Olimpiadas

The only way I know to explain Olimpiadas is Field Day on steroids. About a month before the event (which occurred this weekend), we start meeting in our teams. There are 18, and everyone (from kids to teachers to tíos to volunteers) is on one. You end up with 6 adults as coordinators and about one kid from each hogar, so everyone has various ages of kids. Each group this year was assigned a place of interest in Honduras and a virtue. We had Pulapanzhak (a waterfall) and peace. We’ve been meeting twice a week for four weeks for two hours a pop. Each team has to do a presentation on Friday night and plays games all day Saturday. There are prizes for the top three teams in each. So we’ve been working non-stop creating our t-shirts, making props for the presentation, getting a remix for the dance, designing costumes, practicing our cheer, and making our mural and flag. My role has been in choreographing the dance for Friday night. Turns out you can take the girl out of dance team, but you can’t take dance team out of the girl. I full on put in a basket toss and a ripple line!

So this was the big weekend, and the reason I haven’t been online in ages. We left school early on Friday to meet with our teams and practice the dance incessantly. Then we all went down to the school at about 5:30, and I got ready and put on make-up with the girls who were dancing (we also managed to get 5 boys, including my godson). Our presentation went really well. I got lots of compliments on the choreography and was told that our team was really together. I knew we wouldn’t win, though, because we didn’t have very good props. One team created a huge cruise ship, and Copan recreated the ruins and did a mock Mayan sacrifice. It was pretty amazing.

On Saturday, we started out with a really nice mass that ended with the lighting of the torch. We then spent an exhausting day playing games. We did an obstacle course, answered trivia questions in one of the classrooms, crossed dangerous bridges with balls being thrown at us, ran down a slip and slide to throw balls in a basket, had a tug of war in the mud, and got soaking wet passing giant sponges filled with water over our heads. After lunch, we had relay races on the basketball courts. My favorite was the one where I had to dress up as a clown, and there was a relay race filling my costume with balloons. I got picked because there would be a lot of space for them. Yeah. The judges then proceeded to pop all the balloons on my person to make sure they were all there. I still have red marks. I don’t know if it is Honduran culture or Ranch culture, but cheating and accusations of cheating run rampant in Olimpiadas. It’s like no one even listened to the sermon about sportsmanship and brotherly love. Whatever. That night, we all headed down to the school. They announced the winners, and my team actually won second place in the games! We get to go to the city for pizza and cake. Second place last year in presentations and second place this year in games – pretty good! And then I danced the night away with one of my favorite pequeños.

Pictures and videos forthcoming on Facebook (next weekend when I go to the city).