Sunday Afternoon Football

This Sunday, at the North China Institute of Aerospace Engineering, six students and their teacher face off against each other in a contest of speed, strength and agility.  Are you ready for some football?

One of the best things about being able to share my culture as an educator is the ability to bring some of my favorite parts of the American society to the students.  I love football and I love the Baltimore Ravens.  I still remember waking up early during the last Superbowl and live-streaming the game to my computer while eating breakfast.  One of the sad things about being over here is that I can't watch most of the games.  I still keep an eye on the box scores and play-by-plays that can be found on the internet but it just isn't the same thing.  But it is a sacrifice I am willing to make.  Regardless, I can still bring my own football over here and I get to teach some eager young students how to play.  Most all of my Chinese students have heard about American football but none of them have ever learned how to play.  So I will take them out to the sports field and teach them the rules.  Then we play!

This past Sunday I took six of my boys out from my Business English class and we played some football.  Several of the boys are more athletic than the others so I tried to even out the teams.  They were all very eager to learn.  Don't worry moms... we played two-hand touch so no one would get hurt.  I was pleasantly surprised to see that several of my guys caught on quickly and the their passing game was great.  I, unfortunately, played on the counter team as them and we quickly fell behind in the points.  Two of the boys from the other team liked to throw Hail Mary passes and somehow they were able to catch just about 75% of them.  I guess it's all the basketball these boys play.  They're good with catching.  It was a good thing for our team that the cold started setting in and it's hard to catch a football when your hands get cold.  But we all had a lot of fun and it was a great day.

My team ended up losing but it didn't matter.  Everyone had a lot of fun and my students got to experience some great American culture!