Sports Day

This last friday our university took a break from classes and had a big sports festival! We were obviously thrilled to have a break from classes but had no idea what a sports festival might look like. So, thursday afternoon we headed out to the university's track field to take a gander. We entered through the main gate (still quite a ways from the field) but already could hear the madness going on at the track field. As we walked closer and closer to the "stadium" the ruckus grew louder and louder. We heard a bunch of shouting in unison to large base drums with elaborately dressed drum beaters. The track field is an 8 lane track with a large stadium seating apparatus on one side and an iron fence on the other. We approached from the iron fence side thinking we'd avoid most of the crowd. That was definitely not the case however. It was crowded all around. And this is what we saw:

The view of the track is still a little blocked. But what was going on was basically like a school wide track meet with students & teachers competing. While we were there we saw about 7 heats of the 400m. It might have been a little more entertaining had we gone and sat in the student's section:

I know, you're wishing you had a matching outfit too. The picture may be too small, but if you look closely you can see the big red drums on the bottom row. We've uploaded a lot more pictures of Sports Day at our picture website over there ------>

This is about three o' clock in the afternoon on sports day...and that's the sun (a common day to day sight in our city). Say it with me now, "mmmm pollution filled lungs."

This next one is also a common site. Sadly, it's customary here for the grandparents to play a bigger parental part in children's lives than the actual parents. The grandmother's do most of the raising of the kids. They came out to watch some of the events at sports day as well.

We just thought this one looked kinda cool. They're not quite as excited about sports day as everyone else.
And this is part of the crowd headed to the stadium to watch.