Futbol!

Much of this weekend has been spent planning and preparing for our teaching in the coming week.  Yesterday (Saturday) morning we spent a couple hours meeting and again for a couple of hours this afternoon.  Kimberly walked the two blocks from Casa Mia and joined us at the Casa Pastoral for these long discussions of students, teaching philosophy, techniques, and materials.  Sounds pretty boring...and it is...but necessary to feel prepared to work together to accomplish something in the week to come.  Last year we found that the first week was the hardest and that it all seemed to fall more into place as the weeks went on so we shouldn't have to spend this much time in the future.  As for the afternoon class that begins tomorrow, we have heard rumors that many people plan to come...some with university level English skills and others at a beginning level.  The principal at the high school has offered classrooms there if we have too many to work with here.  Of course, we will have to wait and see who comes tomorrow but, should we have too many and too many levels, we plan to divide into beginners and more advanced.  Kimberly doesn't plan to join us for these classes but Katherine has offered to help, particularly with the university students if they come.

But the weekend hasn't been all work and no play.  Yesterday we were invited to walk to the caserio of Alejandria to watch a soccer tournament.  Several of the players on the "Chelsea" team from Alejandria are relatives of the members of the Pastoral Team.  It was about 45 minutes of steeply downhill walking to Alejandria...through the coffee fincas and fording a stream.  My legs and knees felt like I'd been walking down stairs for the whole 45 minutes.  The members of the Pastoral team make this walk once or twice a day! When we arrived we were given some of the few plastic chairs on which to sit and the dogs and the chickens joined us for the games.  One of the chickens attacked my knee thinking that a mole must be a piece of feed!

If you got bored with the game you could always play a game of checkers that someone had cleverly painted on a flat rock with bottle caps to serve as the checkers.

The games were fast-moving and very dusty!

We all had a good laugh when one of the soccer balls got stuck high up in a tree.  Can you find the ball?

Lots of big sticks were thrown high into the tree with no success...but then a solution was found.

If you look carefully you will see a young man high in the tree.  He scampered up with no difficulty and shook the limb until the ball fell down.  No one there had ever seen that happen before!

It was getting late when the games were over so we walked up the hill on the road, arriving at the edge of Berlin just as it was getting dark, so we decided to take a little "moto taxi " the rest of the way up the hill.  Five of us climbed in with the driver and the little engine managed to take us up some very steep hills to the pastoral house.  I've seen those little taxis....basically a motor scooter with a cab around it with two wheels in back...for a few years now around Berlin but this was my first ride and a very welcome one!  A sweet end to a lovely day.