(Copied from a story I wrote for Parijat's page on Omprakash.org)
Two days on a new continent, the homesickness comes and goes. Only 13 million people speak the Assamese language (myself not included) and so sports and playing with babies are the only languages in which I can communicate for now, but I will talk about sports. Australian visitors brought Frisbees a few days ago and they were a huge success at lunchtime. The children LOVED a new toy, from 5 year old boys to teenage girls. I showed them to catch alligator-style and throw with the label facing up. When my spirits were down later in the day, 90 minutes of spirited badminton with boys in the schoolyard brightened my day and made me really feel like part of the tight family at Parijat. All those lunches spent playing badminton in high school are unexpectedly paying off!
Today we played tag at lunch, me trying to explain in English that tag was the opposite of the game we were playing where all the students chase me. A few girls joined in the game with the little boys and when I got the idea across I was still the target for most of the "Its." After eating I watched boys play a cricket-baseball hybrid with fists and a tennis ball. Baseball is my game back at home and I simply sat and observed how this game was played.
The playfields at Parijat are disused rice patties. Each patty is roughly square, the perfect shape for a game of cricket-ball. The hitter stands in the middle of one side of the patty and each corner is a "safe area"/base, effectively making 5 bases including home plate. The pitcher pitches and the batter swings at the ball with his or her fist. Unlike baseball, the batter can choose to run or not based on how good the hit is and like cricket, a hit anywhere in the field is runnable, fair or foul. Each base can house multiple runners who can score on a hit, making the possibility for 5,6,7,10 run grand slams. There are no wickets, so outs are flyballs like all good schoolyard games, pegouts are encouraged. Tonight I brought out my baseball and funky mitt without webbing to show what a real baseball looked like...also a big success.
Sports are fun. They teach teamwork and leadership, structure and competition, make men of boys, etc. But I have never experienced it as such a literal form of communication and I am thankful now for my modest athletic ability.
Two days on a new continent, the homesickness comes and goes. Only 13 million people speak the Assamese language (myself not included) and so sports and playing with babies are the only languages in which I can communicate for now, but I will talk about sports. Australian visitors brought Frisbees a few days ago and they were a huge success at lunchtime. The children LOVED a new toy, from 5 year old boys to teenage girls. I showed them to catch alligator-style and throw with the label facing up. When my spirits were down later in the day, 90 minutes of spirited badminton with boys in the schoolyard brightened my day and made me really feel like part of the tight family at Parijat. All those lunches spent playing badminton in high school are unexpectedly paying off!
Today we played tag at lunch, me trying to explain in English that tag was the opposite of the game we were playing where all the students chase me. A few girls joined in the game with the little boys and when I got the idea across I was still the target for most of the "Its." After eating I watched boys play a cricket-baseball hybrid with fists and a tennis ball. Baseball is my game back at home and I simply sat and observed how this game was played.
The playfields at Parijat are disused rice patties. Each patty is roughly square, the perfect shape for a game of cricket-ball. The hitter stands in the middle of one side of the patty and each corner is a "safe area"/base, effectively making 5 bases including home plate. The pitcher pitches and the batter swings at the ball with his or her fist. Unlike baseball, the batter can choose to run or not based on how good the hit is and like cricket, a hit anywhere in the field is runnable, fair or foul. Each base can house multiple runners who can score on a hit, making the possibility for 5,6,7,10 run grand slams. There are no wickets, so outs are flyballs like all good schoolyard games, pegouts are encouraged. Tonight I brought out my baseball and funky mitt without webbing to show what a real baseball looked like...also a big success.
Sports are fun. They teach teamwork and leadership, structure and competition, make men of boys, etc. But I have never experienced it as such a literal form of communication and I am thankful now for my modest athletic ability.
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