourteenth-largest "city", larger than, for example, Cardiff, Belfast, Southampton or Bradford.  However, fewer than one in ten British residents are registered.  Costa corruption is as much the result of those who came here, enjoy the Spanish weather and hospitality but refuse to accept any responsibility for the place they live in, as it is of crooked politicians and construction companies.

Ghosts of Spain, Giles Tremlett

Playa de Arrigunaga, Algorta (Getxo). 8 June, 2010.

"Estamos en Cataluña, y aquí el catalán es idioma oficial"

Prof: Molt bé, bon dia a tothom.  Avui parlarem del futur del sistema capitalista global.
Very well, good morning, everyone.  Today we’ll talk about the future of the global capitalist system.
Isabelle: Por favor, ¿señor?
Please, sir?
Prof: ¿Sí?
Yes?
Isabelle: Perdone, ¿pero podría dar la clase en castellano?
Excuse me, but could you give the class in Spanish?
Prof: Lo siento, señorita, pero no podrá ser.  La mayoría de estudiantes son catalanes, o sea que no creo que tenga que cambiar de idioma.
I’m sorry, miss, but that can’t be.  Most students are Catalan, so I don’t think I should have to change languages.
Isabelle: Somos más de 15 estudiantes de Erasmus que no hablamos catalán.  Y para usted no es un problema hablar español.
We’re more than 15 Erasmus students who don’t speak Catalan.  And it’s not a problem for you to speak Spanish.
Prof: Mire, yo la entiendo perfectamente, señorita.  De verdad.  Perfectamente.  Pero usted me tendría que entender a mí también.  Estamos en Cataluña, y aquí el catalán es idioma oficial.  Si usted quiere hablar español, ¡se va a Madrid, o se va a Sudamérica!
Look, I understand you perfectly, miss.  Honestly.  Perfectly.  But you’d have to understand me too.  We’re in Catalonia, and Catalan is the official language here.  If you want to speak Spanish, you go to Madrid, or you go to South America!

L'Auberge Espagnole (France), d. Cédric Klapisch, 2002.

I decided to look up what Spanish/Catalan law has to say about this topic, which is incredibly controversial.

Catedral de Salamanca. 13 June, 2010.

I want to go

Sant Llorenç del Munt, Serra de l'Obac, from Matadepera.
Photo by Marc Sellarès

Every once in a while (not as often as I like, but things are what they are) I sit and watch videos on the TV3 website all day just to work on my Catalan and to learn about what's going on over in Catalunya.  The other day, for some reason or other, I started looking at houses in the Terrassa area, out of curiosity.  Turns out the really really nice houses (i.e. freestanding, 2+ floors, pool and garden) are in a small town just north of Terrassa called Matadepera.  And it turns out that most of those really really nice houses cost under a million euros.  Which, in the Spanish housing market and overall economic downturn in the country and throughout Europe, is really good.  And yes, I did check to make sure it was a Matadepera thing and not a housing bubble crash thing, because you can still get a smaller house in Barcelona for four million.  I'm also 90% sure that Xavi Hernández's family, and Xavi himself, lives in Matadepera but shhhhhhhhh because that information really makes me sound like a total creeper.  Which I kind of am but in the best possible way.

El Cavall Bernat.  Photo by Roc Garcia-Elias Cos

So anyway.  Just last night when I was on TV3 I discovered that on one of their daily "actuality" shows (a program that spends an hour or more discussing national and local issues, news, and other random topics of cultural interest) has a segment where they go to various towns throughout Catalunya and talk about colloquialisms inherent to the town.  This week, well, Sunday, they went to Matadepera, which is also having their weekly festes, and I'm fascinated.  There was also a segment on the Sant Llorenç de Munt mountain, also called La Mola, which is part of the Serra de l'Obac, which borders on the Montseny, the mountain range which houses the monastery of Montserrat.  Apparently the air on this mountain is unique in that the mountain range forms the border between the continental and Mediterranean climates, resulting in a perfect mix of humidity and dryness.  And climbing La Mola itself is therapeutic, being used by footballers from all around the world (mostly Barça players, but there are other players who've used it) when recovering from knee surgery because while it's a rocky trail, it's gentle.  Really, really cool.

I really can't explain what it is that I find so fascinating about this little corner of the world, but I do.  And I am going to try my damndest to find a way to move out there and make a living.  In fact, I may have some ideas....

Castell Cartoixa, Parc del Vallparadís, Terrassa. 30 May, 2010.

