SPRINGDALE -- Brittny Kelly of Elsmere struggled to think of something to say about Hungary.
"They don't have YMCAs that I'm aware of," she finally said. Brittny, 11, was one of nearly 3,000 children at the eighth annual YMCA World Games on Wednesday at G.E. Park on Princeton Pike.
It was a chance for diverse cultures within Greater Cincinnati and around the world to mix in a sports festival.
Children like Brittny, who goes to Willard Wade YMCA Family Branch in Covington, played with children from the Clermont County branch in Williamsburg Township; while members of the West End branch on Ezzard Charles Drive spent time with children from M.E. Lyons in Anderson Township.
"You get to meet more people and see people you've never seen," said Brandi Scott, 10, a West End Y member from College Hill. "You become friends with some of them."
Trish Kitchell, of the Tri-City branch in Florence and World Games chairwoman, said children ages 5-12 from 21 branches in Southwest Ohio, Northern Kentucky and Southeast Indiana participated. "The goal is to let the kids have a good time without being competitive," Ms. Kitchell said. "They're all winners."
But Brittny was more into the competition.
"We don't want to talk to them because we're competing," she said after her team and others tried to throw hundreds of plastic balls across a tennis net into another team's side of the court. Each branch chose a country and had been studying some of its culture. Wednesday, the children and volunteer counselors marched to an opening ceremony, played games and received ribbons at the end of the day.
Kevin Ollerdisse, 12, of Loveland, was there with the Northeast branch contingent. He studied Sweden, and he had plenty to say about his adopted country.
"I know the capital is Stockholm," he said. "They have good sausages. It's in Europe, next to Norway."
Some of the games, like "Find the Peanut in the Flour," were messy. There, children had to use their noses to root out the peanut and grab it with their teeth.
It left Christ Child Day Nursery members Nalina Givens and Maurisa Nelson of Over-the-Rhine spitting flour and nearly coming to tears. "This stuff stinks," said Nalina, 7, in the middle of her turn in the powder.
Said 8-year-old Maurisa: "I thought it was going to be nasty. It was nasty."
Ekaterina Litvintseva, a 20-year-old counselor at the Richard E. Lindner branch in Norwood, was farthest from home. She hails from Krasnoyarsk, Russia, and she said the Tristate is very different from her Siberian home.
"I'm used to having people all around me," she said. "Most people in Russia live in apartments. Here, I live in a house. Here, it's peaceful. I hear birds singing."
By the end of the day, Brittny decided Hungary might be a neat place to visit.
"It would be an interesting place to learn new things," she said.
