Stanley Discovers Cricket - Tues 23rd Feb

Stanley got a tour of the East's home today. It's a three storey house on the side of a hill. Stanley really liked the view from the balcony - he could see the nearby Brindabella Mountain range. They're a lot smaller than the mountains back in Utah, but still nice to look at, espceially when the sun sets over them.

Elissa took Stanley to Curtin Primary School and introduced him to Jewel's teacher. Elissa thought it would be nice if Stanley got to a visit Jewel's Year 1 school class here in Canberra. Jewel's teacher said that Stanley could come in on Thursday, so he's looking forward to that.

In the evening, Adam and Seth introduced Stanley to cricket. Cricket is the most popular sport in Australia during summer, similar to how popular baseball is in the USA. Australia were playing the West Indies* in cricket, and the game was being shown on TV. Adam, Seth and Stanley sat down and watched the game on Television.

It was a special type of cricket game called Twenty20, which takes about as long to play as a baseball game. There are three different types of cricket - the longest, Test Cricket, can take 5 days to play a game! Stanley didn't understand all the rules of cricket, but there were lots of exciting catches and big hits that reminded him of home runs in baseball. Stanley also wasn't sure whether he should be barracking for Australia, or for the West Indies, because they're from near America.(Australians use the term barrack, not root, when they talk about supporting a sports team) In the end, Australia won, and he had fun watching the game with Adam and Seth. Seth even had a collection of cricket cards and they were able to try and find the cards of the cricket players when they were on TV.

Two minute video of Australia vs West Indies Twenty20 Cricket match

*About The West Indies
The West Indies isn't an actual country, but a collection of about 20 small countries near America, like Jamaica, Barbados, Dominica and Grenada. Most of these countries play cricket, and decided back in 1926, that because they were too small to do well by themselves, that they would work together and choose a cricket team from the best cricketers throughout all the different countries in the West Indies. Since then, the countries in the West Indies have joined together when playing cricket games. In the 1980s, the West Indies were the best cricket team in the world. This summer, it was the West Indies cricket team's turn to come and visit and play cricket in Australia for several months.