Sports' Day

The other day classes were cancelled while the university held it yearly “Sports Days” on the new campus. 

 

Some of Ann's freshmen students. This is our college's group

in plaid.

As we arrived home from school two days earlier our phone rang with Zhang Yi telling us that we had been selected by the Student Council of the College of Languages, Humanities and Law to lead its team walking into the sports arena during their opening ceremonies.

 

She said no college had previously selected foreigners to have that honor before. Maybe kind of cool, and hopefully an indication we are creating some of the relationships we are trying to build.

 

When will we ever get the chance to do this again?  We were intrigued. Here are some are some of the pictures of us and the events we saw during the program.

 

The opening ceremony was fairly cool and showed evidence of influence from the 2008 Olympics.

Now stopped in front of the University officials to

perform.

 

We were supposed to wave at the crowd. Not comfortable. But since we had students sprinkled though it who were waving to us, it was easy to wave back, at which point the whole section waved back at us and then cheered. That was fun. The unusual Americans on campus. We are treated nicely.

 

The athletic contests were apparently selecting winners to go to a regional, then national competition.

 



The field was filled with the various college delegations.

The hurdles gave an interesting view of the composition of competition. There were a handful of outstanding hurdlers. Our students said they were PE majors who would all go on to be coaches.

 

There were also lots of very poor ones. Some obviously got recruited by friends who said "oh, let's go do it and represent our club." They tripped a lot. Reminded me of what I hear said about American Idol and reality TV in general: "Friends don't let friends....." Lots of friends here missed the boat.

 

 

 

 

 

The Dragon Club doing their most famous move: "Great Wall"



 

 

 



Two of our students just live to be part of their dance team.



Several hundred faculty were part of this demonstration.