a new month, a new post

So this past weekend was wonderful!
My Friday was a great start. I went to this cute tiny little bar with my couchsurfing friends and saw an equally cute band play! (and when I say small bar, I mean small.. like for those of you who have ever been or seen my house in Cambridge, imagine my living room and dining room... it was smaller than that!) They were WONDERFUL though, and even the size of the bar didn't seem to cause any hostility with everyone shoulder to shoulder... everyone just danced! They had drums, a guitar, a saxophone.... I don't remember the rest... probably a bass. The mood at this bar was so good... everyone was dancing, and the music was upbeat... at one point they even sang the song "No Woman, No Cry..." These are the days that I wish I had a working camera and I could post a video... I promise soon! They even sang the song "What a Wonderful World!" The band was a Korean band too.. it was nice to hear them sing a few songs in English!
I made friends with this group of guys standing and dancing behind me, they were Korean and didn't know a lot of English, but had a bongo drum and liked to dance haha! It was fun! It was really interesting to see one of the guys with the drum have a large tattoo on his neck... that is a very visible area, and here in Korea it is really frowned against to get tattoo's, but mostly frowned upon by the older generations... young people are starting to get them and you see them more and more...
I didn't drink that night, but ended up making it a late night anyways... not always a good thing when you have to wake up super early to plan for sports day! I went to bed around 2am, and I had to be at sports day bright and cheer eyed for 9am. You better believe I was bright eyed regardless of my sleep! Sports day has been, hands down, my MOST favourite experience with my school. Hands down.
I will give you a little low down. We got there early to set up and we see a sound system set up with a MC... and it is at this elementary school with a cute little track.
All the teachers lined up along with four other YBM schools at different tables, and we were expected to run up and cheer loudly and greet our students. We all wore matching long sleeve blue golf shirts, because we were the blue team, then we had to give our students wrist sweat bands. Then, give them name tags for them and their family members. This was a whole family event... Mothers, Fathers, siblings, Grandparents!
Once everyone had arrived, we lined the students up breaking them up into their own schools, then their own classes. We had a cheering competition between all the schools... I accidentally cheered for the wrong team... yes... in front of all the teachers... oops. But in the end, my school totally won! Once we did that, we did a grand entrance and watched as a family ran around the track together holding a torch while corny very Olympic style music played! It was pretty entertaining! Once that happened all the teachers went to the front and all the parents stood behind the lines of kids, and we did our wiggy waggy dance. This was seriously humiliating! haha The dance was too funny... of course I danced it really silly to make my kids laugh... mostly because it was too hard to memorize for me! Then once the warm up dance happened we started our games.
I can't really remember the order of the games, but I will most some as I remember them.
We had your regular tug of war, and relay races, which we all won! :) My school was great! However, we also got the parents involved. Mostly the fathers. Here in Korea, and especially at my school since all my kindergarten kids are rich, they never see their family... so sports days happen at all their schools, even public ones, and the Fathers are always heavily involved.
They had one event where all the fathers sat in a circle with their backs facing inside the circle, and the mothers had to run to the opposing team and try to break up their arm grips to each other... it was too funny to see all these women pulling on these men even dragged them out by their feet!
We also had an event where we had to blow up enough balloons to fill a huge plastic bags... like 12 feet tall bag... so once the bag was able to stand upright because there were so many balloons inside, we had to pull them all out and the kids got to stand on them and break them... man they loved that! Imagine getting to pop all those balloons?
Another event had a HUGE blown up ball, I would say like 7 feet tall. Kids and their families had to push this ball around a pylon and back... it was funny to see these little kinder kids trying to help push this massive ball... my most hyperactive kid ended up pushing her ball almost all the way to other team rather then coming back... it was cute.
All the foreign teachers had to line up and do limbo... you would think I would have been good at this... not so much. I was among the worst. I thought yes... my height will help with something... nope.
Another event the fathers held up a cloth banner and all the kids were able to run across it.
The Grandparents had an event of their own, they played corny music, but that had also been happening all day with the MC, they had to run to a pylon and then do a silly dance and run back. It was so funny.
The funniest event was when the fathers lined up, and had to put on a skirt, take off their pants, do a flip on the ground, run around a pylon, back to the line, take off the skirt and put back on their pants and pass the skirt to the next father... it was really funny to see these grown men in skirts running around in their underwear! haha
We ended the day (which made me a little sad... man I am such a hippy sometimes) by handing out 2 helium balloons to each child.. they had to make a wish and send it off into the sky. The whole time I thought... what about the poor birds?! Not to mention the environment! Think... we have 7 classes of 10 students.. and there was another large size school there, and three small ones.

Well.. there is more I want to write... so I will continue this at a later date.. I must get to work!! I have to teach a class in 5 minutes!