They call it “Sports Meeting” but since they have sack races, 13 legged races (12 guys with their legs tied together), grenade toss, skip relay, along with normal type of track events, I would call it a “field day”. They were just missing the dunking booth and all the junk food that goes with an American school field day. Opening ceremony consisted of a very colorful parade with drums, costumes, dances, performances, balloons and flowers. Each college sat in their own section with matching outfits and their own inventive type of pom poms. Some teams wrapped plastic coke bottles with colorful paper to shake, a couple of teams used fans, another used umbrellas, one team used bowls lined with shiny paper. All very noisy. Two of our teachers participated with the English College faculty and Meagan won 3rd place in the hammer toss and Amy ran the 100 meter and didn't come in last.
I wore my “Ting Bu Dong” (I don’t understand) T-shirt to the event and got a lot of laughs in this relaxed atmosphere – made me feel so much better about the students here. They DO have a sense of humor. Even though this event was much more formal than anything we would do – they were all having fun. (as an example of the formality - the NUDT students actually sat & remained in their cheering sections for the whole afternoon - how many of our kids would do that for field day)
This was one of the rare times we were allowed to take pictures of the students- the photos of the "field day" are at the end of the Changsha Spring Album
