Day 48

February 16, 2010

 

Day 48:

 

           

            Today was an interesting day. In class I had the kids finish up their letters which turned out to be pretty good. Everyone turned one in so everyone got 100% for it. I’m salty because I just realized that Uncle Chris is leaving for Israel any day now and so all of the kids who wrote to him won’t get a response until much later. I’m thinking I’ll just send them to Gramma’s house anyway and just send the letters back when I actually get back to the states and then we can send a picture of us all together. After class I walked to the post office to send off some post cards and check on prices for sending the letters. It’s going to be pretty cheap actually.

            So check this out. The high school got a half day today for their Valentine’s Day dance. Mind you, today is a Tuesday. Not only is it a Tuesday but it’s not Valentine’s Day , it’s the 16^th. And not only was this a dance, but it’s against the church and school rules for the kids to actually dance apparently so the school essentially paid a DJ to come and blast music out front of the school so that they could leave three hours early. I find this absolutely hilarious! It’s a Tuesday and its not even Valentine’s Day! This place is a mess.

            So I knew basketball wasn’t happening because the kids were out at noon. So I went to the trailer and studied some Marshallese until the power went out. I decided to go to play rehearsal in the library where I was sure they would have power. No power there either. This whole part of the island was out. So after play rehearsal I came back to the trailer to just chill out before my game. John told me the night before that we had a game at 7. So it was about five when Eric got back and he brought along with him Nitten, Claudius in the play, one of the twelfth graders. Nitten is a phenomenal ukulele player, he led the jam session outside Tide Table last Friday. So Nitten came in and Eric and I recorded him playing on our computers. He played about three songs but before he finished playing I left to go shoot around before the game. I went with John and all of the hoops were being used at MIHS. There was, however, one court that was vacant. Fully equipped with a backboard. No basket. We said, whatever. We can visualize. So we did a warm up, getting the motion of the shot down and everything on a court with no rim. I assure you though, if there had been a rim, we would have been putting in buckets! After about a half hour of that I came back to the trailer and took a bare-chested nap in the steaming hot trailer while the ocean side breeze cooled me down. John woke me up about 45 minutes later saying it was time to go.

            So at the game, it was THE WORST officiating I’ve ever seen. And we won by 15. So I’m not complaining because we lost. I’m complaining because the referees have never seen a rule book. They don’t understand the idea of possession. One guy called me out of bounds because I was standing out of bounds. Mind you, I did not even have the ball. He told me that it was a violation to be standing out of bounds. It’s a good thing they don’t understand English too well, because I was talking so much shit to these referees. We actually figured out that one of the refs was the brother of one of the guys on the other team. We saw them leaving together and there was a different ref for the next game. One of the refs called a technical for Unsportsmanlike Conduct on John because he went up for a lay up and the guy guarding him got kicked in the balls. They called a technical on another guy, Castigan, because he threw the ball off of a guy on the other team as he was falling out of bounds so that we’d get the ball back. They called over and back because a loose ball rolled across the half court line even though the other team had the ball and we were about to steal it back. There were about 12 calls that made me think I was Oscar Robertson playing for Crispus Attucks in Indiana in the 50s against the boys from Milan. They just clearly did not want the Americans to win. We still won though. It was really really bad though.

            When I finally got back from basketball it was nearly 11 o’clock. I fixed myself a grilled cheese and some scrambled eggs for dinner and after talking to Ben for about an hour about 1990s NBA teams, and eventually about how Michael Phelps and Tiger Woods were just as dominant in their sports as Roger Federer and Michael Jordan, I fell asleep around 1:00 a.m.