Day 109 -- School Festival Day 2

On Friday before the festival started again, I had a conversation with the principal that went something like this.

Principal: "Today askdfjaskd run?"
Lindsay: "Yes, today I will participate and run at the festival with the students!"
Principal: "Today alskfjasdlkj run."
Lindsay: "Um... yes?"
Principal: "Alkajgdslkfjsd soccer?"
Lindsay: "Oh, um, no, I can't play soccer well."
Principal: "Aasldkfjsadlk soccer."
Lindsay: "... yes?"

There, uh, there's a lot of Korean I don't understand, but I usually just say yes so that they stop repeating themselves needlessly. Really, no matter how many times you say that word I don't know, I still won't understand it.

Anyway, apparently this exchange was the principal setting me up to travel to Daejeon with two busloads of students. We were the away team cheering section as our school's girls' soccer team played in a championship tournament.

Our kids all sit patiently under the school's banner. Note the drums and balloon beaters. And bromance. Especially note the bromance.

In America, typical sports event snacks include hot dogs, popcorn, and cotton candy. In Korea, acceptable snacks for sports events include periwinkles--the snails you find in tidepool rocks--and bug pupae. This charming young class captain thought my reaction to boon-dae-ggi (bug pupae) was hilarious, and chewed me up some see-food pupae. Thanks.

These kids asked for a picture with me. About 75% of Koreans are total photo-hos. Note: that is not my hand around his waist, there's a third student kind of hiding behind us all.

Back at the school festival after the game, the teams were playing games to win points for their class. Here's the 2nd year internet commerce (?) students trying to get the most turns of the rope.

Overall, the festival was a whole lot of fun and I'm so happy I got the opportunity to get closer to my students. Being able to see them outside the classroom has really strengthened the bond I wanted to have with them. It's too hard to reach that closeness when you're restricted to a classroom, try as I might to make my lessons interactive and interesting, so the time I was able to spend just hanging out with them meant a lot to me. I'm so pumped for the spring semester festival!