11^th November 2004

By Zoe Clements

The World Gymnaestrada

On the 19^th July - 27^th July 2003, Vivien, Claire, Katrina and I went to Lisbon, Portugal to participate with the Great Britain team in the World Gymnaestrada. ‘Team 2003’ was our team name. It was hard for our Team 2003 managers to get the whole team together for practices before the event, so our first practice with everyone there, was when we were in Lisbon.

Vivien, Claire, Katrina and I went down to Leeds for a practice with some of the other clubs doing the gymnaestrada. We travelled by train and I stayed with Jess for one night who was from the City of Leeds gymnastics club. She was 12 years old and her family was very kind while I was staying with them. Jess told me that she trained 15 hours a week at gymnastics and I realised she could do many more gymnastics moves than me and that most of her life was taken up doing gymnastics.

On the 19^th July the day finally came when I was going to Lisbon which I had been looking forward to for the last few months. I got up early in the morning and got changed in to my blue and white Great Britain tracksuit. I was also given a white cap, a water bottle, 2 bags, 3 t-shirts and 2 polo shirts from the Great Britain organisation. We picked up Vivien at her house and met Claire and Katrina at Edinburgh airport. We then took the plane to Heathrow airport and met up with the rest of the Great Britain team there. Then, altogether we got the plane to Lisbon. We then travelled in a Taxi to a Lisbon school called Casa Pia de Lisboa.

Some of Team 2003 stayed at different schools in order to fit us all in to the classrooms. I was surprised by the schools neatness when I arrived because there was no graffiti or long corridors which I would identify with my school, in fact it didn’t look like a school at all! On the first night in staying at the school I found it quite uncomfortable sleeping on the solid floor and I think everyone did too. I didn’t get much sleep that night because I was too excited and I wasn’t used to going to bed so early. Although, I finally paid for my lack of sleep in the morning when I had to get up at 6am the next day. We had breakfast in the cafeteria and then took the train to the Expo arena where the opening ceremony took place.

The opening gymnastics display from Portugal was very interesting because they used large letter blocks and rolled them around to create different words, although it was in Portuguese. After watching them perform it made me really eager to do our display and I was really looking forward to it. When it came to performing ourselves I put on my orange leotard with orange trousers for the display. The team was arranged in different colours of green, yellow and orange. Vivien, Katrina, Claire and I were all the same colour and we all had pom-poms to go with our outfit.

Our time in Lisbon was spent mostly doing our performance, or practising for our performance. We had one day off from doing our display on the Wednesday but Claire, Katrina and I had a performance in a Lisbon shopping mall to do so we had to get up early in the morning again. The shopping mall we were in felt so grand compared to other shopping centres over here. It had circular balconies and tall palm trees surrounding the floor area. When we arrived we watched the other displays from the different clubs that were on. We then performed our own routine and we got a round of applause afterwards.

There were lots of things that I really liked about Lisbon. One of them being the lovely weather over there, where you could regularly wear shorts and t-shirts all day. I also liked the tall buildings either side of the narrow streets and where there were not many cars driving about. It was just so peaceful and bright. One night in Lisbon we went to the Switzerland performance which fascinated me and yet entertained me at the same time.

When I was in Lisbon I swapped some of my Scottish theme gifts with people from other countries. My exchanges included a Canadian toy moose and Canadian flag badge. I also received Japanese and Chinese badges as well. From an Australian girl I got a soft toy koala bear and was given an Austria top from a young girl. My last exchanges were a Greek key ring and an American medal.

On this trip I experienced new things such as having a go on the Rhonrad wheel, stayed overnight in a Portuguese school, went on the Metro, (many times)I learnt a couple of words in Portuguese and best of all- I participated in the 12^th World Gymnaestrada 2oo3!