boxing begins

1.27.2008 9:08

photo graph. this was new years the 14th of January a couple of weeks ago. In the picture...Host parents, thier daughter and her husband and thier son. to my right is my site mate andrea who is also stationed in my town.

I love being sick. Not. I had a long day Tuesday and it totally ripped up my immune system. I am probably retelling that day but I woke up early, worked 4 hours at the office then made my way to the gym where the guys didn’t show because of a school project they have to work on. So I had the whole gym to myself and I over did it. After that I went to basketball and played close to full out for 3 hours off and on. So by the time my day was over my immune system was shot. Thus since Wednesday I have gotten steadily worse waiting for it to get better. Bummer.

So, not too much has really gone on since then. I couldn’t go to boxing that I was excited to start up on Wednesday, and I really didn’t do anything but go to work and come home and lay in bed. And the only reason I went to work was to get out of the house and not feel completely worthless. Now that I am being completely depressing ill stop :). Thursday was an alright day I guess. After work I came home and had something to eat and tried to calm down the crazy little boy who has been staying with us for the past month or so (my host sister’s son). I decided I would take him on a walk before his nap. So we walked hand and hand as he jumped from one thing to the next as little 3 year olds do.

I decided to try to make the walk productive so we walked to the mayor’s office so I could ask for a map. On the way we were stopped by like 3 older ladies who would yell phillip then come over for high fives. I felt neglected given I had never seen any of them but I felt like a little bit of a celebrity having my moms friends come up to see the little boy I was walking with. Same kinda thing happened in the mayor’s office but it helped my case. Because I was able to use his star power to get in to an office I had never been in and ask for a map of the city. This became more complicated then It needed to be given the complexity of the copying operation that should not have been all the complicated. I resorted to asking if I could just borrow the map for an hour and come back with a copy from a Xerox store nearby. It was agreed and off went the celebrity and his bodyguard.

I walked Phillip home then proceeded into the center for the Xerox. On the way I ran into the guy who had given me the map who explained to me that I had the wrong map. I guess I had the plans for the expansion of the fiberoptic cables in the town so my map contained information I was not to have apparently. Any way, the guy gave me another map he had found so there was no need to make a copy anymore! Success!

Friday was much the same minus the map excursion and the fact that I went to hang out at the orphanage and play some games. So at the oprhange there is this mentally handicap boy who comes that I have grown fond of. I help him play cards with the other kids by limiting his playing to just counting to three and laying down a card, I do the thinking and the slapping the middle. He loves it and had a blast because otherwise he couldn’t play. Anyway were not very good and lose pretty quickly to the other kids and have to wait till they finish their game. So to kill time and keep his spirits up we sing. Its mainly a weird impersonation of this techno song I have heard before. We start off my making sounds with our throat.. you know like a throaty quick sound followed by some finger drumming on the table and then the melody carried out with hums. It is really halrious when we get going and most of the kids look at us like we are insane… ( I think im close to going insane ;-). Anyway that’s my normal day there.

Also Friday we did some puzzles. Me and my bud dominated the first puzzle with ease and to be completely honest I was feeling a little over confident in my puzzle building skills. I was thinking to myself wow.. I am really good at this, maybe it’s a hidden talent I never knew I possessed. WRONG! The next puzzle which my heart wasn’t really into was a sheep in some grass. We probably spent a good 30 minutes on this 75 piece puzzle and weren’t able to finish it. I was frustrated and tired of it so I asked some little girl to come show us how its done. She agreed came over and totally dominated the puzzle like only a 6 year old professional could.

Saturday I had nothing planned and still feeling crummy decided I would clean my room and go for a walk. Mission accomplished. I did a good job on my room, beginning with getting all the carpets on the clothesline then beating them then I got to sweeping my room finishing it off by getting the shirt on a stick mop contraption and mopping the wood floor. I did dust the whole place as well. I rule!

I also had the opportunity to go to boxing practice just to observe because of my health condition can’t really fight yet. Its great! To warm up they played soccer outside. I ran into my mentally handicapped friend from the center who ran up to me singing the techno song and jumping around as soon as he saw me. That was the first impression I made on group of guys I had just barely met. Classic confused looks from all! After about 30 minutes we all went to get to work.

These kids are tough as nails. The practice was brutal but they were in high spirits during the rest periods. Only few things im concerned about. I have only a brief introduction into armature boxing but my past coach seemed to know his stuff and protecting your hands and your body was a big part of his training style because recovering from injury’s is not something that is productive. Nobody properly wrapped their hands to protect the joints and ligaments in their hands and when they were hitting the heavy bag they were going full out on it. Maybe that’s just their way but when out of the 7 boys that were there and 4 of them have wrist problems and one has a shoulder problem id say something is wrong. All I can say is that I am going to get my exercise in while im here and I am thinking about dropping my weight lifting program completely because id rather be quick then slow and big with these guys. Bigger you are the slower and more abused you get in my experience. As long as my lower back and withstand this I should be in great shape. POSTIVITY!

Alright… well the 1980s music videos are on the television now and im watching this bizarre song showing the statue of liberty singing and burning with a red background switching to shots of St. Petersburg in Russia and the soviet star and other soviet symbols. It might be about brining the two superpowers together but its hard to tell whats really going on in this video. I have a lazy day today. HARAAA!!!!!!

Updated.