Come on Down! You're the next contestant . . .

So I had another surreal experience today. We took the 9th – 10th grade to compete in a game show with an A-stan Turk school (all boys). When our principal first heard of this game from a reporter at our grand opening, she though “Quiz Bowl.” I did, too, and I was very excited to hear about the opportunity. We’ve got some really bright kids, so I thought that we’d totally stomp any other team. I was all ready to start some after school practices when we found out that the students actually play games like crazy youth group stuff. In fact it reminded me a little of a Nickelodeon wannabe middle school game show.

So we put together two teams of four students, 2 girls and 2 boys on each team. Luckily I brought a couple of books of cheesy games with me because the TV station actually met with us to get some new ideas. They had one in Dari, one in Pashto, and then our school liaison announced in English. He is so outgoing; we knew that he’d do great!

Saturday was the BIG day. We got permission slips from around 32 students to go, and the TV station said that they would send buses. Okay, pause to remember where I live. There are some fairly decent buses and then some that look like they have been running since this area was part of the Hippy Trail. The former are the ones that you see driving down the street with 40 people in a bus that seats 20 and another 20 or more on top and leaning out the door. The Hippy Bus was what showed up in front of the school. For my friends from B-ville, this bus made our old church bus look like a stretch limo! Can you imagine our parents letting us take a 45 minute drive across down in this thing? Needless to say we took lots of pictures. Here are a few

So the filming took place in a large high school supported by the Germans that had a gym. Our kids just sat around and talked while the station set up. The whole thing reminded me of something that the high school TV class at Newark would put together for local programming in rural Arkansas. Our kids loved it though. Of course the other team brought boys in uniforms and our students, male, female, red, yellow, black, and white, definitely looked like a normal group from any US school. (Well except for the girls who all had their head covered, wore long sleeves and long shirts.) The teams had to wear warm-up suits for the games which made the girls a little uncomfortable, even the ones from N. America.

The filming took all day. First our two teams played each other. Then the 2 opponent’s teams played each other, and finally the two winners played each other. I sat by precious 10th grade national girls who wanted to call the other team “Losers and Cheaters” the whole time. Instead, we cheered “I – S – K!” and did the wave. We even did “We Will, We Will Rock You” once or twice. You don’t know how surreal it is to see girls covered in black from head to toe stand up to do the wave, but believe me, they made some noise! :-)

So after it was all over they called it a tie, but let me tell you what they gave as prizes. Since they didn’t have enough 1st place prizes they gave each team 2 1st place prizes, jackets with the TV station logo and 2 2nd place prizes, a lifting belt. I immediately thought Wal-mart! See the picture below. In case you can’t read it, this is what was on the box. “Patients whose abdominal muscles have become so flaccid as to allow the abdomen to distend, here is a support to help nature carry the load.” CLASSIC!!!