Yay Field Day!

Today was Field Day, one of my favorite days of the school year! It's done at every elementary school in S. Korea this month! The kids all came to school in their PE uniforms and competed against each other in all types of field games and funny relays! Last year I posted pictures of Field Day, but this year I've decided to post some videos for you! (Thanks to Aaron for letting me borrow his handy dandy video cam!) It gives you a chance to feel like you were there with us!

In Korea, students don't recite the pledge of allegiance to a flag, instead, they sing their national anthem! Yep, every morning, after the announcements, 270 elementary students fill the halls with their adorable off key singing voices! It always makes me smile! Here they are singing the national anthem before the games began!

This was the 2nd grade race! The students raced with their moms in hand and were absolutely adorable! The kids start off blindfolded and the mom's have to tell them where to walk, then they throw their blindfold off and jump together, like frogs, then squeeze through hula hoops and then run to the finish line!

This was the 5th and 6th grade boys race! It's fairly self explanatory - and no one got hurt! AMAZING!

This was the 3rd grade race! They had to run 1/2 way around the track, jump through a hula hoop, do a sommersault (sp?) on these mats, and then run to the finish line! Believe it or not, no one got hurt this year!

This was the kindergarden race! Each kid sat in this cart while their moms or dads pulled them by a rope around a cone! The team to finish first won! Ahh, to be in kindergarden again! That was the life, wasn't it?!


This was the 3rd and 4th grade race! They had to run, in groups of 4, to the center, roll the dice, jump rope that many times, then run back and tag the next group of 4!

After that game, the 2nd graders came back out for another relay with their moms. My sweet student, Lily, was all alone out in the line (her mom couldn't come today) so I ran out, grabbed her hand and asked, "You and sun seng neim?" and she had the biggest smile and nodded yes! It made my day! We ran out to the middle of the field, hand in hand, rolled the dice, and hula hooped that many times! Lily rolled a 6! Good thing I know how to hula hoop just long enough to make it go 6 rounds! Whew! (Sorry, there's no video)

Taekwondo is extremely popular in Korea, and according to Aaron, it's the #1 sport in the country! Here are some of my students doing their Taekwondo routines! (Watch, at the end of this video, when the 2 boys come running from the back... Carlos (the 1st one) eats it, big time! OUCH!)

This game was for the moms! There were 2 teams of moms... At the "bang" of the gong, they all had to kick one of their shoes off! The team with the most shoes in the circle won! They tied 2 times in a row, so we decided to give prizes to all of them - laundry detergent! :)

This was a big crowd pleaser! A good ole' game of Tug of War between the 5th and 6th graders! (Notice they're all in order of height!)

Last but not least... This video is of the country-wide Warm-Up Routine! Ella said Koreans have been doing this warm up routine for close to 100 years and every Korean knows it! (It's almost 5 minutes long, so feel free to stop it when you've seen enough... I really just posted the entire thing for my own form of remembrance!) They do this at the beginning and end of field day, and before every PE class!

This is just a small glimpse into what field day is all about! There were lots of other games and relays, tons of parents and grandparents cheering on their kids from the sidelines, teachers racing (Yes, I was part of this!), yummy food, lots of smiles, and awesome gift bags for each kid at the end of the day, courtesy of the parents! Yes, every kid is a winner at Gamjung Elementary! There was a treat for the teachers too... We all had lunch together at a fancy restaurant in Jagalachi Fish Market (FREE!) and went home around 3:30pm! Oh, and I think it's worth mentioning that I have the day off tomorrow because of Children's Day! :) What a great week!