Swing Batta Batta...

A volunteer in the north of Moldova who used to coach softball back in the states recently offered to teach and host softball camps this summer. She received donated gloves, balls, and bats from her old team! I immediately hit her up on this offer, and I'm glad I did. The three days of softball playing has been a highlight of my service thus far.

The plan was for one day of practice and training in my village, one day in my neighboring volunteers' raion center (a larger town), and on the third day to bus my team to their field for some friendly scrimmaging. We also had four other volunteers come and help with playing and translating, bringing eight of us together at once. Since the last two weeks have been cloudy and rainy, we were fortunate to get the last bit of sunshine in the month of June.

The first morning in my village I had a really low turn out, one girl and one boy. Many of those that wanted to play were recruited to help paint at the school, or had house work at home and in the gardens. I also found out that many of the kids in my village had already left with their families to vacation and/or work in Russia or at the Black Sea in Ukraine. The upside to the low numbers was that we were able to practice explaining the game and instructions with our language, and we got our own good warm up to play... I haven't played in more than 10 years! That evening we met back up and had 8 young boys come out and play. They were quick learners and found hitting pop-flies to the outfield is harder than it looks! That morning we had our only girl, one of my regular students, Elena. She was a quick learner as well, and she was excited to play and learn.

The second day we all played in my neighboring volunteers' town. Jeremy and Aaron have a sporting club all year and they were easily able to round up a large group of boys to play some ball. Their coach even came, learned the rules, kept score, and told me that his team would easily beat mine since they always beat my village in soccer!

On the third day we had an equal number of boys come out to play, and we rented an old Soviet-style bus from the 70s for transport. As the coach predicted would happen, his team beat mine. But, there was friendliness and smiles all around. For the second game we mixed everyone up so everyone played with one another. What I loved about this event was that we were able to share our culture, pass off skills, and teach rules and team work. Strategy will come later when we hope to play again this month. It was also so much fun to play with the other volunteers, as we were mixed half and half-- Americans and Moldovans.

What was obvious when teaching this all, was that baseball has A LOT of rules, and that was complicated at times for them to comprehend. But, overall, they comprehended the basics and were fast learners. We had one nose bleed when a boy from my village swung and the ball hit him in the nose. He dropped to the ground and cried, cleaned up, and was ready to play again five minutes later with a smile on his face.

Lessons learned:
1. Hold events in the evening as the kids often have home duties in the morning and the weather is cooler.
2. Demonstrations are better than lengthy explanations.
3. Make sure to invite EVERY kid on the street I meet.
4. Use the Russian facebook to recruit participants... it's their main source of communication!
5. Bring a medkit.
6. I have a slow reaction time. I should always remain in outfield.

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On a side note, Happy Fourth of July to everyone back home! I'll miss the parades and picnics, but we had a great bbq and concert with dancing in the rain on Saturday night with the Embassy staff, expats, and local NGO organizations. After an awful bout with food poisoning the day before, I was so happy to have smiling faces all around and a nice reason to celebrate!