Knowledge Bowl

I've asked Kyle a few times to write this post, but since life never seems to slow down I don't think he will get to it.  Once one big even is completed its immediately onto the next big event.  Kyle's two biggest events since Christmas have been Alumni Soccer Day and hosting the Knowledge Bowl.

Alumni Soccer Day was the last Saturday in January.  Its a day where former students, teachers, and parents come and form teams to play against the current soccer teams.  The games are set in advance and the alumni and parents know when to come and play.  They're given uniforms to wear for the day.  And each of the current soccer teams play one game.  There is also a futbolito (a small soccer game on a basketball court) tournament going throughout the day for the elementary students.  And several food vendors come to the school so there's lots of snacks, drinks, and food available throughout the day.  All of the soccer games are free, but the food is used as a fund raiser for the Athletic Department.  I was sick that weekend, but did bring Juliana up for a little while to watch.  She had a great time having a picnic on the bleachers and then hanging out with daddy for a little while.  Because I wasn't feeling well I forgot to bring our camera.  There is a picture floating around facebook of Juliana riding on Kyle's shoulders, but its slightly scandalous so didn't know if everyone reading this would want to see it :)

As soon as Alumni Soccer was over, Kyle (and I to a smaller extent) jumped right into planning for the Knowledge Bowl.  Actually, he'd been working on it for several months, but at this point it pretty much consumed all of our time.  Every year, at the end of the school year, the heads of all the schools in the Association of Bilingual Schools of Honduras get together and plan the events for the following year, including the dates and which schools will host them.  In the past we have hosted the Track Meet, Music Festival, Teacher's Conventions...things like that.  The the schools are able to work into their budgets the funding needed for each event that they are responsible for.  This year we ended up not being assigned to host any events.  But in August it was discovered that the school which had volunteered to host the Knowledge Bowl would be unable to (they had not participated in the event during the 3 prior years which is required) and perhaps just didn't want to.  And really, no school wanted to host it because its so expensive, time consuming, and complicated to plan.  It ended up that our school superintendent volunteered our school, and since Kyle is the Athletics and Activities Coordinator it was up to him to do the majority of the planning.  So over several months he purchased buzzer sets (at $500 each) and questions, arranged food to be available, communicated with schools, got advise on how to run the games well and prevent cheating, and coerced the staff and friends to be Readers/Judges, Room Monitors, Time Keepers, and Hallway supervisors (and spend many hours training them to do their jobs well).  There were many late nights and a couple all nighters that went into the planning.  I helped out with whatever computer work I could do for him as well as provided snacks for all of the workers and coaches of every school (went and spent about $275 on various snacks and drinks and kept them available for the entire time).  Throughout the weekend there were MANY compliments from the other schools on the way that it was run.  Much to my dismay there are many people who want our school to host it again next year.  I know that it won't be as much work, but it's still not something I want to think about doing quite yet. (We do have pictures of the Knowledge Bowl, but its just pictures of each team.  Since no electronic devices are allowed in the rooms, we couldn't take pictures of the actual games.)