Sport Day

Still buzzing from the welcome party the night before, everyone was eager to get to work. The downpour from the previous day continued throughout the night and into our working hours. Our task was to finish joining the trench to the road and to level the land that would be covered in concrete. Not only was the sloppy clay treacherous to move around the site, looser areas created puddles that would swallow a boot whole. Despite the growing obstacles, the team pushed on with Elijah, Justin and Charlie using their hands to fill pockets of ground behind the group. With everyone’s perseverance we managed to get the job done an hour early. The work was not without some hard-earned chaos; fueled by Ethan and Shae’s shenanigans, Billy became more mud than man.

After a quick mud fight the work day had come to an end so we all packed up or shovels and hoes before heading for a shower, the part of the group that is in green house found out when they got to their rooms that their showers weren’t working so their wait was uneventful. The others quickly had a shower and prepared for a tough sports day with the school. After around 10 minutes of waiting the green house had their showers repaired and had a shower removing all the mud that had attached itself to everyone. Billy, despite the shower still had mud spots where you could tell the mud had been. While waiting for the sports to start many of the boys were playing in their playground with the younger kids from the school. Many of the boys were carrying the children on their back and in their arms. When the sports day eventually started the whole school piled into the small basketball court which really put the pressure on for us to at least put up a fight on the sports they practiced the most. The first sport that was played was volleyball with the team having rotating players every time we won back the serve. After only 3 out of 5 sets played we lost the match after putting up a tough fight and only ever losing by a couple points. When the next sport came around it turned out to be soccer which was a tough game to play. We were initially out of our depth against solid opposition, but we adjusted, and after an enthusiastic rev up from coach Billy Bunn, we were inspired. The deciding goal was one for the books, a spectacular shot getting kicked from the keeper ‘Dunney’ still in goals getting foreheaded by Mr Winberg into the goal (video replay to come). Everyone rushed the field to celebrate the goal not even realising that we had won by one goal until we calmed down and actually looked at the score. The final game that would decide who would come out on top Australia or Thailand was a netball type game, this game was brutal for the Thai teachers as we beat them by more than 10 points ending with one of them getting injured with a suspected rolled ankle.

For the rest of the day we hung out the kids until dinner with the blue sky home girls which had many laughs throughout the meal with a gecko falling into Jonathan’s food causing a lot of confusion, surprise and fun whilst watching the reactions of everyone around him. After the meal we talked for a bit before going into a classroom to help the girls with their homework. After a while the room turned to chaos with girls singing while Ethan W and Elijah were dancing to their song and others just going crazy with the younger girls. The chaos continued until they had to stop to go to sleep with a lot of see you tomorrow comments, we parted for the night and all went to bed.