ISO Field Day and Sofanwet Tournment 2014

This past weekend was Sofanwet (Softball Fanatics West African Tournament) here in Ouagadougou, which is always looked forward to with great excitement and enthusiasm! 

On Friday before the tournament began the girl's school had their annual field day! All classes are canceled and the school participates in games all morning before having an early dismissal.

The kids LOVE field day! For the first time this year the whole school participated in a team event. At the beginning of the school year the student body was divided into four teams, all mixed with students from12th grade to preschool, and every couple months the school gets together, breaks up into their teams, and does an event. I love this! I love that all the students have to work together, from the oldest teenagers down to the three year olds. It has really helped cultivate a great sense of community within the school among all the students.

So, for the first event the kids broke up into their teams and in each group the older kids had to find a way to transport all the younger team members across the soccer field without them touching the ground, by any means necessary. Some were carried in sacs across the field, and others, like my girls, were carried on backs and in arms! They had such a blast!

Sisters!

Afterwards the school broke up into smaller groups, and Marvelly went off to do games with the pre-k-1st grade. And Sydaleigh was with the elementary classes.

Marvelly's group did a water relay and had to transport water across the field in a scooper and the first team to fill up their bottle at the other end won. Most kids didn't have a single drop of water left in their cups after it all spilled out from running down the field!
      
She is a wee bit competitive!

She had such a good time. Man this girl loves school and life, and everything.

Sydaleigh hangin' with some of her favorite friends!

Sydaleigh's group did a scooter relay, and then a game with wooden skies.

Umm, she is a wee bit competitive too. Not sure where they get that from..... =)

This was a busy day and weekend. After watching and cheering for the girls for part of the morning, I had to leave after a little while, bring some friends to the orphanage, stayed and hung out there for a bit, then bolted back to the school to pick up the girls for early dismissal, we came home for an hour, ate lunch, drove out to the Embassy to pick up Isaak and then back to the school we headed for the softball tournament where we stayed the rest of the day cheering on Isaak's team!

Whoop whoop! Go Gecko's!

Isaak loves games, competition and camaraderie. 

They played four different teams over the weekend...the Peace Corp team, the US Embassy team, a Burkinabé team, and a team from Niger.

They put up a valiant effort.

But the competition was stiff this year and sadly they didn't make it to the playoff rounds.

But they had fun, and everyone had a good time hanging out watching the games, catching up with different people who drive in from around the country and from our neighbor Niger....so it wasn't all a loss!

Great weekend here!

We were all exhausted when it was over, but it was great!