As part of Bear Week, a unique competition was planned for each afternoon Monday through Thursday as an opportunity for the university students and people from Risttee Church to have some fun together and hopefully connect if even in just some small way. Winners of each competition won things like 512Mb Flash Drives/Memory sticks loaded up with a Kristian Stanfill song, Bear Week Festival t-shirts, t-shirts that our team brought over from America, Passion CDs and more. To receive their prizes, they had to come to the next band event, which was a great way to tie everything together and to give the folks from Risttee another chance to connect with these students.
Monday's competition: Petanque Tournament (with a little Corn Hole tossing on the side for fun.) Petanque is very similar to Bocce Ball that is played in the states and in other countries, and apparently, the Corn Hole Toss is something that comes from the states, though I don't think I've ever heard it called that before.
We ended up having a great turn out for our first afternoon event of the week. The event took place in a park just behind the town hall square where students come in the afternoons and evenings to hang out, usually with a beer or some other alcoholic beverage of choice in tow. One interesting point of note was the experience of our arrival at the park where we were to meet Viljar to help set up for the game. We arrived at the park, five American's all in bright orange Bear Week t-shirts, and as we weren't sure exactly where we were meeting Viljar, we walked through the park trying to work out that detail as all the young Estonians followed our pace with their eyes and very inquisitive looks. Another note of interest is that this particular park, known as drinking hill to the locals, is the exact place that one Estonian had told us we shouldn't go without an Estonian along. With that warning on my mind, you might expect the level of discomfort I felt as we walked through this place - American's, alone. And just to give you an idea of the people who were hanging out in this park, there were many dressed in "Goth" garb and most others in leather with chains and brute looks about them. What we found later was that they were simply curious of out presence rather than in any way dangerous, thankfully. :-) In fact, a handful who had watched us walk through the park came over and joined the games and several others, with much less daunting appearance, joined us as well after coming by one of our breakfast stations on campus that morning and hearing about the game. All in all, it was a really fantastic time and a great start to a week that would hold more in store than we could ever imagine!
Tuesday's Competition: City Photo Contest. This was a great competition! We had seven teams and around 30 people participate. Each team was given a list of seven themed photos they had to take at different landmarks around Tartu. Photo themes included summer vacation, animals, city bus and many more. The winning team of five people had some very creative photos that we hope to post on the blog if we can get our Estonian friends to send them over to us! Sorry we don't have them to share now!
Wednesday's Competition: Railroad Pump Car Race (in the rain!) We also had a great turn out for this event, but even more exciting was that we had more than one group of repeat participants. The pump car was pretty cool, as I'd seen it in cartoons and the like but never in real life. If you aren't sure what this is, it is the small car that sits on the railroad track with people on either end of the car and they pump the lever up and down to make the car move down the tracks. We held our race on a quiet track by the river that is used to bring coal into Tartu every three months or so. Everyone had a blast doing this, although the car was VERY heavy making it much harder work than people expected. The same team that won the photo contest won this race. These guys and girl were so friendly and seemed to really be enjoying all that Bear Week had to offer! See photos from the Railroad Pump Car Race.
Thursday's Competition: Drawing Competition. This was really fun and is apparently becoming pretty popular in Europe - or at least in Tartu. There were no rules about actually being able to draw, so we saw a pretty wide range of "artists" during the competition. The way it worked was the emcee would ask members of the crowd watching the competition to give theme ideas from which the "artists" had to draw a picture in the alloted amount of time. Themes included things like "Smurf on a Deserted Island", "Car of the Future", "Mermaid", "Karma", and the final theme "Student's True Thoughts on Geometry/Physics". The competition went in rounds, ending with three finalists in the last round. All of the finalists were very talented, though I believe the winner may have been an artist by trade. This was very fun to watch and brought on a lot of amazement (and laughter in a few cases) at the talent of the participants. See photos from the Drawing Contest.
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