A booty witch and red
I have several different things to write about, but all of them are unrelated. So I am going to go with the fun thing first and roll on to the less-fun things in subsequent blog posts.
On Sunday I played with a young Vietnamese girl who enjoyed singing and drawing pictures. So I tried to teach her a bit of the Australian National Anthem – now, she was five years old and I am not sure of her reading ability, but at the very least she could mimic what I was saying (except r’s were a bit of trouble) and at least pretend she was following my finger pointing to the words. She did a very good job! “A booty witch and red” is the result from “A beauty rich and rare.” In hindsight picking the sentence with the most r’s in it for a child who had the most trouble with r’s was probably cruel and evil, but it didn’t occur to me until after a few tries. ‘For we are young and free’ came out much better.
I also played hide and seek (badly) and also enjoyed some fine Vietnamese cuisine, and got some more insight in to Asian culture. I have another cute picture on my fridge from a child – one is a small alpaca, the other is a house with…ah…somebody? I am not sure. It is not me. I am usually very popular with very, very small children (because, you know, they aren’t old enough to know better) on account of my inherent immaturity.
Well, maturity is a word that is thrown around a lot in some of my circles of friends lately. Adults enjoy saying to others “That behaviour is immature” or “you are acting like a child”. But that is the topic of another blog post.
I also played dodgeball. It was my first time playing it since Scouts. Back in Scouts, I made a game where everybody would throw balls at me – footballs, basketballs, tennis balls – and I had to dodge and evade. The rules were, keep throwing until I fall over and die. This was the indoor version of Fuji. Scouts was a strange situation. I was feared, hated and liked at the same time. For some reason I had a reputation of being a dangerous adversary and powerful ally at Scouts, while these same people at school would bully me. A uniform did very strange things to people’s minds. The Fuji game worked like this – whenever we were camping, everybody would try to hunt me down and attack me. But you see, they would split up in to small groups to find me, so I would encounter them in these little groups and counter-attack. Nothing major, just jump out, push them over, then go run and hide somewhere else. Eventually other people joined my group - so then we had Fuji, Muji, Guji, Suji...It was a lot of fun, up until the Scout masters had an issue with people running around in the Australian hinterlands in total darkness. So the indoor version developed. Everybody loved to play it, even me, because dodge ball is a lot of fun.
So! I played dodgeball. The only part of me that doesn’t hurt today is my left arm. We won, by a big amount. I think it was 40 to 16 or something. It started very badly because it was my first game and my instinct from softball was try to catch everything that came anywhere near me. The rules of dodgeball are: If you catch somebody, they are out, and one of your team mates can come back in. If you are hit (or even if you try to catch and stuff it up), you are out. Keep going until one team is all out or nine minutes is up. So when a ball came past and I dived to catch it and missed it, I was out. This happened a few times until somebody came over and said that it was a better strategy to miss a catch than to be hit. So I pretended that it was my plan from the beginning, not that I had been unconciously trying for everything...
I am not very strong so I don’t throw very well, and after the first match my arm was tired and I didn’t have much attack power. The teams were mixed, three boys and three girls a side. I was able to make some semi-decent catches, but I only took out two opponents from throwing at them. My main contribution was to fossik up loose balls and pass them to the more experienced players.
Also, the team name was Epic. No really. It was “Epic”. The irony was that the team colour was grey. Nobody appreciated it except me.
On Sunday I played with a young Vietnamese girl who enjoyed singing and drawing pictures. So I tried to teach her a bit of the Australian National Anthem – now, she was five years old and I am not sure of her reading ability, but at the very least she could mimic what I was saying (except r’s were a bit of trouble) and at least pretend she was following my finger pointing to the words. She did a very good job! “A booty witch and red” is the result from “A beauty rich and rare.” In hindsight picking the sentence with the most r’s in it for a child who had the most trouble with r’s was probably cruel and evil, but it didn’t occur to me until after a few tries. ‘For we are young and free’ came out much better.
I also played hide and seek (badly) and also enjoyed some fine Vietnamese cuisine, and got some more insight in to Asian culture. I have another cute picture on my fridge from a child – one is a small alpaca, the other is a house with…ah…somebody? I am not sure. It is not me. I am usually very popular with very, very small children (because, you know, they aren’t old enough to know better) on account of my inherent immaturity.
Well, maturity is a word that is thrown around a lot in some of my circles of friends lately. Adults enjoy saying to others “That behaviour is immature” or “you are acting like a child”. But that is the topic of another blog post.
I also played dodgeball. It was my first time playing it since Scouts. Back in Scouts, I made a game where everybody would throw balls at me – footballs, basketballs, tennis balls – and I had to dodge and evade. The rules were, keep throwing until I fall over and die. This was the indoor version of Fuji. Scouts was a strange situation. I was feared, hated and liked at the same time. For some reason I had a reputation of being a dangerous adversary and powerful ally at Scouts, while these same people at school would bully me. A uniform did very strange things to people’s minds. The Fuji game worked like this – whenever we were camping, everybody would try to hunt me down and attack me. But you see, they would split up in to small groups to find me, so I would encounter them in these little groups and counter-attack. Nothing major, just jump out, push them over, then go run and hide somewhere else. Eventually other people joined my group - so then we had Fuji, Muji, Guji, Suji...It was a lot of fun, up until the Scout masters had an issue with people running around in the Australian hinterlands in total darkness. So the indoor version developed. Everybody loved to play it, even me, because dodge ball is a lot of fun.
So! I played dodgeball. The only part of me that doesn’t hurt today is my left arm. We won, by a big amount. I think it was 40 to 16 or something. It started very badly because it was my first game and my instinct from softball was try to catch everything that came anywhere near me. The rules of dodgeball are: If you catch somebody, they are out, and one of your team mates can come back in. If you are hit (or even if you try to catch and stuff it up), you are out. Keep going until one team is all out or nine minutes is up. So when a ball came past and I dived to catch it and missed it, I was out. This happened a few times until somebody came over and said that it was a better strategy to miss a catch than to be hit. So I pretended that it was my plan from the beginning, not that I had been unconciously trying for everything...
I am not very strong so I don’t throw very well, and after the first match my arm was tired and I didn’t have much attack power. The teams were mixed, three boys and three girls a side. I was able to make some semi-decent catches, but I only took out two opponents from throwing at them. My main contribution was to fossik up loose balls and pass them to the more experienced players.
Also, the team name was Epic. No really. It was “Epic”. The irony was that the team colour was grey. Nobody appreciated it except me.
have I failed you as a choir trainer??? the words are "...of beauty rich and rare..."
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Anonymous |
April 13, 2008 at 8:35 PM