The London Olympics 2012 was over so quickly. Without satellite TV or a strong internet
connection to watch it on BBC I-player we were quite cut off from it. We caught some of it when we were in the
hotel and on FB but on the whole we didn’t see very much of it. I am hoping that I will be able to re-visit
both the opening and closing ceremonies when we get to the Sudan and are
ensconced in our own apartment with high-speed internet!
So to make up for our loss we held an Olympic event at the
school instead! We planned to hold a
variety of racing events for the first half of our morning session and then
switch to high jump, long jump and ‘shotput’ for the second half. Most of the children finish at the end of
this week and so the idea was to do a test on the Wednesday, the Olympics on
the Thursday and then on Friday have a party with sweets and biscuits, party
games, test-results- giving and of course the awarding of the Olympic medals!
Fran and Martin with some help from Azeb made 120 medals in
a variety of fluorescent colours and I masterminded the planning. Naturally I started with a spreadsheet but
this was a job that called for pieces of paper, a ruler, pencil and lots of
rubbing out. Actually, the act of
drawing hundreds of lines with a ruler and pencil is quite therapeutic. With the advent of computers, printers and
photocopiers we have been denied this simple pleasure!
We gathered our equipment; hard boiled eggs, spoons, pieces
of torn up material, 2 whistles, 2 measuring tapes (extendable), long rope, bag
of plastic balls and 4 bins. All we
needed was the rain to stay in the clouds.
What you need is the rain to start at 2 in the morning and carry on till
7. We have found that this will produce
a sunny morning for school. What you
don’t want is the rain to start at 5 in the morning and carry on till 11. What was the day going to be like?
Alas it was the latter L
At breakfast we were looking at the rain and were thinking about what to do.
Should we postpone to the next day? Why don’t we go to the Grade school first?
Suggested Martin which was a brilliant idea!
Hopefully by 10:30 the rain would finish and then we will have 2 hours
for the event. Phone calls were made;
sorted. The rain stopped at 9:30 and we
were in business!
It was a truly fantastic day! I would like to use the dreaded ‘A’ word that
our friends over the pond use to excess but I can’t bring myself to even though
it was pretty ‘A’. The kids loved it, we
loved it and the teachers had a pretty good time as well!
We started with the running and the children were sorted by
size and gender. Boys, girls, big, medium and small. On your marks, get set,’peeeeeeeeeeeep’ on
the whistle. Mekdes was very strict, a
line was drawn in the sandy earth and she called them back if there were false
starts. The older children had to run 3
lengths but the nursery kids just 1.
Everyone was enthusiastic especially Martin with his bright green
whistle that came out of a cracker.
The eggs were not quite hard-boiled but we had no time left
so we had to take them as they were. But
what this meant was that when they were inevitably dropped, they did crack and
some were a little bit mushy and not reusable!
As always the three-legged race was hilarious. Enough said.
The teachers were reluctant to join in the teacher’s race
but I dragged them up. Mekdes was as
strict for them as with the children and called a false start on the first
attempt. Seble however was in her zone
and run to the finishing line before she realised it was a no-start and so was
already puffed out when we started the race again. Martin was convinced that Fran ran in front
of him at the end but in the final count, it was Fran 1st, Martin 2nd
and Seble 3rd but it was very close and I have to say confusing!
We hadn’t planned on the nursery kids running at all and we
thought the school carried on till 12:30, but they did and it didn’t, with
parents arriving at 12. So we had only
just got started on the Long Jump, High Jump and ‘Shot put’ and it was time to
go.
None-the-less-it was a very special day and such a lot of
fun for everyone.
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