Some fun and competition

If we're being completely honest…I have a favorite class. It puts the others to shame. They are active, they participate unceasingly, they are excited, they do their homework, they even practice oral English outside of class for fun. It's great. It makes Monday mornings tolerable. It makes every other class feel like its missing something. But I think my favorite part of this class is the fact they do class as a community. It's the adult English majors class, so they are all a little older and they have all taught before (most of them primary school). But they all aren't from Guiyang and so they hang out together, live near each other, and do a lot of things together. It was with the students from this class that I ate dinner with earlier this semester and that I had an "autumn outing" with. Well, today brought another unexpected adventure with my class.



I was editing a science journal article (a whole other story in and of itself) at a coffeehouse (actually teahouse-but not like traditional teahouse) and I get a call from another teacher that also teaches this class. "Jake, where are you? Are you coming? We are waiting for you. Come to the basketball court."…ok, I wasn't really surprised. One student mentioned it yesterday, but he said a different time and he failed to tell me I was the starting power forward. So I run and change and make it to the court. All of the girls are sitting in the stands cheering. All the guys are either playing or standing in the unofficial bench area. They put me in immediately. We were playing a team of older guys. I am not really sure where they came from, but they were patient guys. But it was definitely an experience…



(Here comes the part that if you aren't really interested in basketball it might not be as interesting and you should totally just scan it to hear about where I went to cut on a fast break, slipped, and subsequently lost a large amount of hair and skin from my leg…actually, that is about it)…back to the game. We are playing full court, not a great thing seeing as how I have exercised three times in the last two months (at least they were all in the last two weeks though). But they tell me I am playing forward and I go in. First trip down the court I get a feel for the game. The point guard (another teacher) passes to one of my students one dribble and up goes a shot. Not just any shot. A heinous shot. It was ridiculous/amazing all at the same time. I go down to play defense and …well, I just decided to camp out in the lane because our center was cherry picking at the other end and no one could play a lick of D. The other team manages to put up a much better shot than we did, but they missed and to my surprise my teammate gets the rebound and chucks it down the court to the cherry picker who proceeds to miss the layup…ouch. This whole chucking the ball thing happened many more times. Only it stopped working and the ball was either a) stolen by the other team or b) not caught by the cherry picker and thrown out of bounds. My reaction was the closest thing to getting angry that I have felt in a while. I, of course, didn't express this to my team/students, but if I was coaching any one who even looked up court to throw a grenade pass would have been on the bench. My offense contribution to the game took a while to develop, but my students…well they are gunners…all of them. They never saw a shot they didn't like. So I got my hustle points (put backs from all the bricks that were thrown up). I had my fair share of defensive rebounds too. And after a while I completely abandoned the whole outlet pass concept and just ran the break myself. But in a way, it was dangerous basketball. Bodies were flying everywhere; there was no finesse about it. I caught a knee in my quad that left me limping up and down the court for five minutes. The half court offense though…once I went in the post they were actually passing me the ball. I have always had a closest fascination about being a post player. I think it might have been from seeing underachieving post players during my childhood and high school experience and thinking if I was taller I could dominate down there. Well, this was my chance. So I went to town. I'm telling you Tim Duncan would have been proud. I was knocking down 10 foot bank shots like nobody's business. We ended up winning. It was a little anticlimactic as we had managed to gain the lead upon my arrival and keep it (and no one really seemed to care about the score except for me). Overall, it was a lot of fun. Another great experience with my class, they are really feeling comfortable with me now (on my way back to my apartment I talked with some students who had been previously petrified to speak with me, but now are more than comfortable). I got a chance to be competitive (even though I didn't really show it). And I had a lot of fun. Quite the combo. Now if I could only get my other classes on this bandwagon.