Good to see this site up and running again. For me it means that it’s time for another awful and pitiful blog post. It’s about time I write something because not only the site has been down but also I’ve been banned from our national forum. So I’ve been like a blind man in a dark room or a crack addict without crack or even worse: I’ve been like Ben & Jerry’s chunky monkey ice cream without the chunky nut pieces.
About the topic. If you think what I think then please leave this site now. There is other sites for people who wan't to do "Experiments with children" and from what I understand this site is not one of those.
Ok let’s get on what I really have to say… It’s me again. The very nice and polite young gentleman from Finland and this time I have a report to make. As some might remember I was talking about the state of this sport in my last blog. So I tried to do something to improve it… This spring (May) I arranged P.E classes from two different schools. I did the tutoring myself for approximately 200 pupils from the age of 11-14 years old. I arranged about 20 lessons (1 hour a piece) for groups of 8-12 persons. During the classes I first taught the basics of a swing, stance etc. Then I’ve gave them the permission to play a round and I walked around and tried to give instructions and motivate everyone. After EVERY class I shared my thoughts with the pupils and I gave them papers which had information about minigolf school (FREE) that I would host in june. I had great times with many of the kids and at least 30-40 expressed intrest towards the minigolf school.
So after couple of weeks since the P.E classes it was time to start the minigolf school. I had great hopes that many would show up because there was kids that were really excited to play and learn.
You know how many kids showed up to the first lesson? I can give you all the names who showed up: Aziz. An immigrant from Nepal called Aziz who kept asking over and over again: “This is free right? Right?”. Now don’t get me wrong Aziz was a good bloke although his finnish was really bad and we didn’t have a common language so we just kind of kept our mouths shut and played rounds. His best rounds were around 80 or 90 strokes and when I tried to give him instructions he didn’t understand and got so frustrated that he just ran all over the place and on the lanes and just played sort of “freestyle minigolf”…
I think it was the 4th lesson when we finally got someone else to join the crew with me and Aziz. The apple doesn’t drop far from the tree: It was Aziz’s little brother!!! Unfortunately they both moved to Helsinki before the course even ended…
Well. Better luck next time I suppose. A definition of a mad man is that he keeps doing the same mistakes in hope of a different outcome. But wait… Isn’t that the whole point of life?