An American in Geoje: Seong Po Festival

Seong Po, my main middle school celebrated their school festival this past Thursday. As I have been with my past school festivals, I was impressed with the student's creativity and community. They set aside this old conference room as an art gallery. It really blew me away. The students were amazing artists. The students made these mock-lanterns and hung them throughout the halls.

From Seong Po Fest...

I worked with my co-teacher on an English game. Students came and were "drilled" for 12 questions. I scored them on whether or not they understood the question and gave an appropriate answer. For example, "Are you a girl?" "Do you live in an apartment or a house." We were overwhelmed with the number of students that came to participate. There were many more fun activities (at least I thought so) yet we had to turn students away because we were going over our time allotment.

Outside, the students were playing various games. One game, which I was immediately sucked into was a tug-o-war like game. Two students faced each other. Each wrapped a rope around his back, holding it with his opposite hand. Once the game started, the goal was to make the other person lose their balance. If you pulled to hard, the student could slacken up, causing you to go backwards. If you were too lose, then the opposite person could pull you froward, or you could let go of the rope. In the picture below, the student on the right was the grand champion, defeating everyone that came before him.

Finally, the grand moment of every school festival is the school talent show. Each class prepared a pop song that they sang and danced to on stage. Then there were individual groups and performers. My elective English students performed Shel Silverstein's "Ickle me, Pickle me, Tickle me too." Today, I had many other students come to me and try to say, "Ickle me, Pickle me, Tickle me too" fast. Few succeeded. The picture below are some of my second graders performing their pop song.