Birthday Blast and Academic Games Weekend

This weekend I've been helping out at school as Schutz hosts the EMAC(Eastern Mediterranean Athletic Conference) JV Academic Games. We have students from 9 different schools staying here in Alexandria. The schools are located in Qatar, Cairo,Oman, Dubai, Kuwait, and of course, Schutz. The planning for one of these events involves months of planning. In most cases the students stay with students from the host school. Because of the fact that we have several empty apartments here at school, some of the students are staying in our building, and Kris and I are hosting two teachers from the Cairo American School. Both of them are very nice, both are about are age and have been at the school for many years. In fact, one of them married an Egyptian man back in the 80's. She hails from South Carolina, and since her husband died of cancer a few years ago, she will return there in a year or two. The director of the JV Games (these are students from age 12-16) needed readers, timers, and scorekeepers, and so I signed up to be a reader. Essentially the Games involve the students answering questions from all areas of the curriculum.(math, history, English, etc.) They've had this tournament for many years, and there are some very particular rules and regulations that must be followed. Before the quarterfinals begin this afternoon there will have been a total of 136 games played in total among the schools. It's very cool how the buzzers work. Each school brought along the "buzzer gismos" that they use when they practice. There are four buzzers for Team A, four buzzers for Team B. Then there is a cable that funnels all those wires to a control box that in on the reader's table. When a student from Team A presses their buzzer it automatically turns the "A" light on in the 1st position. The students from that team then get 15 seconds to answer a toss-up question for 5 points. If they answer the question correctly, they get a follow-up two-point question. Otherwise, Team B gets a chance to answer the question. As the reader I also have a "joystick" which clears the board after each question has been answered. There is a time and a scorekeeper as well. The rounds are 15 minutes each. Anyway, it has bee a lot of fun to see these students answering some VERY tough questions. Now, I have the answers, and if I didn't, I wouldn't have had a clue as to what the answer was. The readers all get the questions ahead of time; there are individual packets containing 50 questions each for each round. I got my packet the night before, looked at the questions, and I was able to "X" out any questions I didn't feel comfortable asking. (most of those questions were-math related) Even though I had the answers, teams had the right to challenge them if they thought that an answer they had given was also correct. As it turned out, that didn't happen during the 5 rounds of reading that I did. This morning there will be a spelling bee as a sort of "side activity", and I will probably go to that. I'll be thinking of you.......I still remember those exciting days of yesteryear when you were the champ of Brown County. Anyway, it's very cool to see that there are these sorts of activities for students who are bright, and who may not be involved in sports. I was VERY impressed with the kids I came in contact with yesterday. Several of them came up to me to thank me after the round was finished or shook my hand .
The first few pictures were taken last week, on the 4th when Kris celebrated her 56th birthday. We ordered Indian food from a lady who works at school who is employed at school and hails from India. Flowers For the Birthday Lady

The Ultra-Delicious and Chocolately Cake

Spinach Sauce to drizzle over our vegetarian meal

Naan Bread, Vegetables and Rice

Birthday Girl Serves Herself

I took this photo today....This is a photo of Awateef and Bekheet, the wonderful employees at Schutz who clean our apartment every Wednesday.

Kelly, one of the teachers at Schutz, operating the buzzer apparatus

Kitty, one of the teachers from Doha who is a fellow Minnesotan.

The Spelling Bee Contestants

Spelling Bee Action

The Young Girl Who Won the Spelling Bee. I think she was an American, but I don't remember which school she comes from.

This guy was a real character, and I LOVED the 70's afro doo

Contestants taking a break outside

Three really great young guys from the Cairo American School

Action during one of the last rounds of the day

Strategy session as contestants try to answer a question

Two of the Schutz teachers in action as reader and timer

More action at the Games

Afro-dude in thinking mode