After a whole week of awesome but tiring mentorship, the weekend feels even better. And so it is with a big smile on my face that I woke up at 10 this morning. Planning for the day: RAYS OLYMPICS!
After a sleep in that felt like heaven and a free morning which felt like it lasted a second it was finally time for the event of the day. As soon as everyone had put on their Rays shirt like one puts on an armour, the olympics started with the presentation of our posters and chants to the jury. All chants were so good that all three teams shared first place. The posters were assessed on creativity and thought throughness and even though much effort was put in my own team’s poster we ended up third place. However, far away from discouraging us this only made us even more eager to win the other competitions. So it is in a fighting spirit that we continued the olympics.
Next up was the best paper airplane. Everyone did their best and I can say my team had some
very good designs that were totally winning material. But the wind thought otherwise and after multiple tentatives, we did not win that game either. After the paper airplanes came the relay race, except that instead of a stick team members had to take on and off a shirt (for those of you who read Maja Keatly’s blogginlägg you might remember the colour of my teams shirt : ) I promise we ran as fast as we could but couldn’t beat the red team who had developed a tactic to exchange shirt faster. Imagine, we had just lost all three first games. Who could have thought? The best team loosing like that! Inconceivable.
But the organizers didn’t let us mourn on our fate and announced the next game: Remembering as many numbers as possible from a list of approximately 100 numbers. In only three minutes. Quickly, we made up a strategy and started memorizing the long list. When the time came to say the numbers out loud everyone was nervous. What if we lost that game too? But that was our come back! We won the game, and the one after that (irish relay race), and the one after that (riddles). We were coming back, on top of the game!
For obvious reasons of bias, I will intentionally skip the few other games that we lost and not write down the results of the olympics but let me tell you one thing: everyone fought hard, the competition was high and even the slugs in the grass were shaking with excitement.
After that came “English Tea” time and our wonderful organizers prepared scones and tea. What a comforting feeling to eat warm scones with homemade jam and whipped cream after a difficult competition. We all laughed, relaxed and filled our stomach with deliciousness. But this was not the last event of the day! After “English Tea” came the “4th of July” American celebration. We did celebrate it on the 2nd but hey, don’t ask questions we are Rays, we do what we want including the craziest things.
A group started working on the fries, another on the salad, a third on cakes and meringues. Everyone actively participated in the febril preparations to ensure the best and americanest feast possible. The BBQ was lit, the vegan hamburgers were cooked and with the air filled with the sound of country music, everyone enjoyed the moment. The late afternoon sun came to say goodbye and painted the sky with pastel colors. Some ate to the point of no return, some learned american dances and some braided hair but everyone laughed and had fun, that’s for sure.
And so that is how the day ended: with the fainting smell of BBQ and happiness.
\\ Madeleine Monperrus