March 28, 2013
Last week I got to go to the inter-high school track competition. All of the High schools in Vava’u got together to compete in track and field events. The competition was 2 days and it was held at the Mormon high school, which is beautiful. It’s campus is probably one of the nicer high school campuses I have seen.
I went to the event on the second day with my teachers after school. It was really cool, there were so many people there, and of course so much food- people set up tables and sell random package goods like instant noodles and cookies and they also make fried chicken and chopsuey to sell. Even cooler than all the food, was the event itself. Tongans are naturally athletic so seeing them compete was really neat- for some of them there could be a real future in track if they had that opportunity here.
Along with the athletic aspect, I like that every school showed up almost in full and everyone cheered for their team. Not just a few people or a section like in American schools- everyone was cheering and happy. People would lead really funny cheers- a lot in English that was exactly correct- guys and girls would dance in front of the school and guys would put on little impromptu skit type antics where they would run into the field and antagonize the other schools. The whole thing was really cool.
Today was the primary schools’ version of sports day. We have been training our district for about a month now and today was the big day where the 5 districts of Vava’u got together. My school is kind of slow so we only sent 3 kids to the competition but it was still really fun to go and watch the event. I hung out with Harrison, one of my fellow volunteers from a different district, and we prep our teams and ran with some of them and basically just tried to act important. Since it was an all day event (from 8:30 – 4) it was also a picnic. People come with bins of pre-made food, I am not talking PB and Js or cheese and crackers either, I am talking friend chicken, pork, root crop, sausage and giant tubs of water mixed with this sugar powder; also, my new favorite thing, sugar cane (giant sticks that you get to naw on after a big meal). My district got third and none of my kids won their events, but it was still an awesome day and it gives me something to work on for next year.
My fellow teachers, checking out the competition
crazy parents entertaining people during breaks
the bigger kids were told to do shot-put, but they didn'tt really know how to through it, they all looked so nervous when it was their turn
the one in the red is one of my students!
after the competition they did a march around the field
all of the districts. My is Vaheloto, the ones in red
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