I’ve never seen a school that throws events together at the last minute like this one. So, a month ago the bos lady decided that this would be the Saturday we would do our spring bike festival. Great. Whoops, it’s also the same day as the robotics competition. Nope, it’s ok. Robotics is I. The afternoon and we will do it in the morning. We will go back to the treetop adventure park where the kids had so much fun. And in addition, I will create a scavenger hunt with questions in English on the way to the park to make it more interesting. Whoops. Nobody called and reserved a cabin at the treetop adventure park . Now there are none available. Ok. We will grill on the playground at school. Good solution.
Ok, now that we are not going to climb through the treetop adventure, we will start the morning with laser tag, then the bike ride/scavenger hunt, then the grill party. I texted the designated “organizer” the night before and asked if he need help putting up the signs. He had pushed that responsibility off on the new lady because he had to grill the hot dogs. Ok. Tell her to SMS me if she needs help. No message comes. I think she’s got it under control.
I’m not going to show up at 9 for laser tag. I’ll go right before the bike ride. Whoops. I get an SMS from the new lady asking me where I am. Oh Lordy. This means the signs aren’t up and it’s 9:45. I’m on my way. As I arrive, the “organizer” asks me what guests are coming. I told him I had given him the names of the people he should officially invite two weeks ago. Oh, he answers, I thought you were going to invite them. So, no honored guests.
In any case, New lady and I walk the course through the woods and put up signs at 10 different stations. It’s now 10:30, we’re almost back at school, and boss lady is texting to know where we are. In the two years that I’ve been here, this school has NEVER had an event start on time. Why today?
Ok. Back in the courtyard there are only about 20 kids and 10 parents. It turns out, the school has so many WhatsApp threads it posted the bike fest information on none of the ones that most parents and teachers would see. (Russian use their phones too damn much. They live and die for the social media sites.) I told the boss later we should get rid of all the WhatsApp threads except one in Russian and one in English which is available to all. Do we really need a WhatsApp for left-handed, blue-eyed Tatar speakers?
Ok. Be that as it may, I started off with a few words, then gave the kids a bike lesson on the bike path on our courtyard because the police had donated some traffic lights to us and we practiced with them before we took off into the woods.
Once we got into the woods, we stopped at each station, the kids read the signs out loud and we answered the questions. We had varying riding abilities so we always had to wait awhile until
everyone caught up. At the last sign I collected all the answers, we took the signs off the trees, and headed back to the picnic.
There were hot dogs, fruits, tomatoes, actually a nice spread. I grab a hot dog and go inside with new lady and all the quiz answers. We go through them all and I ask her where the prizes are. She doesn’t know. She has to call “organizer”. Organizer tells her I was supposed to organize them. Let’s be clear about something. I create these events for them and give them ideas they never even heard of. My Russian isn’t adequate enough to interact on a business level with people. So I ain’t doing the leg work for these projects that THEY request. Get your act together and find someone who can organize. And boss lady, follow up to make sure they do it!
But new lady saved the day but finding enough Bala City School pens and notebooks for everyone. We presented the prizes and called it a day. We were lucky with the weather, the kids who were there had fun and used their English, but it’s so frustrating and exhausting to get them to organize something that doesn’t involve dancing and ball gowns! And impressing rich parents.
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