Sede Boqer sports
It's been an interesting week of 'sports' here. The weekly volleyball game has started up again. Unfortunately, this week, we showed up at the gym on Saturday night, and it was pitch black. No lights. Apparently the power was out on that block. Because it was still the holidays, there was no one to call. We rummaged around the fuse box by the light of a cell phone for a while until someone pointed out that the next building was dark also. We couldn't even play by moonlight because the moon didn't come up until much later. Ugh.
So, we retired to the ping pong table back in the student lounge in the apartments. Ping pong tables aren't quite so convenient for 8 people. We ended up playing a version where there is a line of people on each side, then after you hit, you run to the other side. If you miss, you're out, and it goes down to the last 2 who play for a point. Points accumulate, etc. It's a bit of a dizzying game. We tried changing directions, but that just resulted in the world spinning around the other way. After that, we tried standing still and letting the table spin around, but that didn't really work either. It was good fun, though.
On Sunday, we decided to try to try playing volleyball again, but thought maybe it would be better to try while the sun was still up. We got to the gym, and saw lights on - good sign. Then, there was a Lord of the Flies scene where a tribe of little kids swirled around the gym floor bouncing basketballs. Turns out they have practice at 4:00, followed by slightly bigger kids at 6:00, then even bigger kids after that. So, we went on a quest to find a place we could play. We tried the soccer pitch, thinking that the goals there were about the right height. If you haven't seen the photo, go back a few pages and have a look.
Next, we tried the tennis/basketball courts. Turns out that there are holes in the court for poles for a net (presumably the tennis nets take the same kind of pole as the volleyball nets), and there was much rejoicing. There were even lines marked for a volleyball court. Then we tried to convince the folks at the gym to let us take the net to the tennis courts. No luck, can't do that, wouldn't be proper. At this point, several of our number we're going into obvious signs of volleyball withdrawal and were making strange twitching motions, punctuated by an occasional leap as if for a grand spike. So we decided to play anyway. Without a net. We lined up 5 on 5, and started playing as if there were a net. It made for some interesting calls on whether the ball would have gone over the net. It is also surprisingly disorienting when a nice set goes up and there isn't a net there. The hits that would have hovered just over the net made for some interesting tangles. There were only a few points where someone moved so far past the net that they could have easily played for the other team.
Needless to say, we got some strange looks from the people who showed up to play tennis on the next court. And I think we scared the high school kids who wanted to play basketball. They sort of hovered around the court for a while with puzzled looks on their faces, and then wandered off to play a makeshift frisbee game on the tiny plot of grass nearby.
I hope the electricity is on for next week's game.
So, we retired to the ping pong table back in the student lounge in the apartments. Ping pong tables aren't quite so convenient for 8 people. We ended up playing a version where there is a line of people on each side, then after you hit, you run to the other side. If you miss, you're out, and it goes down to the last 2 who play for a point. Points accumulate, etc. It's a bit of a dizzying game. We tried changing directions, but that just resulted in the world spinning around the other way. After that, we tried standing still and letting the table spin around, but that didn't really work either. It was good fun, though.
On Sunday, we decided to try to try playing volleyball again, but thought maybe it would be better to try while the sun was still up. We got to the gym, and saw lights on - good sign. Then, there was a Lord of the Flies scene where a tribe of little kids swirled around the gym floor bouncing basketballs. Turns out they have practice at 4:00, followed by slightly bigger kids at 6:00, then even bigger kids after that. So, we went on a quest to find a place we could play. We tried the soccer pitch, thinking that the goals there were about the right height. If you haven't seen the photo, go back a few pages and have a look.
Next, we tried the tennis/basketball courts. Turns out that there are holes in the court for poles for a net (presumably the tennis nets take the same kind of pole as the volleyball nets), and there was much rejoicing. There were even lines marked for a volleyball court. Then we tried to convince the folks at the gym to let us take the net to the tennis courts. No luck, can't do that, wouldn't be proper. At this point, several of our number we're going into obvious signs of volleyball withdrawal and were making strange twitching motions, punctuated by an occasional leap as if for a grand spike. So we decided to play anyway. Without a net. We lined up 5 on 5, and started playing as if there were a net. It made for some interesting calls on whether the ball would have gone over the net. It is also surprisingly disorienting when a nice set goes up and there isn't a net there. The hits that would have hovered just over the net made for some interesting tangles. There were only a few points where someone moved so far past the net that they could have easily played for the other team.
Needless to say, we got some strange looks from the people who showed up to play tennis on the next court. And I think we scared the high school kids who wanted to play basketball. They sort of hovered around the court for a while with puzzled looks on their faces, and then wandered off to play a makeshift frisbee game on the tiny plot of grass nearby.
I hope the electricity is on for next week's game.
1 Comments:
Hey, wait a minute now. We didn't steal the court from small children - we let them have it for the whole night. It was the open, outdoor court that we used for a while, and those high school kids were nothing but trouble anyway. Okay, maybe not, but they had a perfectly good game of frisbee going on the grass after they realized we weren't going anywhere, despite having no net. We even moved our stuff off the benches at the side of the court so a skateboarder could jump on it.
we did think about using the tennis nets, but figured that would be too easy. And there were small children playing there also.
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