Toward the end of the school year, every school in Korea puts on a school "festival". I don't know why they call it a festival - there is no common theme or one particular thing celebrated. It is more like a talent show or assembly where each class prepares a short play, song, or dance. This festival is quite a big to do though and every class rents costumes and the school prints big signs for it and has a background scene printed too.
These were the costumes for the MCs of the festival --- almost like bride and groom attire for kids!
The cutest performances of course were done by the youngest kids wearing incredible costumes and doing dance moves that they probably shouldn't have seen anywhere at there age!
Check out the leopard print hearts on the butts of these boys! I don't know what Koreans are thinking sometimes! - it is perfectly acceptable that five first grade students wear this and perform a routine to some boy band love song. Oh, and just so you get a complete idea of the look they had, the front was bare-chested.
The strangest thing about the festival was that although it showcased the students' talent for playing instruments, doing taekwondo and dancing, there was no singing at all and even the play was recorded on CD rather than spoken live. The playing of instruments was real though, and the drums were most impressive!
I of course wasn't asked to get involved at all and had no idea until the day before the festival that it actually existed. I was happy to see that the grade four class chose some English songs for their performance, but disappointed that they didn't sing. The songs are from the textbook and CD that are used in class and the students know all the words. it doesn't make sense that they would dance and not sing, but nothing ever does make sense in Korea! They are the actual songs that are part of the curriculum for grade 4 English ---it is so embarrassing that this is what I have to teach!
This video is especially for Drew and Denver --- new songs for you to learn and to sing around the house!
(Finally got it to work!!!)
There isn't much more I can say about the festival... just have a look at all the crazy costumes and check out the videos!
This was a grade 3 performance that was done by all the girls in the class, but i guess they were 1 girl short and this poor boy had to fill in with a wig!
I have a great story about this kindergarten kid front left... I thought HE was a SHE for the first month of school and it wasn't until we were doing the letter B and words that begin with B that I found out otherwise. I kept pointing to two students in the class saying "boy" and "girl". "Boy starts with the letter B". I pointed to him several times making the comparison between her and the boy next to him. He got all upset a kept saying something in Korean that I didn't understand and finally the teacher explained that "she" was a he!
Here the poor kid has to wear lipstick and pantyhose and as if that weren't bad enough, they told him to pull them up as high as they would go to hold his big belly in!
Above, notice the "slippers" that all the k-3 students wear. Blue for boys and pink for girls. If only I had noticed the slippers before I started pointing out all the boys in the class!!!
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