So before the
Sports Meeting can officially start, the opening ceremony must take place. I
couldn’t help but think about the Olympics the whole time—yes the games and
competitions are important (I personally LOVE the Olympics and I’m a bit sad
I’ll be missing some of them during Spring Festival… But I think I’ll get
over it!!) but so much went into the opening ceremony. People were dressed
up, there were performances, dances, music, Party members, and a full on
parade.
Now the
procession/parade for the opening ceremony is made up of all the different
schools within Hangzhou Normal University. You have the School of Medicine, the
School of Physical Education, the International School, and (of course) the
School of Foreign Languages. It was required that we foreign teachers
take part in the opening ceremony parade (and I was FINE with that if it meant
not having to wake up at 5am to go to Xiasha campus!).
Surrounded by my
students, Gio, Adam, and I made our way to the new stadium. We got little
Chinese flags (my first one!!) and annoying hand clapper noise makers (I
swear, you give these to 60 year old Chinese men and they will be entertained
for the next hour, clapping away and laughing).
Being the ever important leader of the foreign English teachers (and probably because he is the tallest one in the whole school), Adam was, once again, the flag bearer for the School of Foreign Languages. With a student carrying our school’s sign, Adam followed behind her with the flag. It was then the row of “super-duper important people”—the Party member, dean, assistant dean, secretary, and our boss. And behind that row was the foreign teachers which was made up of just me and Gio.
It was cool
walking into the stadium for the first time. We’ve watched them build this
thing for almost three months now; we’ve walked around it almost every day to
go into town to get dinner so it was nice to know that A). they had finally
finished it and B). it actually looked really nice.
We marched along
the track to the sound of our students cheering and banging their little
noisemakers together. It was a bit weird having to walk past the section where
the Party members were sitting and watching us (nothing like being one of the only
capitalists in the whole arena, eh?).
Our students who
were dressed up as cheerleaders and little Michael Jacksons with their fedoras
performed a small dance routine (my precious babies!!) and then we continued on
in our march.
We were one of the
last groups to go so we didn’t have to stand around and wait too long for the
other four or five schools to go by. We stood in the field as they walked past
us, as a Party member gave a speech, and as they played the national anthem, raising
the Chinese flag. I found myself wondering if anyone ever sings the Chinese
national anthem. Whenever you’re at a sporting event in America, someone will
sing the anthem and usually you get people singing along, hooting and hollering
at certain points (“O’er the land of the free” pops to mind instantly at almost
every Sabres or Bandits game). At this sports meeting, there was no singing (or
even humming) along, no cheering, and no clapping at the end. It was very
serious and very somber. Just an observation, I suppose.
After the official
procession, all of the faculty members (Chinese faculty members I should say) went out onto the field to perform taichi (though I have since been informed
that it is not taichi but something a bit different. It has similar movements, and is still fluid, peaceful, and still looks like waterbending… but no, it is
not taichi). Immediately following that, the faculty ran (legit ran) off the
field as the students ran onto the field, wearing shorts, tank tops (it was
cold!), jeans, and other nontraditional clothes and performed a bunch of
different routines (most of them reflecting hip hop). I loved seeing the
difference between the two performances--old VS. new.
I am relieved that
we finally got our Sports Meeting. If I’m honest, it is mostly because I wanted
to only have to work one day this week. But I do enjoy doing things like this
with the school. I like seeing my students outside of the classroom and being
able to support them. First it was the English Host Competition last week and
this week it was the Sports Meeting. With the semester coming to an end (only
four more weeks until I start up finals!), I’m glad to finally be getting out
of the classroom and out onto the university to be with my students.
Taichi |
Hip hop |
Happy Sports
Meeting!
Until Next Time,
Amanda
PS- Adam pointed
out to me the other day that we only have two weeks until Thanksgiving… WHERE
DID THE SEMESTER GO?!?
PPS- NaNoWriMo is
going swimmingly and you can keep an eye on my status here.
PPPS- Plans for
Spring Festival are falling into place… Can anyone say, “Hello, Nepal!”?!?!
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