In the last couple of months I/we have brought a lot of guests to Good Shepherd. Most times such visits include a tour of the facilities and some sort of sport activity with the kids. In the past this has usually been basketball or volleyball, but last week I took 8 of Laura’s English intensive people for some wiffleball.
Wiffleball, like baseball, is not popular here. Needless to say, the rules are not understood very well. So there we were, 9 foreigners and a few more kids wanting to play—most of whom didn’t know even the basic rules. I gave the best explanation I could and thought the rest could be figured out as we go…learn by doing. This wasn’t 100% but fortunately there were two Russian-speaking Australians with us. This helped and also changed the game a bit; there were definitely some cricket rules Hellenized into our wiffleball game.
We played for a couple of hours, with much laughing, cheering, and maybe a little taunting along the way. It appeared to be time to go home, but the kids weren’t quite ready for this so we went inside for another 45 minutes of basketball.
It is great when the atmosphere is such that playing sports is as fun as anything the kids may find to do on the street.
Dave
