Soccer

4-2-2010

Today was our teachers versus students soccer game and it was quite the event. None of the women teachers wanted to play so in order to field an entire side, teachers from the neighboring secondary school and one or two primary schools came to play on the teachers side. We were a rag tag looking bunch, some people with no shows, some in their teaching clothes, some in boots. The students on the other hand, at least looked like a team in their brand new uniforms. A few had cleats even. Around the field was the rest of the students and they were quite into the game cheering and singing the entire time, but they were especially into it when the student team was on the attack. The field was super rough though. Most of it was covered in thick knee high weeds, US Open third cut-esq. In some of the deeper
spots the ball would be completely covered. It was super hard to run in and you had to really drill the ball in order to get it to go where you wanted. It was also full of those little thorny balls that get all over you and are impossible to get off. The only places where the grass wasn't like this was in the trenches that served as the lines, which really came out of nowhere and more than a couple times I thought I was going to break an ankle. To make it a bit more challenging, there was also a few little termite mounds at random spots, hidden by the grass, acting as yet another hazard.

The game:
Prior to today, I think it had been at least a year and half since I had played any soccer what so ever and that was just one game after a previous year or two drought. So needless to say, I'm not in any kind of soccer shape. I didn't do much in the game, especially the first half. The second half was a bit better as my legs started to come back to me and I managed to make some good tackles. What I didn't seem to have a problem with was falling down: on several occasions I tripped and fell just trying to run. Every time I fell the ref called a foul, which helped us out on defense. I also managed to get kicked in the face and the crouch, both by the same kid. The crouch shot was I think the second most direct and painful one in my life (5 hours later and I'm still hurting). In the end we ending up losing only 4-1, which I thought was respectable. Tomorrow I think I'll be quite sore, and a full day of busses I don't think will do anything to alleviate that.

School was good this week. We finally divided Form 1 into streams, so instead of teaching 1 class of close to 100 students, I now teach three of about thirty students. While this makes the school day much more busy, with virtually no down time, the classes I think are going better.

Thats all for now, I have a 5 am bus to catch so I'm gonna get to sleep.