Roadkill, Taiwan Style

I'm embarrassed. I was the barking coach yesterday. I didn't mean to, but I was all fired up about the game, and I didn't know how volleyball worked here (Three timeouts per team per game? Is that six timeouts? Isn't that a lot of timeouts? THAT WAS A LIFT. CALL IT REF, THAT WAS A LIFT. Timeout, timeout!!!) (sigh). Now I know why when you see coaches at professional games on tv, they're hunched over while sitting on the bench, as close to the court as they can get without getting off the bench. They're trying to make sure that the girls DON'T LET THE BALL DROP, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD NOT AGAIN.

In better news though, the varsity team only got mildly smashed. I was so impressed. Even if they never blocked (never been taught, yikes), and rarely hit (although still well), it was not so bad at all. We were up against the "elite" school, with their well muscled volleyball legs, and when they started playing their warm-up music mix, I was terrified. Alright, I was terrified when I walked into their air-conditioned gym, since we don't have one. (Neither gym nor air conditioning in a gym.) I was terrified when I saw that their coach was efficiently running them through drills before the game. I was terrified when I saw that their setter could backset. I thought: fluck. This is going to be ugly.

But it wasn't so ugly at all. The girls played hard and scrabbled for their points, and when we walked out, they were like, we only lost by 12! Yay!

And they forgave my barking.