Lindsay's new hobby! And Matt's too, maybe.

Contributed by Matt

Today was a great day. I spent 2 hours at breakfast, just enjoying the atmosphere and good buffet food. I also got to work out a couple of meetings for Wed. morning for possible job opportunities.

This evening, Lindsay came in, and she got a text message from Tara, a fellow church member asking if she wanted to go play rugby. We quickly agreed to go, and then ordered pizza to be delivered to our hotel. The delivery should have left us about ten minutes to eat before getting picked up. It turns out that the delivery person did not show up before Tara, so we left money and a message at the concierge desk, and left. We got a few calls from a very confused delivery driver, but eventually it all got figured out.

The Al Ain Rugby Club is amazing. It has some of the nicest and well maintained grass I have ever seen. The weight room and other facilities are top notch. The temperature was a perfect 85°F. No bugs. Flood lights lighting up the playing fields. I sat on the sidelines in the grass while Lindsay did warm-up exercises with all the other girls. They did some jogging, stretching, and then worked on ball handling skills by pitching and catching the ball. Halfway through the two hour practice they split into two groups - One group for playing touch rugby, and another group for playing full contact rugby. Lindsay decided to join the group with four others playing full contact rugby (about twenty five women were in the other group). They worked on techniques for tackling and how to get tackled.

This is the first time Lindsay has ever touched a rugby ball. She has never played, and never had interest in playing before tonight. She just wanted to exercise and be social. She had lots of fun, and we are now looking at joining the Al Ain Rugby Club just to play rugby.

After getting back to the hotel, we found our pizza and salad sitting on the counter in our room. It tasted delicious, even though the croutons were soggy and the pizza was cold. We look forward to ordering from them again and have our food being a bit more fresh.