Futbol! - Blogabond

As I briefly mentioned earlier, each afternoon I coach sports with the children while some others do extra reading and tutoring. Yesterday we had our first, and hopefully weekly, soccer game day with all 6 schools we work in. It was a raging success. The children numbered more than one hundred all told, and I think a total of 8 games were played on two adjacent fields, one a concrete basketball court and one an empty lot owned by an orphanage. As blase as the children might be about school, they are equally ecstatic to play soccer, represent their school and above all ¨ganar¨- to win. (I might add both teams from La Epifania, los pequeños and los grandes, won convincingly) Some of the volunteers who don´t even work with sports came out for the games and even lead some teams in chants for their schools. After the last game, everyone was zapped of energy from the long day and the hot sun but had a small problem. The transportation that had been arranged for the last two schools, about 30 children, wasn´t there! Therefore an impromptu game of keep-away then basketball then soccer emerged between the remaining 8 volunteers and the rest of the kids. Our doubling them in height was quite handy for the first two iterations of the game and perhaps precipitated their demands to return to soccer where their numbers mattered more than our height. The pickup truck arrived around sunset to find everybody truly exhausted from 4 hours or so of soccer. Most of the volunteers piled in the cab and all the kids, yes about 25 of them, climbed into the bed and held on for the ride back to their neighborhoods.

Staying in Granda this weekend, although we might go hike the nearby Volcano tomorrow. I´ll let you know

written by

mls12 on April 23, 2010 from Granada, Spain

from the travel blog: Volunteering with La Esperanza Granada in Granada, Nicaragua

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