Sports DAY!!

On February 17th, the girls celebrated the much anticipated "Sport's Day 2009".

Hosted by World Vision, Sports Day is a day of sporting competitions and festivities for the girls and their parents. The day started off with loud dance music bumping through the air. The girls all dressed in uniforms, created especially for sports day, energetically danced on their balcony and waited for the day to begin. While by the kitchen, hired cooks were busy preparing food for all the girls and their families. World Vision truly transformed our little home into a new place. In preparation, they had hired a DJ for the event, set up a small bamboo and cloth building for the girls and the Ranaghat teachers to sit in, created a long jump, transformed our field into a sporting field with use of chalk powdered lines, put up flags, banners, laid down blankets for the family spectators and finally hired a bus to transport all the parents and families from Calcutta to Ranaghat.

When the families arrived, everyone was given tiffin (tea, sweets, and sweetmeats) and settled onto the blankets for the days events. The girls then marched out by team separated by team names and colors: Red, Yellow, Green, and Blue. The teams had been previously organized by the World Vision representative to ensure that they were evenly matched for ages, skills, and size. Then began the days games: 50 yard dash, balance of clay pots on head races, cracker on string races, thread the needle races, makeup races,Marble on Spoon races, high jump races, and many more. It was quite enjoyable to watch. I did notice the girls were quite serious with many feeling quite upset if they lost. However, in the end it did not matter as all the girls received the same prizes regardless of how their team placed in the final tally.

Afterward all ate the delicious meal, and the girls had time to visit with their families. It was very touching to see the girls with their parents as they seemed very proud of their daughters and you could tell there was much love amongst the families. The girls were all very excited to introduce their parents and show off their american "Didi's" and "Sir". All in all the day was one of my favorite days so far in India.