First Volleyball Practice

Oh, volleyball...  Where to begin?  How about a one-word summary:

Disappointing.

In the car, I was so nervous.  From what my mom had told me, I was expecting a group of girls way better than me.  I was prepared to show them what I could do and probably be worse than all the other girls.  Instead:


My grandpa and I arrived at the building and asked a nice woman for directions.  She came with us to show us the gym.  There we found about three or four nine-year-olds.  There was a man there, too.  He was the dude my mom had emailed about me playing volleyball here.  When I told him I'd already played for two years, he looked really surprised, and then told me to go to a different group.

After my grandpa and I walked to the building next door, during which my grandpa accidentally turned his umbrella inside-out :), we met the coach.  Or should I say "coach."  <air quotes with fingers> The guy was from Poland and had only been in Germany a month.  His German was definitely not sufficient to teaching seven girls volleyball.

Unfortunately, I didn't establish that this group was not right for me until after my grandpa left.  There were six other girls, all of whom were playing for the fourth or fifth time in their lives.

I'VE BEEN PLAYING FOR TWO YEARS.  YES, I WAS IN THE WRONG GROUP.

We did exercise after exercise.  By exercise I mean things like, "Throw the ball at your partner and they have to jump over it" and "Throw the ball left and right of your partner and they have to pass it back to you.  This is very hard."

Sigh.

The poor Polish guy (I think his name was Robert) had a hard time explaining to us what we were supposed to do.  He kept saying 'bitte' (which means 'please') as his means of communication.  If he wanted us to start, he'd say 'bitte.'  If he wanted us to go somewhere he'd point there and say 'bitte.'  And if someone can't properly tell you where to go, they sure can't teach you volleyball!

After a bunch of different excercises and a little bit of passing and setting, we played four on four.  Freaking fiasco.  (Hehe, I just said that because it's an alliteration.)  But, seriously, it was bad.  Everyone was told to catch the ball, toss it to the setter so they could set it and you could pass it or set it over.  Everyone just stood there and watched as the ball hit the floor. ARGHHHHH!

After our "volleyball game" <avid hand quotes> we did hitting lines.  Let's just say I was the only one who could hit.  This is understandable, seeing as everyone else has been playing about two years less than I have, but it was still frustrating.  I wanted to learn things.  I would rather be much worse than everyone than play with people who didn't know how to properly pass.  The coach couldn't explain anything because of the whole language barrier thing, so no one could really learn or understand.

So now we have to figure what to do for next time, because I need to find a better group.

We don't have any school tomorrow, so it will probably be spent doing homework and hanging out.  Fun! ;)

I guess I don't need a word of the day because it's the same day as my last post. :)