Tuesday 12/13: GO ARTLAND DRAGONS!!

I (thankfully) got a little more sleep last night than I’ve been getting lately. However, I now have a deep cough and my voice is still sorta dead. Ugh.

My first class was about to give a poetry recitation for two other classes when I arrived (the teacher had forgotten about English class), so I sat and listened. I was really impressed (they are the 8 yr olds) with their memorization! I don’t remember ever having to memorize poems for school in the US…

My afternoon classes went fine (thank goodness!). With the little kids, I had them do a connect-the-dot Christmas tree and they had to write “______’s Christmas Tree” at the bottom. I explained that adding an apostrophe and an s made it possessive…I think they understood! We did examples of people in the class, like “Charlotte’s dog, “Elisa’s cat,” or “Santa’s reindeer.” And, of course, we sang “We Wish You A Merry Christmas.” I could sing that song in my sleep…

Around 5:30pm, Ralf, Margot, and I left to pick up the twins at their school (about 45 minutes away) and head to Pau for a basketball game!

Photo: Margot all decked out in the team colors!

There’s a pro team in Pau and they were playing against the Artland Dragons, which is a team from the town in Germany where Ralf grew up!

The last time they came to play in Pau was in 2007, so I was really lucky that they happened to be playing tonight! We stopped at a cheap restaurant to have a quick dinner (pizza) before the game and ended up being a little bit late. But, it was a good game!

Photo: The court... The stadium holds 6,000 people.

In the breaks between the quarters, they had entertainers come out (a girl doing tricks on a bike, a guy juggling a badminton racket between two sticks, and two guys in cowboy hats bouncing on giant inner tubes…) and during a few of the time outs they had little kids scrimmage!

Photo: The trick bicyclist

There were probably a few thousand people there and we were probably the only people supporting the Artland Dragons! But, after a really close game, we ended up winning in the last few seconds (Pau missed a shot with about 4 seconds left and the final score was 76-75)!

Photo: The scoreboard!

It was a really fun evening and I’m so grateful to Ralf for taking us (and driving all the way to Pau—it’s an hour away!) and treating me to dinner and the game! He’s so generous.

Today I got a Christmas card from my Grandma!!! :)

video from the game: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mXAlvuQeTLU&feature=youtu.be

video of the crazy half-time entertainment: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=06G5YdVyEqc&feature=youtu.be