Day 2203. It would have been nice to be able to sleep on after a long week of getting up early, but we were expecting a new cleaning lady to arrive at 9 am as our regular one has broken her leg. It was the third time someone was scheduled to come. The first two canceled, and this third time, she simply didn't show up and never replied to my messages. Just great. As Randy had already tidied up so the cleaning lady could clean, he decided to take action himself and vaccuumed the whole house. He did a great job!
I had a student at 10 am, so I got ready for her and then taught until 11 am. Then I went to the kitchen to make lunch. After having eaten, we still had some time to relax or in my case, to work. Then we got ready to leave the house which we did just before 2 pm.
We walked to the tram stop which is a little distance away, then rode two trams, then had more walking to do before arriving at the sports center where they take their tennis classes. They had their olympics today that they have twice a year, and it might be their last ones, as they'll soon start playing actual tournaments. They got their name tags that also had their year of birth on them, then they went on the court.
There were already lots of kid on the courts, some younger, some older. The founder of the tennis school came and split all the kids in half for a warm-up with the trainer since a few kids were still missing. The kids were then running in circles and balancing balls and the such. When it was time, they were all called back to the front where it was time to put them into teams of 3 or 4. I stayed close-by to make sure they were put into the same team so I could actually watch them both. And as before, they did NOT put them into the same team so I spoke up to make sure they were together.
They were in a team of 4, the other two being boys who played tennis better than them but that didn't matter for the olympics. Given the great number of kids, they had 7 stations set up and not all were about playing tennis. Before they got started, Randy and Sammy left to go to the nearby playground and the grocery store, and they only returned when they were just about to go to the last station.
At the first station they had to volley back the ball the teacher was throwing, then do a little parcours before getting back in line to volley.
At the second station, the teacher played with them, and they had to do forehand and backhand.
The third stations was an obstacle courses - moving tennis balls around cones, crawling through a tunnel, jumping. The trainer was taking each one's time and wrote it down. Why they did that at every station, I don't know, as the kids were not ranked but everyone got the same medal.
Their very own teacher was at the fourth station. They each got ten balls that they had to keep in the game as long as possible.
At the fifth station it was a game of speed. They had to pick up five balls individually and throw them into a bucket as fast as possible. After tehy had done that twice, the second exercise was to balance on a board and throw a ball into a bucket from a distance.
At the sixth station they had to volley again. Tammy was sitting with me when it was not her turn as the two little wounds on each of her hand palms were hurting. She'd had a bandage on the whole time anyway to help protect her hands.
At the last station they played field hockey. They had to move a ball through an obstacle course. Sammy also got a hockey stick but then played ball without it.
Once the last station was done, it was time for parent-child tennis, just for 15 minutes. Tammy had wanted to play with me but her hands were hurting too much so I played with Emmy who was delighted about it. We had a good time.
Then we all went to the front for the award ceremony. They called the kids up one by one, and they walked by all the trainers who gave them high-five, then the last trainer put the medal around their necks. In the past, they had also received little gifts, but not this time.
The olympics were over. I talked to their trainer to find out when they could make up for the class they had missed before summer, then we got ready to leave and go home.
It's a long way to our house from there, and I looked up which of the two options was faster. We then walked a good distance to the train station and got on the S-train. Unfortunately it was an old train so we had to lift the wheelchair over a few steps to get it in. Sammy was not happy. After the train, we still had to take the subway and by 6:45 pm we were back home.
I went to the kitchen to cut up their fruit for them. I was glad that they had already done piano practice right in the morning. After they had eaten, it was bathtub time, then story time. After I had prayed for them, they went to bed. It was a little after 8 pm. I then got myself something to eat, then downloaded my pictures, but I was too tired to work on the many pictures or to write. It was about 11:30 pm when I went to bed.
