After much excitement, preparation and fan fair, it was finally game time. The night before the competition we had a large group dinner where we were greeted by the organizers, the other teams, feasted on a fantastic meal and Mor Mor and Far Far got their groove on. Part of the requirements for the participants was to make a slideshow to share a bit about where you are from and why your team came to this competition. We were the only multigenerational team, with both a grandpa and granddaughter and we were counting on years of berry picking to pull us through.

On game day, we had breakfast and got the final announcements and headed up to the olive picking field at the local church grove. Part of the community tradition is anyone can pick the olives from the church, you just need to give back 15%. This competition was held on their beautiful grounds, and it made for a spectacular place to host the days' events.

Part of this year's competition was that each team got to choose their trees to harvest. After a quick look around, the teams were set up as a relay race to mark the trees they would use. I loved seeing Lily, feet shorter, but no less determined, sprint off ahead of these other teams to score the first tree.

When picking time came, it was intense. Everything else faded away beside the olives directly in front of you. The other teams, our own team, even the rest of the tree was a blur and hands raced for the next set of green, purple and black. The event was set up as traditional hand picking, so the olives had to go from your hand into the apron with no assistance and nothing underneath to collect the fallen olives. As I was still working on our first tree and part of the team had recently moved to tree two they announced Slovenia had requested a fourth tree! I couldn’t imagine going any faster, but clearly, we were up against the best.

The whole competition was only 45 minutes of picking, and then a strict stop, just olives in your bucket, not the apron would be counted. As the buckets were lined up, everyone started to size each other up, three teams had three buckets, the rest of us had two, but we would have to wait a day for the final results.

The last part of the competition was a test about olives and olive oil. We were still in race mode and raced through the test. As we turned it in and our answers were reviewed, it was the first time I really paused and reflected. As we sat together under the shade of an ancient olive tree - I was amazed at how we had become a team; a team that knew the pH of extra virgin oil and the differences in weighs between green and black olives. It made me so grateful for this world schooling experience. Win or lose, we had learned a tremendous amount.