The Frisbee

With the rainy season now here, baseball in the afternoon has started to dwindle. While it is a shame that the games have gone away, it is even a bigger shame that playing soccer started to fill the vacuum that was left behind. And in my book that is a big no-no. I just don’t get soccer. I wanted to try to get more into it while I was down here, but it’s just not happened.

So I started to think of other ways to try to stay active and in touch with the kids in my community without having to play soccer. When I was home in the states, my friend Holly bought me a nice Frisbee to take back down here. A couple times, I would bring it to the field and try to pass it with the kids. At first, a couple of them took to it, but their inability to throw it really frustrated them. But they were semi-interested and since I was not interested in soccer, I continued to bring it along.

This past Saturday it was time to make the leap to trying to play a game of ultimate Frisbee. I tried to explain the rules as best I could and had two kids pick teams. With that, I threw the Frisbee to the other team and we were underway. There was some confusion in the beginning in trying to get them to understand when possession changes and you can’t run with the Frisbee in your hand, but after a couple false starts, the game started to take shape.

My favorite moment happened when one of the kids picked up the Frisbee and threw it when it was suppose to be the other team’s Frisbee. I told him that it wasn’t his throw and he immediately picked up what he did wrong. The ‘ah ha’ moment if you will. That was pretty cool to see.

One of the neat things I get to experience is exposing the kids to new things. It is cool to see when kids pick up something new, because they get so excited. The same thing happened last week when I was teaching a typing game to one class. I was working with one girl and when she got the hang of the game, she practically hopped out of her seat in excitement.

I hope to see a lot more of these ‘ah ha’ moments and a lot less soccer.