Now I remember why I never watch reality TV

Last night, for the first time ever, and because there was nothing else on TV of interest (yes, I realize it was Golden Globes night, but awards shows bore me), we watched a 3-episode marathon of the Kardashians (Kourtney and Kim Take New York).  I’d heard of it, and I’m an active user of the internet and am also familiar with the lives of the three sisters.  My thoughts:

1. Kris Humphries has absolutely no personality, no redeeming qualities.  Are people sure Kim wasn’t set up by the producers of the show to date and marry him just so they could divorce?  Because really.  Zero personality, zero redeeming qualities.  I liked the idea of someone with money marrying someone who doesn’t have as much (come on, he plays for the New Jersey Nets), but this…there’s nothing at all endearing about him.
2. Then again, it’s not like Kim has any redeeming qualities either.  Except for the fact that she’s gorgeous.  She just has the IQ of a turtle.
3. Kourtney’s boyfriend Scott seemed to be the only remotely decent person, the only person I didn’t mind seeing onscreen.  He has his issues, but he at least seemed genuine.  Although I don’t mind Khloe either.  She was one of the only people who gave decent advice to Kim when she was feeling all depressed at how her marriage was turning out.  As opposed to the mother, who had nothing at all substantial to say.
4. I really really really want to go to Dubai.
5. Why in the world do these people have fans?  They don’t do anything.  Nothing of significance anyway.  Do people really just like watching rich people act like idiots on TV?  I don’t get it.  Because there’s nothing I get out of them that makes me say “I’m a fan!”  They’re not singers, actresses, or have any discernable talents besides how good they are with a credit card.
6. I actually kind of feel sorry for them though, but only in the sense that they have to go through crap that the rest of us have to go through with relationships.  Just not anything else.  It’s not like they have to worry about being unemployed.
7. Oh, wait.  [Okay, so they are I guess in a way employed.  They can just afford to sit around all day and not have to worry about where they’re going to get money.  Unlike most of the world in this economy.]

And then my brother turned on the other trainwreck show 16 and Pregnant.  Though to be fair, I do feel sorry for those girls.  Genuinely.  Though my pity (and compassion) tends to run out when their friends talk about how they’ve always been planners, and then the pregnant girl says “Oh yeah, I can’t make a decision without planning it out!”  Uh…and you didn’t consider birth control?  And your mother is a single mom and doesn’t like your boyfriend because he’s kind of unstable?  GEE.

Conclusion: even though I am not rich like a Kardashian, things in my life really could be much worse.  And to be honest, even though I’m still trying to work through the myriad issues I have which prohibit me from being the person I should be, I have a supportive family and haven’t made any life-alteringly stupid decisions.  And while at the same time I shouldn’t judge someone based solely on reality TV, it’s their lives that have been made accessible by the public and not mine.  And honestly, while they are people, reality shows like that are good for one thing: evaluating and reevaluating your life and learning from other people’s mistakes.

Guggenheim Bilbao. June 4, 2010.

I love this man

I just need to dedicate a post to this man.  The man who should win the FIFA Ballon d'Or even though the player who keeps beating him out for it is inarguably the best player in the world.  The man who makes the best player in the world so great.  The man who makes the best team in the world so great.

The man who makes this sport so great.

(I know I'm like a week late with this, but eh.  Who cares.)

"The next time you’re in Barcelona, stay at the W!"

"If you haven't lived at the W, you haven't lived at all!"

Where do I start.

No, really, where do I start.

Let me just start off by saying I haven nothing against tourist blogs, the tourism industry, or luxury hotels.  Lord knows I'd love to be able to live in the lap of luxury for even just one day out of my entire life.  Lord knows I'd love to be pampered, even if it's for the last time ever.  Lord knows I would love to stay at the W in Barcelona.  That's clearly not the issue.

Barcelona. Barcelona? Barcelona!

Passeig de Colom, Port Vell.  April 29, 2008.

 It's really no secret that I'm obsessed with Barcelona.  I've never tried to hide it, I've never tried to ignore it.  It's just one of those things I feel defines me for some reason or other.  I'm not really sure when it became my "schtick", but ever since it did, I've had tons of people say to me "So-and-so has been talking about Barcelona and I thought of you!" or "They showed Barcelona on Such-and-such TV show and I thought of you!"  Barcelona, and my love and adoration for FC Barcelona midfielder Xavi Hernández (it's borderline creepy is what it is), are the two things that people who know me really well define me with.

It's all a compliment, obviously.  One friend took a trip to Spain and Italy shortly after I got back from Spain (she left the US the day I left Spain, actually) and after visiting Barcelona she said "Now I know why Elizabeth loves Barcelona so much."  It's contagious.  Add that onto the amount of times other friends who haven't been there have told me "Okay, so if I ever go to Barcelona, I'm taking you with me to show me everything!"  Of course, then I always feel bad because every single time I've been to Barcelona there's always something I don't end up seeing or doing for some reason or other.  Like I still haven't taken the tram up to Tibidabo, and it's been on my list since before I went the last time.  And I haven't been inside any of Gaudí's buildings either, but that's mostly because I didn't want to spend the money to get in.  And considering the last time I went I nearly emptied my bank account doing cheap things, I'm really glad the only splurge I made was visiting the Palau de la Música Catalana.

