Croatia: Days 3 and 4, possibly 5...

Blunder and Lightening

So the weather took a turn for the worse as some storm came over from Italy. It was pretty impressive thunder and lightening, with torrential rain ruining any sort of outdoor plans. It's been bucketing down for the past two or three days. I've had a few technical problems with the tournament, which has resulted in me being a bit of a narky git. I'm doing a FIDE chess trainer course which involves a lot of speaking and a lot of sitting down.

I just re-read my last post. I take it all back. After spending four or five days with the children I can confirm anyone under the age of sixteen is crazy. They'll get super hyper sometimes and spur each other on, until eventually someone takes it too far and breaks something / hurts themselves. They'll be sad sometimes and tell each other their woes with sincere faces and watery eyes. Sometimes they'll be in a mixed bi-polar state, sleeping on the couches for a few minutes before popping up and knocking a balloon around whilst laughing hysterically. It's actually a load of work, but its great fun.

I'm limited on the funny stories front as I cant really write about much on this trip. I sat for about 15 minutes trying to make one up that only involved me, but then a crazy child dived over the back of the couch and tried to make me consume a Knight, whilst cackling uncontrollably and asking if I'd had my five a day.

Croatia: Day 1 and Day 2.

Croatia

Its mental to think we only got here two days ago. The accommodation is totally great. The rooms and spacious, the beds are comfy, and all rooms have a cheeky balcony. The food is pretty good too - there's a wide variety of well prepared foods to cater for even the fussiest of teeth. 

I'm just coaching this tournament (As opposed to playing in it.) so I thought it would be more relaxing and allow me to focus on having a bit of fun with the kids and showing them some tricky sidelines so they can bewilder their opponents into something they don't know. It turns out most of the enemy kids know absolutely everything, and if they don't know it they can make up something good enough to deal with the cheap tricks.

The responsibility aspect is incredible - I've been trying to work it out from a psychological point of view - I used to think parenting / being responsible for kids was really tough work in which adults kindly donate a large portion of their effort and time (Time they would rather spent on themselves.) to nurture the kids into hard working, positive adults. Instead, it feels more like some kind of weird hedonistic reassurance. If the kid makes a mistake I can point the mistake out, and I get a little mental kick thinking "Yeah, He'll learn from that and I already know that.". If the kid acts or says something daft, I can giggle with the other parental bystanders and reply with a witty answer, whilst giving the "Ahh, To be young and silly!" rolling of the eyeballs.

Now that I've got two hours to myself, I feel like I've earned it. I feel like its my time, because I've given the morning, some afternoon and probably most of the evening helping the kids with chess and making sure their OK. Reading these paragraphs back, I sound well old. I'm not even sure if it makes any sense. I'm not sure if its offensive to parents / adults responsible for kids either. Two days looking after a trio of children and I think I'm the next Marie Curie.

I cant end this post with such serious, mature patter - So instead I'll write about the swimming pool adventures from yesterday. Their was one non-bloggable event which was awkwardly funny (You'll have to ask for the story.), but we had some great time's throwing three small inflatable balls around the pool. Some older, either drunk or slightly crazy Croatian man jumped in and started joining in, throwing the balls around in a circle. The pace was picking up with every lap, until eventually people were launching the balls full force at each other and much laughter ensued. The game ended after the potentially insane Croatian man whalloped the ball off one of the children's faces, whilst hysterically laughing. We checked they were ok, gave each other looks like "You've taken that too far.", "Hes taken that too far right?" and "Yeah, hes ruined it.", then climbed out the pool and dried off in the thirty degree sun.