Sports Meeting!! 加油!!

I feel like Sports Meeting in at HNU is like sunshine in March in Tonawanda or a unicorn—this imaginary promise that no one believes in anymore. Sports Meeting (which is basically a wannabe Olympics for the students of HNU) was supposed to happen for us October 23-25. It was delayed twice, pushing it from 10/23-25 to 10/30-11/1 (which would have given me Halloween off) and then again to 11/13-15 (which totally screwed up my midterm schedule). There was talk of the meeting just being cancelled with the threat of bad weather coming from the typhoon that hit the Philippines last week. But it seemed that good fortune decided to throw us a bone and we finally had our Sports Meeting (it is actually happening right outside my window now--加油!!)

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.

 

Photos stolen from DH

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.

Taichi

Hip hop

 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.

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!”?!?!