Sonny, the Cumbia-Dancing Shark

A couple weeks ago I blogged about a dancing shark. Willy the shark is the mascot for Barranquilla’s soccer team, Junior. Our school is sending a team of high school kids… somewhere… to compete in…. something… I’m not really sure. But anyways, our director decided that it was time for the school to officially choose a mascot. And so it was put to a vote.

The choices were-

a dolphin,

a bull,

or….

a shark!

Guess which one won! Our new mascot is Sonny the Shark. His favorite music is Reggaeton, although he loves to dance the cumbia. He wears a hat and has a Caribbean flair.
It’s so funny. The whole idea of this cracks me up. But at the same time today was such a perfect example of the entertaining, enjoyable things I love about Colombia and the frustrations that I don’t love so much.
This week was last week in the trimester and the students had 6 different trimester exams, each accounting for 20% of their grade. Definitely a stressful week. We had half days which I was very appreciative of considering that teachers had their final grades due at the end of the week too. Basically students come to school, take a trimester exam, have recess, class for about an hour and a half, and then go home.
With this in mind I was surprised to read my e-mail Thursday night and discover that there would be an assembly to unveil the new mascot first thing in the morning. The e-mail courteously explained that the whole school would all go to the assembly which would take about a half hour and then return to take exams.
Although this seemed like really bad timing to me, I literally had my kids half way out the door and down the hall, when a student ran up to me and told me that the assembly had been re-scheduled for later. At recess I asked what time the assembly would be, and was told it would be right after recess at 9:25. Fifteen minutes later, I was told the assembly was moved to 10:30. About 10:20 a janitor came into my room and told me that the assembly was starting right at that moment. (This is kind of an on-going joke because there are so many last minute assemblies, and then changes to the last minute assemblies- check out Elizabeth’s blog) I had my students finish cleaning and getting ready to go and then we arrived late at the assembly.
Anyways, did I love the idea of Sonny, the Cumbia-Dancing Shark? Yes- it’s really funny! And kids were excited about it. It was fun. It would have been more fun if they assembly had just been scheduled at 10:30 to begin with, and then had actually begun at 10:30.