Tennis and Basketball

Here's a short one (finally, I know!) Ok, well now that I've written it, its not that short, but shorter than some of the others :

So this weekend was mostly a weekend of tennis. I've been playing after school with a bunch of other teachers a few times a week, and so this weekend I played in a mixed doubles tournament. It was mostly teachers, some embassy people, and some peacecorp people (mostly all Americans). Can I just preface this by saying that I am definitely not a good tennis player. I have had a little experience in the past, but I don't even like mentioning that because it shows how I should be a lot better than I am :-) But anyways, I played with Chad, who I had never met before. He and his wife work for peacecorp I think.

Oh, well first on Saturday we had our first basketball game!! So the first practice we had 2 girls, the second practice we had 3, and the 3rd practice (after some recruiting on my part) we had 9! So come Saturday we had had 1 practice with all the girls. I've been having a really good time with it. More than 1/2 of the girls have never played before, so we're starting really really basic here. So Saturday game comes along, and right before the game I'm trying to explain how to throw a ball in bounds :-) But the game went pretty well overall. I mean, we definitely lost, but it wasn’t too bad- the other coach put in his weak players and didn’t kill us, which was nice. I think we scored like 12 points, which the PE teacher said that's like 3 times as many points as they scored all season last year, haha

It was interesting to be a coach and not a player- my first time. I kept telling the girls to sprint back and then play defense, which none of them did. Not once were we able to get the ball and pass it around on our end of the court. And two of the girls loved to try and play defense on our own players who had the ball! It was quite funny. But I think they had a good time. Another game this Saturday- and we only get one, 1 hour practice before then! How are we supposed to improve? Oh well!

So back to tennis. I coached the bball game and then ran over to the tennis court, met Chad, and then we played. The tournament was fun- there were about 9 teams I think, split up into two groups. So the first day we played 2 games and lost both, but they were close. Then it rained, so we played 4 games on Sunday, which was tiring! But we did much better. We ended up in the lower of the two groups, but we came in first out of the lower division! So that was fun. Chad is a really good player, so I give him all the credit.

Other than that, I got totally burnt on Sunday, not surprising I guess. There's a women's singles tournament in 2 weeks, so I think I might play in that one, mostly because someone has to come in last place! This weekend there’s another basketball game and Latin dance night at school for teachers and parents. Then next weekend is the tennis tournament, and then Derek comes that Tuesday!!!!! (the 13^th) I’m currently trying to figure out plans for my October break, which comes the week after Derek gets here, so it’ll be really fun. We may do some or all of the following: help deliver medicine in the bush with a doctor, visit my cooperating teacher’s village he lived at when he was in peacecorp, go to Bamenda, go to the beach again. All great opportunities!

Oh, and I've moved in with Ang for at least a little bit because Liz came down with a really bad sickness, and it might be swine flu, so she's qaurentined at least until we get the results back on Thursday. A lot of kids are out of school too, so we don't know if it's going to be a swine flu problem, or if there's just regular sickness going around. Hopefully nothing too major. But for now we still see liz, just with masks on- reminds me of mumps days at wheaton :-)