The Return of "The Panda Punch"!

Today’s been the best day yet! Turns out Friday is PE day at NAP and that means the entire second half of the day is devoted to being outdoors and playing games. I think Friday is going to be my favorite day of the week, by far.

I started out my PE by learning a few dances with the KG1 and KG2 (kindergarten 1&2) classes. After that I embarrassed myself a little more on the football field. It was still fun, regardless of my inability to dribble, defend, or score. My day got infinitely better though when they put up the volleyball net. Now here was the sport I was looking forward to the most. After playing volleyball in the backyard of AXA almost every day over the summer, I was looking forward to getting back into this game. Also, to explain the title of this post, before I got decent at volleyball over the summer, the only thing I could really do was serve. My serve was actually pretty good though and the rest of the ’14 AXAs decided to give it the nickname “The Panda Punch”. As you can see, it’s a nickname I’ve embraced. I spent basically the rest of the afternoon playing volleyball with the kids and ended the school day with a 5 on 5 game with just us teachers. “The Panda Punch” scored 5 of our 11 points. Boom. :)

After school, we had a sort of staff meeting where Sir Dun brought meat pies and pineapple soda and I was officially welcomed as part of the staff. It was also one of the teacher’s birthdays so we sang to him. We also threw like five buckets of water on him. Apparently that’s some sort of tradition here. Good thing my birthday is in March and well outside of the time I’ll be here in Ghana. That’s one of the traditions that I don’t really want to personally experience.

Since it’s my first Friday in the country and that teacher’s birthday (I keep on forgetting his name because it’s really hard to pronounce), everyone is going to go out tonight. And even though I technically got my first taste of Ghanaian nightlife last Saturday, that doesn’t really count because I was half asleep the entire time so I’m really excited for tonight to get the whole experience. As I was leaving, Sir Dun told me to get ready because “he takes his weekends seriously”. Game on. I didn’t sophomore summer for nothing. (Yes, I did just use “sophomore summer” as a verb.)

So, I think I’m going to do some quick reading before dinner and then get ready for the night. I have no idea what to expect. Whatever we do, though, I’m sure it’s going to be fun because these teachers are a really awesome bunch of people. Outside of Sir Ernest, I’ve also become good friends with Madam Victoria, Sir Edward, both Sir Richards, and, of course, Sir Dun. I’ll take and post pictures of all these people soon so you can all start putting names to faces.

Alright, that’s it for now. I hope everyone had a great week and happy Friday! :)