Jugar: To Play

Culture clash and field day bash. "Los Olimpiadas" were a daunting task, both in the literal obstacles that were there to be faced, as well as the successful working of two cultures together in a time where the stakes are high. There were around 2.5 weeks of meetings leading up to los olimpiadas. Most of those meetings were vastly unproductive, all of them started at least 30 minutes to an hour late. None of them were stress free, and a few of them were fun. Each team had the task of creating: a banner, mural, mascot, t-shirt (one for each person), and dance, rolled into a presentation. Each team received about $40 (which goes a long way farther here than in the States) and had close to 30 people (though many of those people absent for some/few/all of the meetings. Not surprisingly I was in charge of making the musical remix and the dance. While our team may have... struggled in completing all of our tasks in a timely/impressive fashion, we all had fun, and our presentation managed to fall (somewhat) together by the time we were on stage that Friday night.

Though I don't have a video of the dance yet, I will work on getting one up. No promises though, youtube is highly inaccessible and I so far have no way of getting videos on my blog. Here are some photos of the night of presentations:

Saturday commenced the actual games including but not limited to:


volleyball, long jump, tug-of-war, many-many relays, soccer, obstacle course, and more.

While our team had little in the way of thrilling victories, here are a few ideas of our day!

 

What really made los olimpiadas difficult was the culture shock I experienced during the weeks of preparation. My preferred work method is to A) be on time always and B) not leave everything to the last minute. These are rare things to experience on ANY team during the season of olimpiadas. I, along with many volunteers, was immensely frustrated by the constant confusion of meeting times, everyone arriving 30/45/60 minutes late, everybody panicking and doing things last minute, the multiple changes to the number of people in my dance (on the day of the performance) and the general relajo (chaos) that is involved with this larger-than-life day.

I found myself being so angry about the stress that this all brought on and feeling upset that the people I was working with couldn't just see and do things my way. I struggled because I didn't want to feet that way, but I did. Somehow beyond (in my mind) all odds, our performance was more or less successful, everything was made, and all had fun. While I still don't see eye to eye on the mode of completion I do have to praise the Honduran ability to simultaneously all know when something important is happening, and where, regardless of what the official schedule says, as well as the Honduran ability to make beautiful, artistic banners, mascots, etc, out of materials I would never have thought to mold to my will. I can't say that I am at peace with everything yet, but I am trying very hard to appreciate what new insights and perspectives this culture here in Honduras has to offer.

 

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