Sports Day at Yaohua

So over the weekend the Asian Games in Guanzhuo had begun. It's basically the Olympics, but only for countries in the Asian continent. However, Yaohua hosts a school-wide sports day that is similar to the Asian Games/Olympics where classes compete against each other in many different events. There isn't really a prize or reward, but it is a chance for the students to show off their athletic abilities and to not have any lessons! The first day of Sports Day was for the Middle Schools and High Schools. The second day was for the Primary School-Grades 1-6. It seemed that these days were a chance for the International Section to see if they were better than the Traditional Section of the school.


The first two pictures and the video are of the opening ceremonies. Each grade, both International and Traditional do a march of some sort in order to impress the administrators of the school. I was asked by the 9th grade of the International section to think of a cool cheer and to be with them when it was their turn. I taught 9th Grade for only 2 weeks and they have been good friends to me ever since.







The cheer: Robert would shout, "9th Grade is what?"
The students would then reply, "Red Hot"
This happened two times and then Robert shouted, "2-4-6-8!"
The students then replied, "Who do we appreciate?"
Together we all said, "9th Grade, 9th Grade!"

It was fun! Their cheer was the most unique of all the grades. They shot off these giant party poppers and we all wore flashing light pins and the cheer was in English!


Here is a pic of Kenya walking with one of the Seniors. The 12th graders do not get to participate in Sports Day because they are busy filling out applications and writing admission's essays for U.S. Universities. However, some of them took breaks to come cheer on the underclassmen. Estelle is the name of this Senior. She LOVES Kenya! She hadn't seen her in a long time and risked her life to come and play with Kenya! (sorta)



These next three pics are of some of the 9th graders that I taught. Oh, yeah, most of the International students here have an English name and a Chinese name. The guy giving the peace sign is Sky. He was the star for the males in the 9th grade class.
This is Seven. Yes, Seven like the number. Anyway, she was the star for the females. She broke 2 school records and her personal bests that day!
Here is a picture of Jackie doing the high jump. He plays basketball so naturally he loves to jump high. He did ok, but could have done much better. One thing to realize about the competitors on this day is that they really don't have any training in how they run, jump, throw, or really anything they compete in. Sometimes, they do a few things in their P.E. classes to get in shape, but they don't have starting blocks for the races, they don't have anyone telling them to use certain techniques in order to do better in an event or anything like that. They just go and do it.

People were extremely nervous as if there were some huge prize on the line, but it was more of a fun day than anything. But if you asked one of the students they would tell you that they were so nervous that they might not even compete!

Here's a video on an 11-legged race! We thought things were hard with a 3-legged race! I am pretty sure that this is the only event that anyone truly trained for. We saw them practicing this event well before Sports Day came.




On the 2nd day, only the teachers who taught Primary School were supposed to have no lessons, but our boss Mr. Tian enjoyed our support for the students so much from the previous day that he canceled our lessons so that we could be there for the Primary students! We thought that was awesome considering we had so many students that we wanted to see compete. I only teach Middle School now and so I would not have been able to see the Primary kids at all. Thank you Mr. Tian. We could have used that time to go prepare our lessons for later in the week, but we felt it more important to go show our support to our students. We were down cheering and uplifting the kids all day long. It was so much fun!

This video is of the Opening Ceremonies of the Primary School. Specifically this was the 3rd grade class that I used to teach. Lois still sees them for science, but I only see some of them in passing. they all run up and hug me every time they see me though. I like it! There were actually prizes and stuff for Primary School so they had a lot more on the line this day, but still had tons of fun!




Now here is a video of the teachers racing in an obstacle course. We raced against 4 other groups of teachers. We got second place to the P.E. teachers. (Go figure) However, it wasn't recorded, but there was a one-on-one race between the P.E. teachers and the male American teachers and we totally beat'em! Ron is the person running right before me.




Overall, we had a blast! We loved cheering on our students and hanging out with them. Kenya was spoiled so much by students and Chinese teachers and parents with candy, drinks and other food! Lois and I stayed and supported our students the whole day and loved every minute of it.