Howdy, Fruitful English Friends!<\/p>\n
Another month for an October greeting from me, Tara.<\/p>\n
Well, as the most exciting aspect of this month so far has been the Rugby World Cup, I would like to talk about it for this month’s post.<\/p>\n
When I was young, my father always watched sports on TV. My brother and I always played sports on teams until we got to high school. Even after I stopped playing them, I would regularly follow my local basketball team or national competitions.<\/p>\n
However, as I moved away from the US, it got harder to keep up with<\/strong> the NBA<\/strong> or NFL<\/strong>. So, I ended up becoming a ‘big competition’ fan only. This means that I would only watch the NBA Playoffs<\/strong> or the Super Bowl<\/strong> each year.<\/p>\n Furthermore, I came to learn that other countries were fans of different sports like soccer, cricket, and rugby.<\/p>\n Thanks to some Kiwi and Aussie friends, I started to get into rugby and found that it was even more fun to watch than American football. The constant play, rather than stopping and starting to set up plays, was much more enjoyable. Plus, the matches did not take hours and hours to watch.<\/p>\n So, in the beginning, the All Blacks became my favorite team for their starting haka<\/strong> and also because, of course, they are a strong team. But, I was really only a superficial fan<\/strong>. I did not fully understand the rules or action on the field.<\/p>\n Over the years, I have continued to watch and learn different styles and the teams’ strengths or weaknesses. While I still wouldn’t call myself an expert, by any means, on the sport, I feel that I can watch it knowledgeably now.<\/p>\n The USA team has only been a pro team for two years. Our history of playing rugby is short compared to other countries. So, even though the US did not win even one match this competition, I felt that they still improved over their four-game losing streak. I was proud to cheer for them anyway!<\/p>\n Finally, I would be remiss<\/strong> to not make any mention of Japan’s performance so far in the competition. What an amazing few games Japan has had. I’m developing going to be supporting their success in the Semi and Quarterfinals.<\/p>\n Let’s keep our fingers crossed that they can go all the way<\/strong> to the end!<\/p>\n Go Japan!<\/p>\n ~ Tara<\/p>\n Keywords<\/strong><\/em>:<\/em> to keep up with; NBA; NFL; NBA Playoffs; Super Bowl; haka; superficial fan; remiss; go all the way<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Howdy, Fruitful English Friends! Another month for an October greeting from me, Tara. Well, as the most exciting aspect of this month so far has been the Rugby World Cup, I would like to talk about it…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":31,"featured_media":1107,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[19],"tags":[145],"class_list":{"0":"post-1106","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sport","8":"tag-sports","9":"article cf"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.fruitfulenglish.com\/blog2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/IMG_5707.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fruitfulenglish.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1106","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fruitfulenglish.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fruitfulenglish.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fruitfulenglish.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/31"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fruitfulenglish.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1106"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.fruitfulenglish.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1106\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1129,"href":"https:\/\/www.fruitfulenglish.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1106\/revisions\/1129"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fruitfulenglish.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1107"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fruitfulenglish.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1106"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fruitfulenglish.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1106"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fruitfulenglish.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1106"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}