Day 49

We started today with our third and final sessions with Ysterplaat 1 & 2. The first 2 sessions were a little bit tricky, the kids were a lot more lively but we had a few that were disruptive and a few that to put it politely were a bit slower than the rest. Both groups we did the stop start movement game as we felt that with the mood they were in continuity was better than trying to do something new. They fully understood the game and even told me the rules, but as soon as we said stop/freeze they wanted to get as close to us as possible. We then split the groups into 4 circles and did the passing the ball around the circles activity. We then went from four groups to two and then eventually had everyone involved, it worked so much better than starting with 1 big group and also meant they were constantly active and not standing around getting distracted. 

We finished up and moved to the other building for the final group. Our 1st week with them was great they were so much fun, 2nd week they were difficult so we weren't sure what we were walking into. Fortunately they were really well behaved again and we had a real laugh. We had an advanced session we wanted to try out but the kids took over, they wanted to play the movement game, we usually just get walk, run, jump, hop and skip, this lot wanted to do robot walks, animals and even created their own which is the purpose of the activity, to get them learning about ways they can move. We then were just about to start our original planned session when we had 30 kids chanting 'duck, duck, goose' at us, we gave in and gave them what they wanted. To be fair though we did do duck,duck,goose back at Arsenal with Dean so it is an Arsenal in the Community session, kind of. They really got into it and I didn't really want to end the session. But after shouts of Arsenal and high 5s they made their way inside. I've managed to get hold of a video of them chanting Arsenal and the high 5s I just need to work out how to get them from a memory stick onto my iPad so I can show you. We then went inside for a quick drink and a biscuit, as we tried to sneak out the kids saw us and we spent 5 minutes saying goodbye and giving more high 5s.

Joe had phoned and had said don't worry about coming in and to take some time off before our afternoon session. We headed back to Berghof for a bit of lunch and to get ready for the afternoon session. We were at De Waveren who have been given the unfortunate title of our worst school we visited. Last time we ended up with 80kids and 8 balls, it was difficult but we managed, our issue was the kids were uncooperative with us, they made our job a lot harder than it already was, we had put on a good session that we had organised last minute and even though they could see us struggling they went off and did their own thing. Harry and myself along with Joe were reluctant to go back to the school again, but between the 3 of us we decided we would just organise a game, we were keeping our side of the deal by being there but the teacher and kids had broken their side of the deal last time so we weren't prepared to give them a full session. We turned up and was told by the teacher that he was expecting us last week even though Joe had reorganised the session with him and he said he had turned over 100 kids away. The original plan for this school was that we would do 3 sessions each with 30 kids and it was up to the teacher to decide which kids arrived, I know this is a problem a lot of the other guys have faced but common sense says 100 kids split them into 3 groups and have 1 group per week and then they get the benefit of having a good quality session. They've missed out on an opportunity in my opinion.

After De Waveren we quickly drove to the shops, stopped off at the Africa house to say hi to Jodi and Yonick and then headed for training. We want to get some game time this Saturday so we felt we should earn it by going to training with Densel. We took part and it ended up being a couple of minutes of suicides followed by a 4 v 4 game. Me and Harry were on the same side with Eric who we had met before and another guy, we played some good football but this heat and a tiring day was catching up on us. Hopefully done enough to get a game on Saturday.

We headed back to Berghof for the evening. Tomorrow we start our computer teaching and have a new club to go to, should be an interesting day.