AON Maadi Cup

The long-awaited, much prepared for national school rowing championship has started! Today, at 7:30am, Jeremie was on one of the first races, competing with rowers from more than 100 schools in New Zealand. The girls and I got up real early. Leilani was brought to friends who could later take her to school (she'll be on an Art Camp all week), Kylie was taken straight from her bed to the carseat, and off we went - at 6:00am. Nathalie took off school for the day, since she really wanted to see Jeremie race - at least once! I really enjoyed the atmosphere and the races! Rowing is a pretty graceful sport - although VERY competitive! Jeremie's teams did fine, although I'm not sure they're gonna win a gold medal, but that's fine with me :)! Here are some photos of the day. The first one was taken right after the start of the 2km race (couldn't take photos at the end, because it was too far). The second and third were after a race during debrief. You can see Jeremie with his 3 team-mates, his coach and their coxen, a light girl directing the boat, since they are rowing backwards. They are completely wiped out after every race, breathing heavily, even five minutes after the end. We brought Jeremie his favorite food in between races: some left-over Tahitian "Poisson Cru" (raw fish salad). Fish is on sale at the moment, and so I made some yesterday (very rare occurence) Anything to cheer the boy up :) I'll be back there on Wednesday for the next race and we'll see if he makes it into any finals later on in the week.