Los Olimpiadas

So this week of school has been fantastic! Next Monday is "Saint Rose of Lima Day" and since she is the namesake of my school we have been doing some serious celebrating... No clases, no homework just fun and games. Seriously! We have art competitions, play logic games, watch talent shows, and most importantly PLAY SPORTS!!! I was on the basketball, soccer and track team and we won gold in all three! Yayyyyyyyy ok, so maybe its not quite as impressive as it sounds because we are competing against the grades who all happen to be younger. But we were still super excited!

So, I'll start by describing the opening ceremonies... It started out with the regular Monday assembly where we all stand at attention and sing the national anthem, Maryknoll song, listen to a sermon and have announcements. The only difference is this time we were decked out in "Promo shirts" and everyone was figity and sang with gusto rather than mumbling the words. Each class of 75 students has a certain color that stays with them for all 11 years... In our case its red so we had a huge elmo costume, red paint on our cheeks, red butterfly ears, red plastic noses, red confetti etc. After the announcements each grade forms a huge mob and parades around the central patio shooting off those canons full of confetti and singing. Super fun. :) And then the entire rest of the day monday was sports. In basketball I enjoyed a serious height advantage so we won by a tonnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn and I got to score a lot! Kind of felt like Dani Halberg for an hour or so :) And today was "paseo" so we spent the day at a club and competed in "athletismo" and "fulbito". Translation of these two is imitation track and soccer. For example, I ran the 800 but it was more like a 400. Two laps around this little track marked out with cones in the parkinglot. And I ran the marathon which is three laps or roughly 600 meters. Nobody else in my colegio seems to share my love of distance running so it was fairly easy to win :) Paseo was super fun though... this particular part of Lima almost always has sun and there was lots of green grass and gorgeous architecture and we spent the day taking pictures and eatting yummy food and playing games :)

Ooooooh other exciting news is that I rode public transportation all by myself for the first time on Tuesday!!! I walked from school to one of the main streets and caught a micro. They are these little crowded buses that go all over Lima and only cost about 15 cents. You can flag them down wherever and jump on and then tell the guy manning the door when you want to get off. The whole time the doorman has his head out the window looking for anyone who wants to get on and he has a constant stream of spanish too. Seriously its like a monologue of "baja baja baja sube sube sube va va va esquina esquina esquina." So anyway my mom helped me pick the right micro and I told the guy where I wanted to get off. And then I crossed over and got on the Metropolitano which is the main bus system. From there it is easy because I just ride it to the last station, get off and walk about 5 blocks to my house. Yayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy!