Victory Time!

Just this past week, all of the kids at my school participated in our annual color war tradition. All of the students in the school are divided into four teams, all of which are a color. The colors were yellow, blue, red, and green. Most years, there is a theme that goes with it. This year’s theme was Marvel superheroes. I was on the yellow team, Thor. The tradition is all of the 8th Graders are the team captains.  We come up with the song and all of the cheers each team uses. It reminds me of the summer Olympics. Last Friday was the closing ceremony. For the closing ceremony, each team had to sing a song, deliver a speech, and present artwork. Each team creates a piece of artwork that reflects their experiences with education, previous color wars and how they put it all together to make it all happen. There are lots of games, too. I worked alongside four other co-captains. One of them gave a speech in English, another gave it in Spanish. I had the incredible honor to be the captain delivering the speech in Hebrew. When I completed it, the entire school gave me a standing ovation. Everything during the week of color war, including the speeches was worth points. My team was losing at first and the blue team was winning. All of our combined efforts gave us a boatload of points. We got enough points to surpass everyone and we were able to call ourselves the champions of Color War 2018.

Here is a surprising thing about me that I neglected to mention earlier. Every other year since Kindergarten I’ve dreaded the approach of color war. I used to hate it and asked my mom to pick me up early. The very worst day for me was the day of the closing ceremony, the day of the most competitions. This year, I was an 8th Grader so I was in charge and I had to embrace it. Oddly enough, I enjoyed it. Here is one thing that I learned from it. If you open yourself to something uncomfortable, it might turn out to be a fantastic experience.  Kudos to me and all of my co-captains!