Kickball comes to Ecuador

Buenas Tardes amigos y familia,
I know it might not be my turn to post on the blog..but I´m stuck inside today and have little else to do. Earlier at school the sun was very strong and I am burned on the face. Heather left to go for a run and Hallye is on the terrace enjoying the sunshine. The english teachers had the comfort of staying indoors today while this phys. ed teacher was outside for four hours straight. While I may be complaining about my sunburn, I almost have to say that is was worth the while because today was such an exciting day at school.
The famous North American childhood game of kickball made its debut at Nicholas Aguilera School in el pueblo del Armenia in the Valle de Los Chillos situated in Quito, Ecuador today. I had the pleasure of introducing this game to some 100 students today who had never heard of it and I am proud. And they loved it. I began by asking the students in each class how many of them knew the rules to baseball. Much to my dismay, only about two in each class had ever heard of baseball. So I had to start from the beginning. I explained the rules and throughout the day was remembering more and more myself as I went along. The children picked up the game quickly and were very enthusiastic about playing. Even the die-hard soccer players chose to play kickball today rather than there own beloved sport. It was truly a success and now I have more tricks up my sleeve. No longer do we have to resort to playing no-bounce basketball, which is so because the school has not one single inflated basketball and no air-compressor or pump. So now the boys who don´t like soccer and the girls have options for their 45 minutes of class time. Hallye and Heather even came to join in the fun fifth period since they only go to fourth period and I to fifth.
So yes kickball was the highlight of the day but it wasn´t the only memorable event. I have five classes and they range from second grade to seventh. I was only able to accomplish introducing a new sport to the older classes of fourth and up. I had to come up with something for second grade. The previous day I had already taught them red light, green light and by the end of the class they were somewhat bored with it. It just wouldn´t suffice today. During lunch I confided in Hallye and Heather for more ideas and one of them suggested Duck Duck Goose. Perfect. That would be second grade´s new game today. When it came time for their turn, I circled them up on the court and had them sit down. I began to begin explaining and realized that I couldn´t remember the word for duck and I did not know at all the word for goose in Spanish. Eventually, I was able to get out of them that ¨Pato¨was the word for duck. Then I asked what is larger than a duck and also swims. They replied ¨Cisne¨. I knew that cisne is the word not for goose, but instead means swan. But we had already spent so much time trying to come up with the name of the game and I was so exasperated so I just went with it. Yes. We played Duck Duck Swan. And even now that I have returned to the hostal and have looked up the word for goose in the dictionary, it is too late. The kids will always know the game as Duck Duck Swan or Pato Pato Cisne. And that is just fine with me. They loved it and we played it the whole time.