Outdoor Souji

As promised, I have for you pictures of my Outdoor Souji Crew at GS. But first...

...my soccer buddies, or most of them anyway, plus a few extras.

Notice "Keeper" in the middle. He's our normal goalkeeper, and he's pretty darn good at it.

Yesterday (Monday) was fricking freezing, and these guys just couldn't get it together to decide which net we would use, and which another group of would-be soccer players would use. "We" finally decided with about 10 minutes of the 30 minutes for afternoon recess left. And of course, for some reason, they stuck me in goal, which meant no moving around to get warm, only kicking a super-hard cold rubber soccer ball with my cold feet. A deathly painful combination.


We had to take another picture because the guy second from the right wasn't in the first one. He doesn't look so happy because he had been crying about something. Either being made to keep guard over the far goal (so no one would use it) or because he got left out, or who knows. Who understands why 9-year-old boys cry.


Anyway, after hiruyasumi (recess) is souji. I had been worrying all day that it would rain, as per the morning Yahoo weather forecast. Fortunately, instead of raining, it snowed, so we got to stay outside.

The little guy in blue is the cutest cutie pie. He's the souji leader and is so meek and cute, that none of the others pay him any mind. Poor thing. I always try extra hard to be attentive when it's his turn. The one in the grey is my neighbor, just across the way.

Here's what Outdoor Souji typically looks like with my crew. Me, the boy in blue and maybe the other two boys working to scrape dirt and mucky leaves out of the drain you see there. And the girls standing around doing nothing.

After school, when I got home from my plethora of errands, apparently I looked like I hadn't had enough of the cold because the boys in grey and red, plus a few others, were outside and called to me to come play baseball with them. "Sensei, Come on!" (instead of "come here.")
So of course I joined them. They also wanted me to show them inside my house, but that will not be happening until this place is a speck neater.
Yikes!

Good Times were had and we all retired to our homes to try to get warm. No easy task in my freezer box that I call a house.

The good news, I will be staying in this house next year, without having to make a decision about it. Hooray!