May Madness

For May, my main school (and all Korean elementary schools) had what they call Sports Day. Hilariously enough, Sports Day apparently requires practice runs. This means I had the luxury of cancelled classes on Wednesday so the students could practice. I was excited because their Sports Day was Friday, and I'm at my second school on Fridays, so this was basically Sports Day minus the color coded wardrobes.

Some kind of chicken fight game, only they were grabbing hats and not knocking each other over.

Preparing for the chicken fight event. The boy in gray kneeling is named Namsu, he's in the fifth grade. His favorite pastime is coming up to me and claiming other students have hit him. ("Teacher, Donggeun, punchy!.... Teacher, Yeojin, punchy!") I need to translate, "I don't care" into Korean...

Doing this awesome jog in place pump up chant, akin to "We got spirit, yes we do, we got spirit, how bout you?!!"

One of my favorite third graders, Seon-oo. Though to be fair I think I love every single one of the third graders. They're little English-obsessed angels who learn super fast, sit up straight, never talk, and are excited over absolutely everything.

"Today let's play rock paper scissors!"

*Massive cheering*

"Today let's learn the eensy-weensy spider song!"

*Asah!!! (Korean "Yesss! Sweet!" kind of thing)*

"What day is it today?"

*ME ME ME ME ME MEMEMEMEMEMMEMEMEMMEMEM!! - cue groaning when only one person can answer*

School-wide tug of war. My fabulous third graders (with two fourth graders on the far right). Please note Gyeongmin in the solid yellow shirt... I'm convinced he is actually Grumpy the dwarf from Snow White. One day he wore suspenders and I almost died of cuteness.

Tug of war prep

Yun-mo, third grade. His face scrunches up like that when he's thinking really hard. I wish Yun-mo was my child. He's the only student from grades 3-6 who never forgets that "October 6th" is "sixth" and not "six."

Gon-hwi and Eun-sol, fifth grade. Gon-hwi is probably my smartest student in the whole school, and he's super helpful too because the other kids listen to him and he's attentive without being a brown-noser. Eun-sol is one of my remedial students, and he lives in the orphanage, but he does have parents. I've gotten to know him better because of the remedial class, and I adore him. He honestly might know the least English of all my fifth graders, but he's got a good heart and he tries so hard. They both got second in their obstacle course races, Gon-hwi informed me that their classmate won. "Kang-chan very fast!"

My coteacher on the left. Koreans fear the sun because being tan is "awful." One of my sixth grade girls once told me, "Teacher, your skin, so white! My skin, black!" (She happens to be fairly tan. A tan, I might add, I would like to liven up my pasty skin.) The student sprinting his little third grade heart out is one of my more advanced kids, Hwi-jun.

Spectators.

The little boy in the hat with his hand in his mouth is one of my favorite fourth graders, Keon.

Subin (blue) and Daejin (stripes). Two of my remedial, badly behaved fifth graders. I think most of their behavior problems stem from needing attention (he and Subin are both orphans). The other day Daejin about broke my heart when he came up after class and said, "Theresa Teacher.... today.... my... so happy! My go... Homeplus!" Yeong-a (my coteacher) had told me the orphans look forward to their Homeplus outings (it's like Target/Wal-Mart). I was so happy that he actually wanted me to know badly enough that he strung together an English sentence and came up to me during his break time.