Olympic Day Race

Today was "Olympic Day" here, and we went to see the festivities and watch Strider and Peter participate in the featured race.  From what we could piece together, this was a celebration based on the start of the Olympic torch's journey in the U.K., which began yesterday.  (Only 68 days until the London Olympics!)

During the "opening ceremony" today, the British ambassador presented the Moldovan representatives with a special flag and some other symbols, and then a man came on-stage carrying a real-looking Olympic torch!

After the ceremony, the torch led the crowd to the race starting point.

The race was 4 kilometers, going around a big circle of streets in the center of the city.  This was Strider's first official race (other than one he did for kids at Wingate a couple years ago), so it was pretty exciting!

Here's a little video clip in which I tried to capture the scene at the start of the race:

The other kids and I played in the park for just a few minutes, and then the racers were back!  Pete and Strider did great -- we were very proud of them.

And the man with the torch did great, too.

(I'm sorry these pictures are so poor... I'm using our Flip video camera because our regular camera broke and is at a repair shop at the moment.)