I am a bit behind on my blog entries, so I will just give a briefing of the games from two weeks ago. We won the first game against Vaureal 11-1; the game was ended after five innings because of the 10-run slaughter rule. I had a no-hitter going through the five innings, so I guess you could say I threw a complete-game no-hitter. The first time I have ever done that. Because of the pitching rules for foreigners in the French League that say you can throw up to half of the innings for your team on a given day, [View Full Entry]

---

---

This past weekend we played Cherburg, one of the stronger teams in our division. They have three Canadians, all good players, a pitcher, a shortstop, and a second-baseman. In our first game we were completely shut down by their pitcher; he struck out nine batters and almost all of the rest he made us hit to second or short. I pitched the first game; we lost 2-0, their two runs coming in the 4th inning on no hits and three errors. The second game we lost 5-1. Our pitcher for the second game pitched very well, recording 9 strikeouts in [View Full Entry]

---

---

Monday we took another trip to the Pig park; this time one of the mama pigs had had babies! They were so cute. Just as amusing and entertaining as the baby pigs was watching Gerald, the pig park ranger, interacting with the mama pig and her babies. It is incredible how comfortable he is with the pigs, and vice versa. There are significantly fewer pigs in the park now than there was when I first visited the park five weeks ago. They have been slowly selling the pigs to other parks, and selling some to people to be consumed. There [View Full Entry]

---

---

The Cliffs of Etretat Europe » France » Normandy By Vilius April 19th 2007 Will GordonThursday the 19th was my birthday!! Armed with a GPS as our guide, we hopped in my Pink Fiat and headed for the coast, the Cliffs of Etretat being our destination. Etretat is a small tourist town on the coast of Haute Normandie that is flanked by strikingly beau [View Full Entry]

---

---

On Monday I drove to Beauvais Airport just outside of Paris to pick up Viktorija, who was coming to visit for the week. Tuesday morning we took the morning train to Paris to spend the day ‘sightseeing’. About halfway through our train ride two passengers boarded the train, a middle-aged woman and another woman in her thirties, and found seats just across from us in the same row. As they sat down I said ‘bonjour’ and they returned the greeting. I noticed one of them was wearing a Brown University sweatshirt; then a few moments later they started talking, in [View Full Entry]

---

---

Friday night I stayed with Eric Fournier at his mom’s house in Chesse, a suberb of Paris. We spent the evening at his friend, Phillipe’s house watching a soccer match between Marseille and Lille. Eric is a Marseille fan. Then we went back to Eric’s house to sleep. I slept in the kids’ playroom on a little mattress in the corner of the room. The next morning Eric's two kids and their mom arrived. Eric had bought mini-croissants, pain raisins, and pain chocolat at the Boulangerie, so we had our coffee and ate croissants. Then we got in the car [View Full Entry]

---

---

Eric Coutu has had a rough week, one of the most ‘unlucky’ weeks I have ever seen. (Eric is the history professor from Quebec who took me on a tour of Rouen when I first arrived.He pitches and plays shortstop, he also coaches the Cadet--15 year old--team at Bois-Guillaume. He is also the one in the picture in a previous blog with a balloon on his head.) Last Sunday on his way home from our game he rear-ended another car at a traffic circle. Then on Tuesday he went to the emergency room because of severe stomach pains (he has been [View Full Entry]

---

---

Just a report on our games. The start time for the game was delayed because the baseball field is also a golf driving range, and we had to wait for golfing practice to end so that the baseball game could begin. We won the first game, 4-2. I pitched. Then in the second game we sort of fell apart. 10 errors, I think? We lost 13-9. I will try to get some pictures of the games, hopefully the next series of games will have photos along with. [View Full Entry]

---

---

Atleast once a day Flo and I drive to Louviers, a town not far from Le Vaudreuil where I live, either to work out or to go grocery shopping, or to see his mom, etc. For the first week or so it seemed that each day we took a different route to get there, and in fact it almost was true. Though Louviers is only ten minutes away, there are about 5 or 6 different ways we take to get there that vary from day to day. I have learned this about Flo, that he likes to vary his routes whether [View Full Entry]

---

---

On Wednesday before our scheduled practice we had a scrimmage against Pole Espoir, a school/sports academy just outside of Rouen. There are several programs at schools throughout France for baseball, but Pole d’Espoir is the top school where kids from 14-18 years old go to study and practice baseball. They have 15 hours a week of baseball year-round, and then in the Spring they play games against the other baseball schools and against some club teams. Two of the players on the Bois-Guillaume team are students at Pole Espoir who play for us on the weekends. The head baseball coach a [View Full Entry]

---

---