Museon Middle School Festival

For weeks now my school has been preparing for their Festival. And for weeks I had no real idea what this festival would entail, or my role (if any) in it. I had gotten tidbits from the students, "We play games, then sing in the afternoon". I had gotten tidbits from other teachers, "Just wait. It will blow your mind." Well, friends, while it didn't blow my mind it was certainly interesting. Here are ten things you need to know about Korean Festivals:

10. The students get to show off their art work. And some of it, let me tell you, was pretty amazing. I only took pictures of the pictures because they were the funniest. Candy will rot your teeth. Its universal. I have no idea but the art work is just plain awesome. Melamine=death, basically. The Koreans are super worried about Melamine and as a consequence, we get this picture warning us not to eat certain products. Again I don't know. I took it because there was a blonde person in the picture.

9. The games. The students were right. They play games and all types of games in the morning. I was roped into reading true/false questions and riddles (why riddles of all things??The kids had no idea because the co-teacher picked wicked hard ones). Then they have field day type activities. I watched a few. It would never work (but should) in America. This is Tug O War...but with no rope. Quite effective. This looks like Tug O War, but Crystal (my co-teacher) said it was called Motorcycle. Basically they hop around on one foot trying to knock the other team down. And Musical Chairs. But you can beat the girl/boy who wins, and I mean hit.

8. Lunch. We had Bi Bim Bab. Rice with veggies and some meat. You make it yourself. I left out fish, mushrooms, peppers, and kimchi. It was WONDERFUL.

7. Ahhh the Festival. This is where it gets fun. Every school has a talent contest for their students. My school was no exception. It went on for 5 hours. I only had to endure 2 thank god. Here are the highlights:

6. Costumes. They had a whole group of these kids dressed up in animal costumes. They made them dance to a kids song.

5. Wondergirls. If I hear one more "Nobody" or "I need your Love" I'm going to kill a Korean child. About 70% of the groups danced to these songs. All the same dance. Even the boys. The "Nobody" song and video are actually pretty good...but not 1,000 times. Yes I can do the dance too. (I'm trying to find out who sings "I need your Love.")

4. OMG. Inapproprate dancing. There are no pictures because I felt uncomforatable taking them. It is okay for 12-15 year olds to shake what their mama gave them in TIGHT mini skirts and dance like hookers. Fortunately, only 1 out of 30 acts can actually shake it like Beyonce, so watching the others weren't soo bad. But one was enough. My friends say that the belly dancers at their elementary school were pretty inappropriate as well. But its okay I guess in Korea.

3. Boys dressing up as girls and doing girl dancing. (Small problem...I tried to load a video of it, but it didn't work. Its 9:00 at night here now and I'm not going to fool around with it anymore...hopefully by the end of the week I'll get it up).

2.Ki Bi Bo (rock paper siccors) where the kids can actually hit each other off the head. No matter that they were using 'silly hammers'. Those kids were whacking each other. Hard. Oh and no teacher supervision either.

1. NO CLASSES! I didn't have to teach. Reason to celebrate right there!