Day 36

February 4, 2010

 

Day 36:

 

            Terri wasn’t there again today. I think I forgot to mention on Monday, but she wasn’t there on Monday either. The classes were pretty good today though. A lot of them finished up their stories, at least in my third period class they did. I even got Bobby to finish up a page. In fourth period, lesser progress was made but progress was made. I got three people to finish up their stories and turn them in. One was Bilisa whom I met for the first time this Monday. She wrote a story, got it approved, drew pictures and all in four days. I even saw her helping out some of the other girls in class. She’s nice to have around. I notified two of them that they’re going to get F’s because they won’t have finished the project by Friday. Kalani and Jota, these two girls just will not do work. Kalani finally finished up a story yesterday but waited until the end of the class to show it to me so I couldn’t look over it. I told her to bring it back to me and she never did. Jota, she just gives me the cutest, innocent smile when I ask for her work but never brings it. Then I go and stand by her desk to see if I can just look at her work from there and she puts her head in her arms and lays on the desk so I can’t see anything. And she WILL NOT move. She’ll sit like that all class. So I told them they were going to get an F and they don’t seem to be fazed by it which is sad. I’ve expressed this before but these kids aren’t motivated by grades at all. I was hoping that having some fun in class by drawing and coloring would motivate them to do more work but I’ve come to the conclusion that they’ve never colored in class before. They didn’t jump at the opportunity nearly as much as I expected them to. I guess that’s my fault for having expectations.

            Between third and fourth period I cornered Tony in his car and asked him what the deal was with basketball. He said that he had the teams made up but hadn’t posted them yet and that he wanted to start by Monday. He also said the first game is February 17. So now we’re pushing back the practice start date to Monday and the first game is two weeks away. Whatever.

            I went to Tide Table for lunch because I had missed a meal somewhere and it finally caught up to me. I needed a hearty, juicy burger to fill me up again. After I got back from Tide Table I worked on the computer and then went to play rehearsal. I left play rehearsal early on to go finish up something I was doing on the computer, when I came back they were just coming back together. The actors are certainly getting better at making the part theirs. They’ve now seen three movies of Shakespeare and have seen their roles in three different lights and it’s nice to see them put their own spin to the part.

            After that I went to basketball practice for the team I play on – not the one I coach. Six or seven guys showed up and we went over some plays. Well one play. I’ve said before that the only defense they play on the island is 2-3. So I drew up a simple 2-3 zone offense which is basically 3 around 2, with someone always at the high and low block. It was a very simple play, and its more like an offense than it is a set play even though it became that. These guys just don’t know basketball. X’s and O’s don’t exist to them. I had to show one guy what a screen was because he’d never seen it before. These guys are in their 20s and I’m positive that the first team I ever played on, the Sycamore Wolfpack, had better basketball sense. John and I, after a while, decided to forget it and just play. So we challenged some young guys that were playing on another court so that we could practice our new offense. It’s so interesting to see how as a culture, Marshallese don’t retain information very long. I’ll show an example of something ten times in class and then show them the same example on paper and four people in the class will get it wrong. We ran over this play about 20 times, with and without defenders, and when we got into the game situation, they threw it out the door as if we hadn’t just spent 30 minutes on this one play. John and I tried to get them in the right positions while we were scrimmaging but the other team was quite determined to play us hard. We weren’t looking to score at all really. We ended up losing to those guys, a bunch of scrubs, and not making any huge gains in our offense. John and I decided that one of us would have to play the post and the other would have to play the wing. If only one of us is in at a time though, we’re screwed.

            After that I came back to the trailer where Peter was cooking. He made a pasta with cottage cheese, broccoli and a Slovakian soup. I just ate the pasta which was VERY good. After that I helped Robyn with a crossword that she had found in the newspaper. Professor Garrod ended up helping us as well and we still never completed it.

            After that I came into my room where Eric was watching a movie. Eric came home sick from school today and hasn’t looked very good. He says he thinks he’s dehydrated and his head feels very heavy. Well, I came into the room and began working on the computer and somewhere got the motivation to write a story. So I began a story last night about a boy named Jay who is a high school basketball phenom and his motivations to be the greatest of his generation. There are many undertones to the actually story itself which I will explain once the story is done. I guess I’ll post some excerpts on here periodically.

            After plotting out the first half of the story, and writing the first three pages, I killed another roach, Raided my room again, and fell asleep.