The School Festival

On October 22nd my school had its annual festival.  Now, I wasn't exactly sure what to expect, but in the weeks leading up to the festival it became obvious that this festival is a BIG deal.  Apparently every school has its own festival every year--all the way from elementary school to high school.  These festivals are essentially a chance for the students to perform musical and dance numbers.

At my school, each boy class paired with a girl class to sing a traditional Korean song and an English pop song.  This was a competition between the classes, and let me tell you, they took this very seriously.  During the week or two leading up to the festival, I had canceled classes multiple times because they "needed to practice for the festival."

On the day of the festival, I arrived at the theater and the day began with a film festival.  In the weeks before the festival I had also heard a lot about the films that students were making.  Even though I couldn't understand what the students were saying in the movies, they were pretty awesome.  I could get the gist of the stories, even though I didn't understand a word of what was being said.  Most of the movies followed a similar idea--there was almost always someone in love with someone else....how surprising.  Ok, not really, but I truthfully enjoyed this part of the day.

Next was the song competition.  I was surprised by how well some of these students could sing.  Although, I'm not really sure WHY I was so surprised because singing is a big part of Korean culture--this is the country of noraebang, after all.  The students had told me so much about these songs, so it was awesome to finally see them perform.  I loved how into it they all were.  I tried to imagine trying to get my students in America to do this, and it made me laugh.  This is something that students would just NEVER do in America, but even the coolest kids in Korea took this really seriously.  Below are a few of the videos from the singing competition.

After the song competition we headed to lunch  During the lunch break we had little games for the students to play.  I was at the "Speed Quiz With Sarah" game, where students had different nouns they had to describe and they had to get me to correctly guess the noun through their descriptions.  If they got me to guess enough words, they got a prize. 

One thing that I've noticed about Korea is that they make banners for everything. I felt legit to have my name on this one.  

After lunch, we came back and the students did their other singing and dancing performance.  This part was LONG.  Tons of kids got up to sing songs, and again I was impressed by the singing abilities (do all Koreans sing well?)  I was especially surprised by how many boys got up and sang ballads.  Again, things that would never happen in America.  

There were also a lot of dance numbers.  These numbers were mostly all danced to K-pop songs, but I loved listening to the reactions of the students.  You would have thought that the actual K-pop artists were on the stage by the way that the girls would freak out during these numbers.  It was really quite entertaining.  

(sorry for all the videos...I can't figure out how to move/delete them now)

After they finished all the performances they announced the winners and then we had dinner.  After dinner, I came back to play the English games with the students again, then the kids all got ready for their evening performances.  

The evening performance contained many of the same performances from the day, but there were some new things as well.  This is the performance that many parents came to, so there were a lot more people there at that point.

The festival went until really late--I don't think I left until 10:30.  It was a really long day, but I was glad to see my students have some FUN and doing things artistic instead of just studying all day long like they usually do. These kids are smart, but some of them are also really talented, and it was awesome to see them in their element.  The students really love this day, and I'm glad they have at least something to look forward to.

 Of course, the whole school wasn't at the festival.  Third graders don't get to participate.  Why?  Because they have to study, of course.  

                                                                That's Korea for you.