Soccer...I mean Football...

One thing you have to remember about traveling to England is the fact that they have different names for certain things. Cookies are "biscuits." The trunk of a car is called the "boot." Instead of a phone card to call the States, I have a "Dog 'n' Bone" card.

Here's a really big one -- soccer is known as football here and across the world. If you call it "soccer," you get all kinds of dirty looks from passersby. But either way, the sport is "kind of a big deal," to quote Ron Burgundy.

Take, for example, the annual soccer match between the UGA @ Oxford and the Georgia Tech @ Oxford students. Here's a quote from an e-mail from one of the graduate students in my program:

"The players who come back from the game victorious will stand proud whenever THE OXFORD BOWL is invoked. Just think of it: when you’re tailgating in the ATH, or maybe even when you’re old and retired and living in Florida, and someone mentions THE OXFORD BOWL, you can reminisce and bask in the glory of conquest over the Techies."

Unfortunately, we did not pull out a victory over those crazy Georgia Tech kids. But in our defense, we're pretty sure they bribed the ref. And one of our best players, Sam Franco, rolled his ankle the day before the game. And the goals were about 3 feet wide by 2 feet high...which is about the right side for a 7-year-old kid. Wait -- see what I'm doing? Soccer/Football can really take over.