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Published: October 28th 2008
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Hurray, it's Megans birthday today! Happy birthday....! We will celebrate that this evening because we first have to do some final preparations for the sports day, so it's an early start today. First we have to go into town for some extra copies of the sports certificates that we will hand over to the children. Also some extra stickers because there is a fourth team all of a sudden (we had stickers for first, second, third place) and finally some plastic cups for water. Then we made a cord out of wool for the high jump game in case there is time to do that and we organized water for the kids (HE helped a lot!). A quick cup of tea and off to CWH where..... nobody was ready yet :-(. So we already started the day with a delay. To gain some time I went ahead with a few boys and supplies to the sports field where the children from CWA already had arrived. Once there I set up the obstacle course by sticking arrows on the trees (that were already there ;-))). Then the people from CWH also arrived. While Megan and Charis formed the teams (we tried to
get mixed teams with CWA and CWH members) I hung up the volleyball net brought by CWH. And then there was the moment to start our very first self organized sports day. We first explained what we had planned for the children. We would do the obstacle course (as a relay race) first followed by the volleyball match. During the volleyball match we would do a sack race and a three legged race. The teams would earn points for the obstacle race and the volleyball match and bonus points for the sack race and the three legged race. At the end of the games we would add up all the points and announce the winning team of the day. We started by giving a demo of the obstacle course, I did the course and Megan commentated so the children would know what to do (note to myself: next time it's the other way around ;-)).
We had to make this a relay race too to make it possible to stick to four teams for the whole afternoon. Before the obstacle course started I went to the somewhat difficult part of it (children had to climb over a tree branch)
Sports Day
Photo by Charis Hill to help. But before I could do that I first had a quarrel with a buffalo grazing there (exactly in that spot, silly cow). I tried to send it off but it disagreed and it wanted me to go away (they are quite big up close..) but finally I won and it went somewhere else. The obstacle race was great fun, Megan joined the youngest children that went first and after a short time all the children were yelling their team members to the finish line. Then we had a break for some water. Wow! Our supplies were gone in less than no time. Then we started the volleyball match and Megan hosted the two other games with Charis helping to keep score. Children had a lot of fun with those races, even the elder ones… Megan had to go to the shop twice to get more water! It happened to be a hot day so there could not be enough water…. Lesson for the next time. She had to get 15 extra 1ltr bottles and that still was just enough.
Lucky for us one of the boys from CWH was a national level volleyball player. So he was
Sports Day
Photo by Charis Hill the perfect umpire for that (I am not!) and he agreed to do that. So the volleyball games went well. It was difficult though to get the teams in the field each time, they were all over the place and not really listening to us (have to think of something else for that next time). After the match Megan collected all the scores and added them up so she could put all the stickers (for 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th place) on the certificates. We had gold, silver and bronze colored Buddha stickers and blue smileys for the 4th place. We handed the certificates over together with a roll of Mentos (that was a success) and thanked everyone. And then we all went home again.
Megan and I stopped at Mamma Mia’s for lunch to go to CWH again to decide on the final decorations for the classroom. We also had a look at the painted classroom and kitchen. Let me tell you, I won’t ask that guy to paint my house…. Then back to HEHQ. On the way there we ran into Trish again (met her in Kathmandu) and at the HQ we met with Tony Jones (one
Sports Day
Photo by Charis Hill of the founders of Himalayan Encounters, he is a very inspirational man!). At the HQ we discovered that the PC was missing, it had been replaced to make room for a hole in the wall for a new window. The mason man at work here (part of the HE staff) was much, much quicker and more precise then the man at work at CWH. The window was in in an afternoon! And then there was another power failure, oh yeah! We are getting used to that. But our plan to prepare the photos of the children for the decorations is shattered. Even typing over the stories from the diary is out of the question. Maybe later this evening again. It’s rather enchanting to have candlelight and hear nothing else then crickets..
We had a lovely birthday dinner together with Tony and Trish. Especially made for Megan complete with wine and a birthday cake! We ate a lot!
: What a great birthday. Sports day was a success (despite it's imperfections!) and the dinner was amazing! Can't believe that Tony Jones arrived on my birthday. Was in awe of him in Kathmandu and thought I was being stupid.
After talking to him a lot more - I really am in awe of him. As Jan says - very inspirational with a lot of insight into the running of this country and a never-ending reportoire of interesting stories!!
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