TPR school promotes Beijing Olympics

CHINESE staff and foreign teachers of TPR American English School competed at the “I Love TPR, TPR Greets Olympics -- The Fourth TPR Fun Sports Meeting” in Jida last Tuesday, with Team Lion capturing first prize and Team Eagle second.
There were 120 people from TPR branches in Zhuhai and Zhongshan forming six teams -- Lion, Eagle, Tiger, Leopard, Kylin, and finally Dragon, which included all the foreign teachers.
Events included rope skipping to determine the team with the most jumps; “collecting balls in collaboration,” in which pairs in back-to-back tandem race with balloons between them; “12 people with 13 feet,” in which people line up with their legs tied to their neighbours’ so that the whole team must walk abreast at the same pace; “kangaroos deliver melons,” in which each team member hops in a bag up to the waist with three balloons in hand; and tug of war between sets of teams competing for the victory.
TPR President Simone Xue said 16 years of ups and downs have accompanied the growth of TPR, which has expanded to Dongguan and Zhongshan. The success of the school is attributed enormously to the painstaking efforts of its staff and teachers, to whom he showed high appreciation. The sports meet would also serve as practical support of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, he said.
After demonstration of the spirit of each team, a jubilant group dance kicked off the sports meet. The first event was rope skipping, which was competed by separate teams. Members, one after another, stepped into the skipping zone, the floor area above which a rope was twirling, between two rope holders and jumped once each before they stepped out. Some failed to jump in the skipping zone and sometimes the rope slipped out of the hand of the holder, which affected the number of jumps and thus score of the team. TPR teaching director Riaz Kamali, 58, entered the skipping zone and jumped twice. “It’s fun and I did that when I was young,” he smiled.
The second event was “collecting balls in collaboration.” Two team members carried a balloon between their backs forward to a target object and then moved back to where they started, and then the next pair continued. Each pair had to be very careful not to press the balloon too hard else it burst. It happened to Team Dragon when competing with the other two teams and aroused great laughter from competitors and onlookers.
While the first two teams competed in the “12 people with 13 feet” game, the sixth team -- Team Dragon -- headed by Ian Gregory Helyar, a teacher form Brisbane, Australia, and instructed by Donald Jean Boldus, a teacher from America, practised the game over and over again. “One -- two! One -- two!” with the order of Donald, the team moved forward in a line pretending their feet were bound together. However, the team lost the game for being out of step. “It’s terrible,” Ian said afterwards. “Your English is right, but not your math,” Ian said to Donald, the latter seemed to have seen the light when he heard the last two teams calling in one voice: “Yi -- Er (one -- two)! Yi -- Er!” He kept repeating the Chinese order, trying to find out the reason for their failure.
The meet culminated with the “tug of war.” With only four men and the rest women, Team Lion defeated Team Dragon, which had eight or nine men. When the game took place between teams Eagle and Leopard and teams Tiger and Kylin, the rope broke and the teammates all fell down on the ground. However, the four teams urged for re-competition till the champions were selected.
Riaz showed appreciation of the activity, saying it brings unity by bringing different people from different countries together, even people in China from different provinces together. It also shows diversity, he said.
“The world is but one country and mankind its citizens, Baha’u’llah had said,” Riaz noted. Baha’u’llah, founder of the Baha’i Faith, was born in 1817. He had a vision of humanity as one people and the earth as a common homeland and he called for the adoption of a universal auxiliary language, explained Riaz. “It’s possible. It’s just a matter of time,” he said.
Craig Powell, a TPR Zhongshan Branch teacher from the US, was happy about the sports meet. “It’s good to get everybody here and it’s good to see other people,” he said. “TPR is our home because we have so many people coming from different places. There’s more fun and still there is unity to bring us together,” he said.
Noshin Misaghi from Canada showed excitement about the activity: “It’s interactive and very exciting! Everybody is here. Everyone competes. I think it’s fun!” She explained that schools in Canada have a similar activity day each year with sport and fun events such as rope skipping and carrying balloons filled with water.
The original plan also included “shooting a basket” and “Olympic quiz,” which were canceled due to time constraints. Some people complained about the change and suggested more personal competitive events such as shooting a basket be conducted next time, President Assistant Susanna Pan noted.