We arrived in Bloem and our wonderful friend and driver, Adrian, took us over to the UFS campus for a meet-and-greet. The Oprah was not in attendance. As we entered the doorway, there was a table of shot glasses filled with sherry. The teams were incredibly friendly, outgoing and eager to know about the U.S. court and jury system. They found our explanations were confusing and complicated. We assured them that certainly this was the case.
I set my alarm to wake everybody up at 6:45am. When breakfast arrived at 7am, I realized my alarm was still set to Charlotte time. You’re welcome everybody.
Today was the first day of the competition. We were taken downtown Bloem to the High Court of Appeals. The architecture of the building much resembled that of a federal courthouse in the U.S. Large pillars, beautiful mahogany, high ceilings, and an extremely slippery marble floor.
Enter competition courtroom. We donned the robes and Abbey immediately assumed her role as the Honorable Abbey. We went against two teams, playing both sides, in front of three advocates / attorneys serving as judges. The judges were fair and objective. We were excited because they did not ask us to leave, tell us we were wrong, nor sit down and shut up. All in all, great success.
We waited for a few hours for the results, had lunch, and took a group photo on the steps of the courthouse. The results were in, and only five English speaking teams and one Afrikaan team would compete Saturday in the final rounds. There was a tie between two English-speaking teams and two Afrikaan-speaking teams who had to face off again that afternoon to determine their spot. Out of the four teams to automatically advance, we were one of them. It took all we had not to give each other high-fives in the gallery, so we chest-bumped, instead.
Tomorrow at 8:30am, we stand-off for our final round. This one’s for all the marbles.
