keeping score

There are several things that give me un cansancio mental (mental exhaustion) that is beyond comparison. Theology is one. Usually they are good things, worth it, but much like lifting heavy weights, I have to realize my limits and respect that mental growth happens slowly. Today I added another activity to the list: volleyball refereeing in Spanish. Wow! I have never been good with keeping score orally - I just don´t care that much about the score. Doing it in Spanish with lots of high schoolers yelling at me that it was actually dieciocho a once or veinte a diez did not help. At the end of it all, I said "No! It´s diecitres a diecisiete!" For you non-Spanish speakers out there, "diecitres" does not exist. It would be like saying "ten-and-three" instead of "thirteen". Oh dear...

This anecdote raises a question: Why was Ellen refereeing a Spanish volleyball match?

Excellent question my friend. Next week is Semana Santa, Holy Week. If you didn't know that, make a mental note because a lot of people in the world celebrate it and it is important for a number of historical reasons, besides being really quite a key time in the Christian Church year. Spain does not have Spring Break. Spain has Vacaciones de Semana Santa. Mostly the same idea, except less of a drinking, party stereotype. (Not saying it doesn't happen though). However, while providing a delightful tidbit of cross cultural information, this does not directly answer the question regarding me tweeting a whistle and keeping score in Spanish. The week before vacation is pretty much always a lost cause in the academic world - at least in the years before final exams. So, Albariza scheduled La Semana Deportiva. Sports Week! There were football (no, not the tackling American version), basketball, tennis, and volleyball tournaments. Students from each class joined a team and from 11-2 we had matches. I, being one of two teachers who knows a golpe from a saca (spike/ serve, respectively) was put on volleyball duty. Yesterday it was not bad. I was with the other teacher who has volleyball playing experience. We were refereeing the 3rd-6th grade games. The name was not volleyball, but voleibote - volleybounce - because they were allowed to have one bounce in between every touch of the ball and they could catch, coger, the first two balls. The last one had to be a hit - golpe. The Spanish interjections is mostly to jog my memory when I am old and cannot remember the words I learned back in the day when I used to live in Spain. If you don't follow, no worries.

Day one was pretty chill. We alternated games, laughed a lot, and I enjoyed watching children with more football (again - think feet) skillz than most American teenagers awkwardly try to gain the same level of hand-eye coordination.

Today though, I had the older kids. Approximately ages 12-16. And they all played each other. Sometimes it was obvious before the matches which team would win (Seriously - 12 year-olds vs 16 year-olds?). They played normal volleyball rules - no voleibote here. I was alone refereeing. Counting in another language seems really easy - one of the first things you learn. However, because it's so basic, so integral, and seems so simple, it's not. Talk to any interpreter and they will tell you that on the job, they carry a pad and pencil to write numbers down because in the midst of translating, it's difficult to remember that the number was 3243 and then translate it into another language. It's equally difficult to remember that the score was 12-17 after you have just explained "Que, cuando se cae en la línea, está dentro del campo... no! ha entrado.... Porque lo he visto... No. El árbitro siempre decide." And then... dang. "No me acuerdo... ¿a cúando vamos?" And it's gone. Even faster because I had been trying to remember the numbers in Spanish while speaking in Spanish while refereeing in Spanish in a game in which my entire history has been written in English. Complicated!

The last game, we settled on a compromise. Paloma, one of the girls who had already experienced my less than stellar puntuación/scorekeeping, shouted "Cuenta bien Ellen. Count well Ellen." I shouted back "Cuento mejor en inglés! I count better in English!" All the girls laughed and said "Pues, cuenta en inglés! Count in English then!" And count in English I did. From 1-15. Three times. :)