Pierre, Marie, and Monsieur Duval, are the common characters from my textbook that come to mind whenever I have conversed with Mathieu. A friend who I met not too long ago and with whom I have started throwing old French vocabularies that come to mind from back in the day (sadly Mathieu has left Houston and is headed back to Paris). Its great to have old memories and foreign languages come to mind, since they bring a slew of things that I had done yet had completely forgotten about. I remember in my British School system, French was a must and it was a mandatory course, every year, yet I remember how incredibly hard it was for me since I had no interest in the language. We even had Fromage Wednesdays, on days when we were forced to miss break (and thus from playing football/soccer) and instead bring and taste a variety of cheese that I had absolutely no taste for.

Hadi Saie won the Taekwondo <80kg gold medal in the Beijing 2008 Olympics on Friday, August 22, 2008.

For once I went to bed before midnight on Thursday night, yet at midnight I got a call from a friend asking me if I was going to watch the Hadi Saie games that were on, I agreed that it would be worth missing some additional sleep over (went clubbing the previous night). What happened after that is probably one of the most amazing things that I have ever witnessed in Olympics history (Yes, even greater than Phelps, or Bolt's ridiculous records and medal tally). When the final game came around, hadi was down 4-1, and in a sport like Taekwondo, a come back from a 3 point deficit is rare, yet for some strange reason I knew that he would pull through, and towards the end of the match when Hadi was ahead by 2, I had a knot in my throat. How does an athlete create such a feeling of passion, such emotion, and mostly such pride in so many people? There is a lot more to Saie than just his talent at his sport, he is an extraordinary man in many many aspects.