School sports day

3.30pm I'm sitting at home quietly quivering. 

I've just spent the day at our youngest son's Elementary Field Day. A bit like an Australian school sports day but with much less emphasis on Olympic-type sports. They do individual events like a sprint and a longer run but also events like obstacle course, soccer dribble, skipping rope, and ball throw. They would have done long jump too except it was a wet day, so this all happened indoors today. Hence my quiet quivering. It isn't a large school (I'm guessing about 130-150 kids in elementary), but they sure made a lot of noise. 

The afternoon was team games like tug of war, running relay, ball games, and other relay events (egg and spoon type events). Again all in the gym. My ears are still ringing. 

It's my last elementary sports day (see photos from the outside field day two years ago here). Middle school now has a similar but down-scaled half-day event and high school doesn't have any such thing. In fact there is very little within-school sport (Americans call it intermural I believe). From now on it's all interschool sports on weekends (and occasional week nights). 

A few (silent) photos: the cup stacking. 

Tug of war

Distance run, really only about 600m but having it inside made it seem longer, it also made it very difficult to pass people in front of you.  (Sorry for the poor photo.)

7pm. I'm now fairly recovered from the day. My headache is gone and I'm no longer quivering. All in all the day went fairly well. The teacher who coordinated the event is very experienced and did a superb job. He had the 11th graders as his helpers (which helps to explain why they couldn't postpone the event until a later date because of the rain, not to mention that we've only got five full school days left!).

I'm looking forward to another sleep-in tomorrow. It's been hard all week to get out of bed. I think a full relaxing weekend last weekend pulled the plug a little on our energy and now we're just hanging out for the summer holidays.