"Sports are a universal language"

... is the most incorrect statement I have ever heard. Like ever. First off, it's not that it's impossible to have a universal language. Smiling and tic-tac-toe prove they exist, and while playing 20 minutes straight of tic-tac-toe with a girl who rides the bus back home may sometimes get monotonous, we have proven time and time again that a smile and a grid written up on the board can prevent complete chaos when you are alone with 15 children who can understand absolutely zero of what you’re saying. (also heads up it's entirely possible that the word "furniture" will be inserted at some point in the next few posts because my browser is now trying to translate my writing into English and things some of the things are saying are Vietnamese...? it's unclear.)

But back to sports. So today, in the morning it was blistering hot (thankfully we also lost electricity today because who would want a fan) and then in the afternoon we had a monsoon-like storm that flooded the school ground so we did back-to-back academic classes and then sports a bit later. While it was nice to get our health class out of the way because the 7^th grade lesson was so boring that we didn’t even want to teach it, it meant that we had an hour and a half straight of volleyball. Coming from college practices, this shouldn’t have seemed like a lot, and don’t get me wrong – it’s a blast. That being said, there are some SERIOUS differences coaching outside of the US when compared to doing it in our sheltered gyms in Marin or New Hampshire. I won’t pretend like I have extensive coaching experience in either, but I’m almost positive that there are some fundamental differences.

1. I’ve been told that personally and as a team, I’ve looked at coaches like they’re speaking a different language when they talk to me. I’ve also been on the other end of it while coaching CYO and camps. However, I will say this – it is one thing for the to look at you like you’re speaking a foreign language, but it is quite another for you to ACTUALLY be speaking a foreign language. It takes the phrase “pick your battles” to a whole new level, because I am not about to try to spend 5 minutes getting one of our translators to explain something to a child unless it is actually worth it.

2. Kids in America are exposed to sports. We have some really, really athletic kids on my team, like to the degree that I’m pretty positive that if they came to America they’d be on scholarship somewhere by college. And not to generalize, but that’s mainly the boys. Some of the girls are pretty coordinated as well, and especially when it’s coach-initiated they can pass the ball pretty accurately. However, there is a large portion of my team (and especially the girls) that I am 100% positive has never done a single athletic thing in their life. Which is probably true, and which is why CFC exists. But it makes it much more difficult to explain to someone how to do something like set a ball when making contact with a moving object is a struggle and they’ve literally never touched an athletic ball in their lives because sports just aren’t a thing for most kids here in the rural jungle.

3. We play in basically monsoons, in flip-flops/barefoot, on the concrete floor, with barely enough volleyballs for each set of partners to have one.

4. They don’t speak English.

5. They don’t speak English.

6. Did I mention they don’t speak English? And sometimes, in class or in sports or whatever if we look frustrated because the Vietnamese coaches aren’t translating for us, they just look at us and ask “What is wrong?” to which our response is, “they don’t speak English.”

Side note – just paused to watch a lizard walk across our floor. Hopefully to keep eating the mosquitoes and maybe the cockroach sitting outside?

As a fun story for today/from last week, today we had 4 kids get knocked in the head with a volleyball. While this may not seem unusual given that we have kids running around wreaking havoc all day on the volleyball court, we haven't had that happen at all over camp and had it happen four times within maybe 5 minutes. And as a background on why this made my heart stop literally every time, day 1 we had a kid get knocked unconscious for a good 40 seconds playing Duck Duck Goose, which needless to say has been banned from the camp. But don't worry, he came back to school the next day and has been coming to class and playing sports ever since. Because that's safe and healthy and we don't listen to words like "concussion" or "hospital" over here apparently.

But anyhow, that’s the basic run down on coaching volleyball so far, more on health class, life skills, and team bonding to come! And, I’m sure, more adventures with sports.

Current sick count – we had 5/8 Americans today but got up to 6 by the afternoon. We figured out that (ironically) there must’ve been something wrong with the cheese on pizza we found on Sunday, because 6 of the 8 of us ate it and all 6 (except for me, likely because I’m on double-duty antibiotics that kill literally everything) have been running back and forth sick, as well as the one Vietnamese coach that ate with us. But other than that, Ms. Sinusitis in the room next to me is clearing up, the girl with infected capillaries has not regressed, the heat rash has stagnated for everyone, and I believe the two Vietnamese directors that were hit by trucks (separate incidents) are healing nicely. As for the one Vietnamese coach who's sick, more on her later, but for now her name is Phoenix and she has a pretty serious crush on one of the American coaches. So yes, it’s quite the situation.

Goodnight/good morning! More tomorrow :)

- Alex