Back at Work

First day back at work after an awesome weekend vacation, let’s hope it goes smoothly.  Our first p.e. session was at Mumana at 9:40.  We got there a little late, around 10, because the buses sucked as usual.  We were happy to see that there was already a large group of kids outside playing in the area where we normally conduct our sessions.  However, there was no peer leader, so it was just total chaos.  A group of girls ran over to us (these are the 4^th graders), and we asked them if any coaches were here.  They said Aaron was but had taken a girl inside who was bleeding.  Ok, so that meant it was now our job to round up all the rowdy little kids.  By the time we were able to get them to listen to us and finally make a circle (this took about 5-10 minutes and many failed attempts) Aaron was already back.  We warmed them up and then played a game of Hippo, Hippo, Lion (the modified version of Duck, Duck, Goose that we had taught them a few weeks before).  This went pretty well, minus the fact that all the kids wanted to be tagged as the lion, so they moved around to different spots in the circle as the game was going on and stood up and raised their hands to be picked.  Come on now kids, that is not the point of the game at all – it’s no fun for the tagger if the lion/chaser already knows that they are going to get picked.  Anyway, after that game we played a few partner games, like locking arms behind your back and trying to stand up together.  They enjoyed this, and we used it to lead into our discussion about teamwork.

After the Mumana session we were told that there were no more p.e. sessions for any of the other schools this week or next because the students are taking their end of term exams.  We would only have sessions at Mumana tomorrow and Thursday.  We then went to Tionge to teach our HIV/AIDS class (or as they call it, the Anti-AIDS Club).  Today’s class was on Transmission and Prevention.  It was supposed to occur last week but the students had a conflict in schedule so we had to postpone it until now.  It went well, and as usual we got tons of really good/interesting questions at the end of class.  This class is our favorite to teach and they really seem to understand the information well.

Then as we have gotten used to doing, Chrissy headed back to the office to do some work and I went to coach basketball.  I was a little late because of our class and was sad to see that the few boys who were already at the court weren’t practicing.  Both of the other coaches were there but they hadn’t started anything.  I shot around with the boys for a little while (I have to say my shot was pretty rusty) and then started practice when a few more of them had arrived.  I ran it for about an hour and then the senior Spartans started showing up.  I coached their entire practice, putting in a lot of shooting drills.  Coach Robert showed up a little while into practice and as usual he just sat on the side and told me to do everything.  It’s a good thing that I really enjoy coaching the team because otherwise his lack of effort wouldn’t sit too well with me.  Ok, it does kind of piss me off, but I’m not going to punish the team for his wrongs.  Anyway, after practice I went with Sammy to pizza Tuesday and met Ivy, Chrissy, our new housemate Fancis, Carl (a photographer who was staying with us for a few nights) and Victoria (a woman from the office).  Chrissy and I got our recent standard, a medium veggie and medium hawaiian to split.  Of course after pizza we did our grocery shopping for the week, and then indulged in our hot bucket showers once we got home.  Tuesdays after work have such a lovely routine.