'THE OLYMPICS' in Belo Horizonte...we have been having a great, but exhausting week. It is a 5 day event crammed full of fun physical and mental challenges for 6 teams. The teams are named after the countries represented on the base. Dave is one of the leaders in the 'England' team and Beckie is helping lead 'United States'. Josiah and Gideon are also in teams, participating with the other children from the favela. The teams compete against each other for points and at the end they are awarded medals and other prizes for their achievements. Each team has it's own colour and on the last day, the children get to keep their t-shirts. The children are full of enthusiasm, and continue to shout their teams 'war cry' even on day 4! Lots of the activities have involved team work. One we particularly liked was 'Monkey families', where the team had to retrieve a banana from a tree without touching the ground near the tree. They were given a piece of rope to help them but that was all. It was really interesting to see how the groups reacted to the challenge, especially as only 20% of the points were given for getting the banana and the other 80% was for how the team worked together (or not!). Other events included football (of course), swimming-dressing-up races, obstacle courses, unusual relay races and lateral-thinking challenges.