Date: 11/12/2010
Picking up where I stopped off before my computer charger cord decided to go on the fitz (it only makes sense to be chronological about posting events--and boy do I have a lot to do this weekend!) (Yah for speedy delivery--thank you Apple Korea!): Oku School Festival.
Here is my school--I have finally made it!
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| Front Entrance (from the street view) |
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| The courtyard. To the right is the middle school and the high school is on the left. My classroom is on the first floor on the right. |
I immediately go to my English room--but the doors are locked. I knock on a teacher's office door and they guide me to the school's auditorium where the festival is being held. I walk in right as the Principal is giving out awards and officially starting off the ceremony!
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| I love how all the students stand at attention, in nice neat rows. It makes me laugh to think of an American school trying to pull this off--at least, I can't remember ever obeying any teachers telling me to be in a single file line with my homeroom class. |
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| The program for the festival. The far left is the morning's activities, middle is the list of the talent show, then the right is the front page. I thought the "school picture" was very interesting--see below: |
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| Okay: so the most important things about Oku MS: they have a good choir, a fun shaped building, and they're male students can make shapes while jumping in the air...??? Sure...let's go with that. |
This lead to a short "serious" music portion of the morning. Students played the piano, the choirs sang, and the clarinet/recorder choirs preformed. I kid you not about the recorder choirs--I didn't know you could actually get music, let along different sizes of recorders, to play--but they do things a little different here in Korea.
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| This girl had major skills. Below is a video of her song--listen to it! It's pretty freaking amazing! |
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| A mostly boys choir. Which was interesting because, in American, you run short on guys very quickly. I think this group only had 6 six girls and probably 3 times as many male singers. Which, would make me very confused as what to do if I was a music teacher and faced with this conundrum... |
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| The lovely commentators. They did a very good job. |
Which makes me want to point out the difference between a country school and city school. My city school hired a professional commentator to do their school festival. The country school--yah, these kids won by popular vote and teacher recommendations.
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| This is the recorder choir. The two girls on the first row on the right have "base recorders" (?). (?). I didn't snap a video of them, because while they were good, it sounded just like a bunch of weird flutes in semi-tune. |
After the performances were over, the whole middle school body played a game of T/F. I must admit, the whole middle school student body consists of maybe 150 kids. Which, in my city school, there are 9 classes (40 kids each) per grade (three grades). Differences differences...
The T/F game goes like this. The teacher asks a question, for example, the first question was, "Did Romeo kiss Juliette the first time they met?" In front of the room, there is a teacher holding an X sign and an O sign. (X=F and O=T---another Asian-ism). The students move to the side of the room that they think the answer is on. The teachers string a line up to indicate time for choosing is up and give answer. In this case: O! So, the kids who are on the WRONG side, lose and have to sit out. The kids who win, stay around to play another round. Keep going until you have only 1 player who = the WINNER! Just in case you're curious--I lost in the first round. I thought the first time Romeo kissed Ms J is during the Climb Up the Trellis scene.
Here are some pictures:
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