Sports Day

Today is Tuesday, November 7 -- Election Day back home, here it is Sports Day. It's kind of fun though mostly interesting to see how much time and effort is invested into what are basically intramurals.

For a day and a half, many of the students from our school, plus teams from the 5 elementary schools in town run races and do high and long jumping. The kids, of course, get very excited about this. The teachers just view it as an interruption or a day and a half without regular classes. For the previous week there were also MANY hours dedicated to practicing the "opening ceremonies". I have to laugh, they march in to the sound of the band playing "Anchors Aweigh", a very popular march for students here. No one that I asked knew that it was an American song, not to mention a Navy one.

The whole deal is quite showy -- every class has a flag, the school and national flags are everywhere. Some local vendor contributed matching shirts and hats for the teachers to wear, local dignitaries came -- really a hoot. All to watch a group of 7th graders run the 100 meters!

As in any group of young people there are some who are obviously more athletic than their peers. These, supposedly have been previously selected to be in the "sports classes" and woe be it unto them if they don't do well in these events. They do, of course, several clearly have talent (not to be confused with brains). A ugly little trace of racism creeps out now and again, though, which I have never heard before -- "well, of course she is 1/2 aborigine, that's why she can run so fast".

My role in this is nonexistent. I am just roaming around. Some of the teachers are judges and timekeepers but, as usual, I am deemed to be not interested/able/willing to do any of these things. I wish they would ask me what I thought!