All Request Saturday #1

As promised, Happy Birthday Milou! You are officially old. And as long as you are older than me, I will consider you such. Aka. Forever. Enjoy :)

On to all request Saturday. I only received one question, so today's post is going to be short and sweet.

Ola hijo mio. Soy en Mexico ahora entonces hablo en espagnol. Mi pregunta para tu Sabado requisito es: Jo sais que tu nomalmente adivinar que es el mejor competicion para cada tournamiento. Que piensas par esta competicion. Los Mexicanos premiere tambien, ou outros?? Su padre.

After writing about the language barrier, and my struggle with Spanish, this question was conveniently written in said language. Thanks Dad. With a little help from Jessi (He and mom both say your spanish needs work by the way), I've managed to translate it as follows:

Hello my son. I am in Mexico so I will speak in Spanish. My question for all request Saturday is: I know that you normally predict who your strongest competition will be in most tournaments. Who do you think it is at this competition? Are the Mexicans strongest, or someone else? Your Father. - Don Saxton

First I'll fill everyone in on my dad's status. He is also currently at a NORCECA tournament in Mexico, coaching a Canuck Club U17 team. I don't have any info on their status, but good luck Canuck! Or in this case, good luck Canada!

Now, to answer the question, I have to say that the strongest opponents here are Cuba and USA. I'm not sure the reason, but Mexico did not enter into this event, or they would be up there as well.
Cuba consists of two tall athletic young athletes with good ball control. So far this tournament they have not faced any opponents who have challenged them. Puerto Rico should have challenged them today, but they had a little hiccup, and ended up losing earlier in the tournament.
USA consists of two veteran athletes from San Diego who play a little on the AVP tour. They're a scrappy team that will make anyone work hard for any point, and find ways to score even when it doesn't look like they will. We played the Americans today, and after a tough back an forth match, we pulled out the three set win to put us into the Semi Final tomorrow. I expect the Americans to battle back in order to face the Cubans tomorrow in the other semi final.

So far things are going well for us, we will still have a tough battle in tomorrow's semi against whoever we face. But I hope to see either the Cubans or Americans in tomorrow's final.

Cheers,
Ben

Language Barrier

First things first, Happy Birthday Camille! Don’t worry, I didn’t forget. Milou, you’ll get a shout out in a couple days. Dustin, you’re S.O.L for six months. For those confused, Camille, Milou, and Dustin are my siblings, and my little sis turns 19 today. I almost forgot, but fortunately, while sitting at lunch in Guatemala this afternoon, one of the Canadian women, Kara Zakrewski (sorry if I butchered it), asked how old my sister is now. After considering when her last birthday was for a couple seconds – Oh! Her birthday’s today. So Camille, you can thank Kara for the shout out. Not really on topic, but family comes first.

I consider myself bilingual, though I don’t have a certificate. I took French immersion all the way through until the eleventh grade. My mom, Mylène, was brought up in a French speaking household, and made sure that all of my siblings at least began our education in immersion. All but Milou, the oldest, switched out of it before graduating, making her the only one of us who is formally recognized as bilingual. But that doesn’t stop mom from speaking to us in French when there’s company over so that they can’t understand. Plus you can’t win the World Francophone Games if you can’t speak French, right? Wrong, Jessi doesn’t speak a lick of French, but if anyone asks it’s true. Hence my self declaration of bilingualism.

Then we get to a place like Guatemala, where the majority of people speak Spanish, and it’s back to square one. I try to make sure I learn how to say hello (hola), goodbye (hasta luego), yes (si), thank you (gracias), and the numbers 1-10 (uno – diex) in every country that I visit. Then I try to pick up the rest from there with very little success. Fortunately, Jessi gets us by. He knows Portuguese, which is very similar to Spanish. French has a few similarities, but I can only catch a few words here and there. Often I find myself communicating with locals through the universal language of hand gestures and facial expressions. It must look pretty funny to see two people who don’t understand each other try and get a point across. Almost like a very strange dance, possibly the inspiration for Jessi’s girlfriend, Dianne’s, very unique “Awkward Dancing” technique. I might have to get a video of it up here sometime for the world to see if she’ll let me.

I’m very fortunate that the Universal Language of Sport is English, because that means there will always be a translator to help out. Though it’s even hard to understand them sometimes, not for lack of effort, but some people struggle with the differences between the languages. When we all went swimming with dolphins in the Cayman Islands a few weeks ago, the trainer could not pronounce the letter B. I tried coaching him to pronounce my name correctly, but it always came out “Ven”. After about two minutes of trying to get it right, he announced “It’s ok, I call you Matteo”. Close enough I guess.

I really enjoy the fact that I can speak two languages, but I always wish I knew one more whenever I’m around a new one. But with so many different languages around the world, I don’t think I will ever be able to learn them all. If someone ever does, my hat is off to them. I only hope that by the end of my playing career, I will be able to say thank you to all my different fans all over the world. But for now,

Hasta Luego, Au revoir, Auf Wiederzein, Ciao, Sayanora, Cheers

Ben Jammin

P.S. Just a reminder, the first all request Saturday is coming up. So far I don’t have many questions to answer. Even if it’s just mom and dad asking for now, I hope to be able to answer something, or I might have to change the theme for Saturdays.