Three Continents, Still Running

Clothes fly about, flung from arm to arm to table to floor. A hat catches a gust of wind and flies off, and the air erupts in screaming.

"快點, 快點!"
"女生, 加油, 男生, 加油!"
"Hurry, hurry! What do you say?"

"Jack."
"What?"
"Jack."
"It's my jacket?"
"It's my jacket."
"Good! Now go back!"

The boy ran back towards the back of the classroom to disrobe so his next teammate could take his place. And so it went, cheering, changing, speaking, running.

It's a classic, really, the clothes relay race, and I've now played it on three continents: North America, obviously, South America (I led a VBS featuring this game at my aunt and uncle's orphanage in Bolivia when I was 16), and, now, Asia. I would have to say this game is one of the Great Universal Truths in the world, except, to make it more accurate, one of the Great Universal Funs. (Maybe less catchy, though.)

And, since our 5th graders at Qingshan are learning articles of clothing and personal pronouns, it was the perfect game to reinforce sentences like "It's my hat," or "It's my jacket"--which they had to say before running back to change.

As a bonus, it gave way to pictures like these:

And also videos like this (our first, leisurely attempt, including a hilariously showboat-y participant, Willy):

And this (a later version, more hectic and more fun--sorry for my poor videography, though):

There are more installments to this game I could show you, were it not for Youtube's notoriously slow uploads tonight--hour and a half for that second clip--which show Patty blocking the boys' path and some of my most vocal girls complaining (as they always do) that the game was somehow unfair. But you get the adorable point, don't you?

And now, I give you take 2 on yesterday's mystery, which I've decided probably deserves its own label. So here they are, today's T-sihtrs from Taiwan! (Yes, the spelling is intentional. Come on, people!)

If you can't read it, this says "Denim & Bump Monstar." I have no idea why.

This is Jesse. He is adorable. He also happens to be wearing a second Grany Bigrs shirt. No, he is not the student I wrote about yesterday, and no, he does not have the same shirt as the other boy--this is an entirely different shirt with an entirely different image, which is still labeled, quite clearly, "Grany Bigrs."