Yesterday was the day of the Hope School for Girls and Boys versus Braeburn International School football match. Hope was victorious (and don’t worry, I’m not spoiling anything by saying so).
My morning was a bit thrown off because I woke up before my alarm and couldn’t get back to bed. I was upset at my body for being stubborn; I only get so much time to sleep, I want to take advantage of every single second.
Yesterday being Friday, and a sunny one at that, the school had parade. It had been a while since we last did one, so it was nice to see. After parade I took the first lesson of the day to teach simple future tense and do some exam corrections. It was cut a little short because I had an overlapping music lesson (I’m starting to learn that time moves much quicker when there are things you want to get done).
After music I was swept up in the mess of trying to get the entirety of class 1 onto school busses to shuttle over to a nearby school. It took a lot more effort and coordinating than it should have—we were 30 minutes late in arriving to our football match.
Arriving at Braeburn I was struck by the sense that we may be a little intimidating; Braeburn was on the field practicing—2 teachers and 9 kids—while 100 students in matching uniforms offloaded from 3 different school busses. In meeting the teachers of Braeburn and their pupils, I found their impression of the match’s nature was a cordial and friendly exercise for the kids—maybe a chance for them to meet some new people and be able to play around with them.
Our coach/teacher clearly wanted to win. As most know, I’ve never been a competitive person when it comes to athletics. I have always enjoyed the exercise and camaraderie of sports, but when it comes to competing I tend to shy away. Braeburn clearly aligned with my view. Their team was a mismatch of girls and boys, different skill and interest levels; our team was hand picked after an hour long “tryout”/practice the day prior.
I don’t think I need to say much more about the progression or outcome of the match, I think at this point it’s implied that there was a not-so-great-winner and a sour loser. I enjoyed talking with the other teachers during the match. I learned that while our class 1 consists of over 100 pupils, they have only 19. Braeburn is known as the “fancy” international school where they use Cambridge curriculum. It costs around 5 times more than Hope for a student to attend there. So when you think about those numbers, the schools are pulling in the same amount of money, but one only has to deal with the education and handling of 20% of the students as the other one.
After the match, I observed some pretty stark differences between the schools. The kids of Braeburn were a bit upset that they lost. They didn’t want to lineup to shake hands.
One of the Braeburn kids started punching and pushing the P.E. teacher when the teacher tried to force him to shake hands with our students. The P.E. teacher kind of grabbed him by the shoulders, but the kid still had some anger to get out and didn’t settle down—rather than gently fist-bumping, he threw full on punches against our kids’ outstretched hands. If that were a Hope student, he wouldn’t know what day of the week it was after being reprimanded.
Our bus drivers left during the match to go do who-knows-what. Us teachers were left stranded with 100 rowdy kids. I felt bad for the Braeburn staff, this was a lot more than they’re used to, so they just left us to occupy their field. It took nearly an hour for the drivers to show up.
Once we got back to school it was lunch time. After lunch we had sports/games, but the schedule was altered to allow for some patriotic song practice.
I was pretty burnt (physically, mentally, and UV-wise). The football pitch was pretty exposed and the sun was coming down heavy yesterday. But crazy enough, only a few hours after acquiring a good crisp, the weather decided it wanted to prevent any sports and games.
Once regular school ended and I finished with the afternoon bus route, my day petered out nicely. I got home early, had some snacks, did a bit of work and chores, had dinner, read, and went to bed. This morning I woke up even earlier than yesterday (around 4:45), but thankfully I was able to fall back asleep in a timely manner and resume my beauty rest.