Special Olympics - What a Great Day!

These aren't my students. I hope to have some photos up tomorrow from our track and field meet today. But the same competitive spirit is there in those smiling, victorious faces.


As the track meet was in another city, we endured a bus ride filled with exuberant special athletes and many peer coaches from our hugely successful Best Buddies Club, about 22 in all, plus 7 staff, all singing Kumbaya at the tops of their collective lungs, over and over and over again. And then again. Coulda been worse, coulda been 100 bottles of beer on the wall.


It certainly wasn't the best day weatherwise. Only about 9C, windy and overcast except for a 2 second glimpse of the sun through a tiny break in the clouds at about 10:00am. But other than a few rain drops we remained dry, frozen solid, but dry.


But I heard no complaints, except from my staff (and me) while guzzling gallons of strong, hot coffee and gorging on double chocolate muffins and cookies provided by our most excellent hosts (St. Joseph's Highschool in lovely St. Thomas, Ontario - thank you!)


We managed to score quite a few ribbons for shotput, highjump, long jump, 100 and 400m races but the best prizes were the looks on the faces of our kids as they crossed the finish line with arms raised in the air, jumping up and down because they finished the race.


We met up with old friends who had moved away and made many new friends too as evidenced by the frequent exchange of facebook info - I had to keep loaning out my pen - sheesh! Love was in the air! Things were heating up!


The ride home was much quieter, I even heard a few snores! And our bus driver, God bless him, made a pit stop for us at Tim Horton's. You can never have enough hot coffee on such a chilly day. We made it back to school with the same number of kids as when we left - that spells success for me.


American Idol is certainly a long drawn out affair tonight, I enjoyed David Cook singing with ZZ Top. And it was nice to see Donna Summer still hobbling around - she sounded pretty good. Which David will win??? Being more of a rock fan I'm hoping for DC, but DA has the preteen and little old lady market cornered. It'll be a close one.