运动会！！

Ah the scent of Patriotism in the morning. I do love China. You know how I always say bitches be crazy? Well, you know who else be crazy? China. Just so you're aware, 运动会 [yundonghui] means Sports Day [bold intended]. You remember Sports Day, right? That day, or couple of days, where all the athletic kids were forced to do the competitive races like 100m and relay, the people whose defences could be worn down were forced to do the horrible things like shot-put and 1500m, and the moaners and chubbsters had to sit on the sidelines for the whole day and pretend to give 2 thirds of a shit? Well, that is exactly what sports day in China is not like. Lemme walk you through it, that way, you can make an impartial, unbiased evaluation of China's level of insanity.

The actual event took place on the Friday of last week, so of course the Chinese students had been practising for about a month or so, training up and preparing for the Opening Ceremony [yes, Opening Ceremony, don't do a double take, it happened]. Here's some prep evidence:

Just some casual frog-marching practise. Oh yeah. That actually happened. Then there was the actual ceremony. Well, first, we all have to show up at 7a.m to receive our free departmental T-shirts. We weren't as organised as some departments, which had come up with chants [accompanied by those big Chinese Drums you saw at the acutal Olympic opening ceremony], costumes, marches, mascots and some had even learnt these flip-card routine things so the audience spelt out characters Like 'Go DUT!' [Dalian University of Tech.] and '加油!' [Good luck/go for it!]. I don't think I'll ever be able to do the atmosphere justice - just imagine a Man city vs. Man U game, but with less hooliganism and more organised, communism style 'fun'. Seriously, most of the audience was made up of freshman, who weren't allowed to leave otherwise they failed 1/4 of their credits for that year. Brutal. Most of the foreign students had f'ed off by 9:30.

Reppin' the Foreign Students'  Orange T-shirts

our motley lot 

Just an example of how other departments were better than ours

Yes, their signs make a picture. As you've
probably guessed, this is the history of art's section

The actual sporting events weren't quite so organised. In typical Chinese style, the bulk of the effort was put into making the whole thing look good, whereas the quality was just left to be 差不多[chabuduo, more or less, but in a bad way]. It was still a good day out - even though it was 28 degrees, with no clouds and no breeze from about 8:30. The true sports fans stuck it out though.

Some foreign students in the relay, action shot!

Some of our teachers...

...more teachers [and the one on the right's son]

Men's 400m relay...we did not place. But I don't think we came last...

Martha in the women's 3k...or was it 5k? Whatever 7 1/2 times
round the track is

Marth came 3rd in her race! There she is rockin' some Bronze

As you've probably guessed, I did not participate. Hey, if I had, who would have written the awesome blog post about it? Get some perspective people.

Xx