WWW: Week Without Walls goals

We are going to the east coast on mid January for a weeks stay where we will be riding bikes and helping out a unprivileged school situated around that area. The Goals I would like to achieve during this trip are:

• Undertake new challenges and give my best in each of them, such as establishing good communication with the children; this should be particularly hard because I am not very good at talking to children below my age group and also because most of the kids there speak Tamil while I can only speak English and Sinhala fluently. 
• Plan and initiate academic activities to do with the children while we are at that school. Plan these activities in a way they are both fun and would also help them later on during their lives. After the plans, undertake these activities with complete focus and dedication so that it would be as productive as possible. 
• Work collaboratively with my group to help make a difference to the kids at the school, provide them with what they need to make their lives better i.e education and equipment.  
• Since I ride my bike everyday, I usually only ride for 1-2 hours. However during the trip, I would try to ride for much longer thereby not really undertaking a new challenge but rather develop the skills I already have. A new challenge however, would be riding my bike at an unfamiliar area and possibly, at a different terrain. 

Tennis: The matches

Me playing a backhand shot during the warm up session
(Photo credits: Inuri Liyanage)

Today in tennis, we first started off with a regular warm up session where our coach made us play forehand shots (this is the shot played while your front faces the ball), then backhand shots (this shot is played with your back towards the ball and is usually played with both hands holding the racket) and finally volleys (shots played very close to the net before the ball bounces). We then followed by playing rallies (this is consecutively hitting the ball back and forth each other without actually trying make the other person miss the ball), I paired up with an assistant coach and played for about 20 minutes. The rest of the 1 and a half hours were spent doing something much more fun and challenging; matches!

We first started out by playing doubles matches (this is two people per side). This was my opportunity to work collaboratively with other. I paired up with Ali; who is a decent player and is great at volleys, I am usually bad at returning the ball using a volley so I thought he was the ideal teammate. This soon turned out to be true.

Me during the singles match playing a forehand shot
(Photo credits: Inuri Liyanage)

Of the three matches we played, we won two and tied the last one. Each match consisted of 4 games (this is scoring in the form 15, 30, 40 and game, if both teams have 40-40 also known as a deuce; a team must obtain two more consecutive points in the form advantage and game). Ali and I won the first game 3-1, the second 4-0 and finally the third 2-2. We had the best scores of the day and so because of that, Our coach let us play a singles match with each other. This was a tough challenge and it was the best match I played the whole day. I am usually strong with my forehand and I have good placement when playing this shot, so I decided to try and play like this as much as can and since Ali was particularly good with his volleys, he tried to play as much of those shots as he can. Finally, I was able to win with a score of 3-1, I lost the second game but I was able to easily win the other three. In my opinion, I definitely showed a lot of perseverance and commitment to the match, and also I was able to increase my awareness of strengths and areas for growth and improvement.  

Tennis: lessons start!

I finally started going back to tennis practice at the Sinhalese Sports Club in Colombo. My coach's name in Chandaka and there are also two more instructors called Thilan and Sarath. The SSC consists of only clay courts and so this means that should it rain on any day; the courts are unusable, therefore our coach will hold the lessons at the Taj Samudra Hotel in Colombo which consists of two hard courts.

So first day back and I'll be honest, I was really scared. I hadn't played tennis in over 8 months because I had stopped going to practice for my IGCSE exams and mock exams that spanned from April to May, then followed by the summer vacation. I thought for sure that I will not be able to play a single shot over the net because it felt almost unreal holding my tennis racket after such a long time. But, I was mistaken. Well sure, the first few shots went all over the place but soon I got a rhythm going and it felt like I never stopped playing at all! Most of my shots made it over the net and many of them were pretty good strokes.

After we warmed up with some knocks, we played a match. There are three more people in the class and so were were able to play a doubles match. We were tied at 3-3 but unfortunately I wasn't able to finish the match because another student came and I decided to step out and let him play the remainder of the game (he was younger than me and less experienced). I went to rally with Thilan for rest of the session.

Overall, it was a good day especially when I realized that I didn't have to go back to the basics and learn everything fresh! This now gave me the opportunity to undertake new challenges in the lessons to follow. I was able to apply the skills that I knew to this lesson without having much trouble. However, this was mainly due to the fact that I really showed great deals of perseverance and commitment, in order to make sure played the basic shots properly. I'm really glad that I did finally go back to practice because I really did miss the game and the thrill :)