Day of Health

On Saturday, the Institute hosted its annual “День Здоровья,” or Day of Health. The Day of Health is a field day, of sorts, where students compete on teams with their departments in sporting events, dance competitions, cooking competitions, and the like. Participation is mandatory for all students and faculty, but it takes the place of Saturday classes for the day, so I didn’t hear many complaints.

The day started early. I met Katya and Lena outside at 7, when it was still not quite light out and pretty darn cold (of course, no one was dressed for the cold morning weather because temperatures were due to get into the low 80s later and they would, after all, be running around). We walked maybe a mile to the road where everyone was lining up with their departments, waited there for about an hour, donned our brightly colored hats (the Department of Foreign Languages was bright orange), lined up in columns of five, and walked another mile to the field. At 9, everyone had gathered and the opening ceremonies began.

One of the first competitions appeared to be a song and dance (or chant and dance) event. Groups made up their own words to popular songs, generally about making them about the day of health and how important it was, and accompanied them with little dance numbers.

From there, I went with Katya to check out the tug-of-war competitions. Now tell me, is it really fair to have the students from the Physical Education Department competing against the students in the Mathematics or Literature Departments? Come on now. It’s like taking the Governator in his prime and pitting him against the poor sickly Dostoevsky. No contest.

Here, students from our department are trying their hardest. They did end up winning a round, their very last (against the literature students, I think).

From there, I wandered around a little bit more, checked out the poster-making competition, listened to some students singing and playing their guitars, and watched another dance competition (below, the Phys Ed students show off).

At the end of the afternoon, we had a picnic feast and finished up the last competitions (I watched our fishing team by the river, where it was a bit warmer in the sun), and then the students had a mini “discotheque.” Discotheques seem quite popular here. The students seemed to enjoy themselves the most during it. Closing ceremonies followed, and finally we all processed out (again in orderly columns of five). We had a long walk home, made even more tiring by the fact that we had been on our feet for the past 8 hours. I collapsed in the dorm when I got home and fell asleep embarrassingly early.

All in all, an interesting, though exhausting, day.