Games

I love to spend a weekend playing board games with family and friends, but my kids are into video games. Street fighter is his favorite retro game. Near our house is a classic arcade and game room. But what the kids like most is to find games on their tablets. When the weather is bad they will stay home and play the game online with their friends. Mostly they play a game called Player Unknown.

I prefer the board games we have at home. The problem is that these board games take a lot of concentration time. Risk is a fun game for people who are interested in world history and conquest. It just takes to long to finish.

Other games like card games and chess finish within a half hour. We had a great time playing a silly game called, "Taco, Cat, Goat, Cheese, Pizza." In this game there are taco cards, Cat cards, goat cards, cheese cards and pizza cards. In order each player says the word and if the card is there then players have to slap their hand in the middle.

It doesn't matter what game we play. What matters is that we are with our good friends and family and have a lot of laughs and "Taco, Cat, Goat, Cheese, Pizza" is full of laughs. There are Narwhal, gorilla and groundhog cards that require a silly action. In the end it's just a great game to play whether you win or lose. The act of playing is hilarious and a lot of laughs.

Chess is the board game that our kids take with us everywhere they go. It's a game that we can pack up and most of the people we meet in most countries know how to play chess.

In India our friends enjoyed playing chess so much that they gave us a new chess set as well as a couple more board games. We take these with us wherever we go.

Food

It would be nice if we had a barbecue this weekend, but it was my son's birthday and we went out for sushi. For some reason he loves sushi. No one else in the family loves sushi like him.

His brother thinks it is gross and has to force himself to eat sushi. I think it is pretty good because it usually makes me feel good when I eat it.

We went to a good sushi bar with a Japanese chef. The sushi came out piece by piece so it was fresh each time. It was a great dish for me and my son. It was too bad that no everyone there liked sushi.

Barbecue

Back to the Retro theme. There is a museum in our neighborhood with an original one room school. Not so many years ago the classrooms had a charcoal stove in the middle of the room. Everyday was barbecue day back then. The coal could be deadly if not properly vented. Even twenty years ago I could find portable gas ovens similar to this in the center of a restaurant and in the center of the language school I taught in back then.

School Lunch

The boxes on top of the oven are lunch boxes filled with rice and some vegetables to keep warm. It's not exactly barbecue, but this is how kids used to keep their lunches warm until about thirty years ago. My wife remembers her classroom to be similar to this one except she had seventy students per class. Now most classes are closer to twenty students in Korea. The baby boom was several decades past and the birthrate has not caught up yet It's down to 0.7 births per woman in 2023 according to the New York Times yesterday.

The result in the future may be the majority of public elementary schools becoming museums or community centers. I wouldn't be surprised if my own desk may be part of a museum. I like teaching, but I enjoy the weekend even more. And then bring the games of the weekend into the classroom on Monday.

How was your weekend?

This post was written in response to the Weekend Engagement Prompt week 182 @galenkp.