Ready, set, GO!
This morning, instead of doing our normal school activities, the entire university attended a our 14th annual "sports meet" at my school. Students, teachers, and administrators were all there.
Now I ran track in high school, so I sorta knew how it would go, or so I thought. In China, things are bigger. The stands were packed - I had NEVER been to a track meet where that many people had shown up!
So we met at 7:50AM outside our apartments, and traveled to the stadium with all of the other foreign teachers and our foreign affairs officer (FAO), named "Thor." Before this, I had looked out my window and seen frost on the grass - it was somewhat chilly all day, but got better as the day went along. When we got to the stadium, we lined up to do some kinda parade! It seemed that all the students had done some amount of rehearsing... we weren't the best at marching. Oh well, everyone still loved us, cheered at us, and waved as we made our way around the stadium. We listened to some short speech (mostly in Chinese, with one of my team leaders doing the English translation at some points) and a flag ceremony which included the Chinese national anthem.
First up was the 100m dash. In between heats, they had entertainment! Students would dance for the crowds, or perform some type of martial arts, and there was even a rollerblading trick show (and believe me - around here, some people really know how to use roller blades like hockey skates, extending winter sports into the summer). We were never at a loss for something to see during today's festivities.
On a rather extraordinary note, a student friend of mine, a great runner, was doing a 1500m race, and he missed the start of the race (due to the school president walking around the track and waving at people, postponing the start). The look of surprise on his face! He shot off of the ground and started running. I'd say almost everyone else had a 3 to 5 second head start on him. Soon he was close to the front, and then he fell down. He got back up, and managed to get first place in the race! It was amazing.
Aside from the main in-between-heats attractions in the center, each department scattered around the stands had their own speaker system. I do believe I heard "Gangnam Style" about 20 times today, and about half those times included some kinda dancing. They played Party Rock Anthem as well, and We Will Rock You a lot. Sometimes I'd see one of those pop-n-lock dancers who want to dance to every style of music played. As long as you weren't getting in the way of the races, you could just dance on the track. Many foreign teachers (who all happen to be friends of mine) showed their fun side to their students today.
People sign up for events that they want to run. If you were a student, you ran against students. If you were a teacher, you ran against teachers. For some reason we teachers weren't allowed to sign up for my types of races (mid to long distance), so I had to settle for a 200m sprint. I got to the registration table and discovered that the male teachers' 200m dash was cancelled. Well great! Now I can't run. It turns out that there was a relay I could still do as part of the English department! Once I found my teammate (Sydney), she agreed to do the race with us.
The five of us waltzed over to the registration booth about half an hour before our race. It consisted of 2 laps (800m) with one person running 50m, another 150, and the other 3 people (including Sydney and myself) running 200m. The race had 2 heats. our team was in the 2nd heat. I was chosen for the honorable position of being the last runner - the one on the team who gets to cross the finish line! I had no clue what hand I would be dealt. POP! went the gun, and they were off. In a matter of seconds, the baton had been passed to the 150m runner. The runners came to my little corner of the track and passed the baton to my teammate (who I'm not exactly sure speaks English, even though he's in the English department). I hopped over to the waiting place and got the adrenaline pumping, since I had about one minute before that baton came to me! My teammate had passed the baton to Sydney, and she was booking it. She was in 3rd, but overtook one runner. She passed me the baton, and I was off. Sydney had given me a lovely 2nd place spot, but I had to catch up to the leader, who was maybe 7-10m ahead of me. I guess my legs were moving pretty fast, because I managed to overtake him around the 100-120m mark. I was afraid to look back, because I didn't want to slow down one bit. For all I knew, the other guy might've been right behind me, kicking it into high gear. I crossed the finish line, securing first place for our team in our heat. Someone told me that we got first place overall as well! Now I'm pretty sure the majority of my students thinks that I'm super cool or something.
I forgot how much fun it can be racing against somebody! Whenever I did a 1600m (1 mile) race in high school, I tried to find someone ahead of me to pass. It was like one of my goals - to not let down, and to make those last 100 meters leave me breathless. And if I failed - I at least gave the other guy a run for his money, and we both got better times!
So yeah, It ended at about 4pm. It was a super fun day, which ended with watching the finale of Harry Potter in a team leader's room, then writing a blog post. Good night!