Sagrada Família.  May 1, 2008.

The other day on Spotify I did a search for all songs with "Barcelona" in the title and created a playlist.  Due to the amount of songs that only mentioned Barcelona once with no context of the actual city (I guess the name Barcelona just sounds nice or something...) I ended up deleting the playlist, but the fact that I actually did that search says enough.  I just can't stop.  Anytime I hear someone mention "Barcelona" in a sentence I feel my nose start to itch and my eyes start to water and I want to bust into the conversation and say "Oh my gosh, I adore Barcelona!"  Anytime it appears on a TV show or movie I'm watching I want to pause it and just repeat the person saying "Barcelona" over and over again to take it all in.

I've said it before, and I'll keep saying it until I die.  Barcelona is magical.  And I don't care at all that I'm obsessed with it.  Because of my obsession with Barcelona I've met some wonderful people, learned another language, discovered amazing literature, amazing music.  Barcelona és, senzillament, màgica.

Castillo de Peñafiel, Valladolid. February 4, 2008.

5th Avenue, NYC. 22 May, 2010

The Good Ol' Days?

My mom asked me today for the umpteenth time about high school.  If I thought that I'd felt abandoned when they sent me off to boarding school.  I think she was feeling a bit convicted when an MK/TCK blog she was reading about boarding school mentioned how a lot of kids felt abandoned by their parents when they went.  I never felt abandoned.  It didn't bother me that I was in Germany while my parents were in Spain and that I'd only see them every couple months for a couple of weeks.  When my mom left that January morning in 2001, leaving me in the bleachers of my new school, she was the one who was crying.  Not me.

I did have a lot of issues in high school.  I never really made friends, some of the friends I'd made abandoned me.  The world I thought I knew literally blew up one afternoon in September 2001.  I thought I was thousands of miles away from my real "home" and struggled to feel like I fit in.  I never did.  I still don't really talk to people from high school, unlike my brother and sister.  I have some of them on Facebook, and I'm still a bit ambivalent.  If I miss anything about high school now, in retrospect, it's the fact that living on the border of France and Switzerland, in Germany, and being able to fly to Spain every couple weeks was something that at the time I didn't unappreciate, I just didn't quite appreciate as much as I do now.  I miss Herbstmesse in Basel and the tradition of meeting at the bumper cars at 7:30 in the Münsterplatz to overrun it with English speakers duking it out.  I miss wandering the streets of Basel and camping out at Starbucks, begrudgingly making it back to the Klaraplatz or the SBB station to get back to the dorms and sleep.  I miss French field trips to Colmar and Strasbourg.  I miss History field trips to Paris and Normandy.  I miss Senior Trip to Florence, Rome, and Venice.  I miss hopping on a flight every two, three months to Málaga (it's cheaper to fly into Málaga than Sevilla because of all the Germans who fly down for the beach; it has a bigger airport too) with a layover in Zurich (to which we'd take a train out of Basel instead of a plane), Geneva, Barcelona...  I miss shopping days in Freiburg, shopping trips to Carrefour in Mulhouse.  I miss school weekend trips to the Swiss Alps and Lake Constance.

I miss the time a friend from school and I got together one weekend in August to spend some time at the town feria and then heading down to the beach in Marbella the next day, staying up half the night on the marble floor in the living room in the sweltering heat and spying geckos in the cracks in the wall and ceiling.  It's funny because looking back on my period of high school, when I thought I had everything all figured out, being convinced that I was "American" and couldn't be anything but, and then realizing sometime in 2006 that where I really should be was Spain and when I went back two years later realizing how right I was and how wrong I'd been in high school.

I was convinced that the United States I'd left behind was the real United States, and when we went back more permanently in 2004 after I graduated and had to move on with life, I realized that it wasn't like the way I'd always thought it was, and I think I've been living with that disillusionment ever since.  What's worse is that when I went back to Spain in 2008 for my study abroad program I saw the Spain I thought I'd left behind in 2008.  I wasn't disillusioned, in fact, my feelings were accurate.

And I sometimes still have to keep asking myself, the pessimist that I am, is if that Spain that I still have high expectations is just an illusion, like the United States I was convinced existed back in high school.

Yonge-Dundas Square, Toronto. 4 November, 2010

In which I ramble pointlessly about sports

I've always had a love-hate relationship with American football.  That sport that hardly anyone outside North America follows unless they're American, drawing ridicule from hardcore rugby fans and Association Football fans who can't figure out why it's called "football" when it's not even played with feet (hint: it's because the "ball" is a foot long), much less a ball.  And rugby fans think it's a wussy version of their sport, simply because the players actually wear padding.  Being a big fan of Association Football myself, it almost feels like the two sports have to mutually exclusive, as per the whole "football" vs. "soccer" nonsense (FYI, both are valid: "soccer" is a shortened form of "association football", and the term was coined in, yup, England).