Friday 23 July 2010

Counting to the stars

Mart tells me this game is called 'hopscotch' in English... sounds a bit weird to me though, so I'll just call it by its French name: Marelle.

Well, this afternoon we saw kids playing marelle on the street. I guess they started with a very traditional one. And then one little boy noticed that the paving was perfect: he didn't need to draw the boxes anymore, and could just write the numbers in the right places... Well, he made a very thorough use of his discovery. As you can see in picture 3, his marelle wasn't finished yet, and at the time we cycled past, he was up to 187 (!).

Now I don't know if that's the case for every marelle game in the world, but in French the last box (which usually has a semi-circle shape) is usually called 'ciel' (sky). That's where you land once you've hopped your way all the way up the numbers. I think the little boy will not only make it to the 'ciel' - he's well on his way to the stars!





4 comments:

  1. fantastic! we called it hopscotch in america. i like reading about the french names.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Adorable!
    J'aime beaucoup ces petits reportages! A creuser peut-être avec des choses typiques de Maastricht?

    ReplyDelete
  3. Oh!! I used to do this when I was a kid. It is called "hinkelen" in Dutch...or at least in Flemish :o)

    ReplyDelete

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...