Sports Day

Sports Day consisted of warm up stretches, speeches in Korean, speeches in Korean, cheering and running, relay races, games, relay races, games, cheering, dancing, really races and speeches in Korean. Oh, and the teachers all were a uniform and the kids all wear white. The kids are then tagged with either yellow or blue to designate which team they are on.

Finish Line!

Tug of War!

This is Teacher Kim. She acts as out co-teacher and English speaking connection!! She has been absolutely wonderful to us. She usually teaches at a Guendeok branch school but the branch school joined us for sports day!

Chicken fighting. Falling. Like what we weren't supposed to do in the pool when we were kids. The do it on the ground as part of school.


Aerobics. . . what we would call organized dance party for minors. We practiced the dance with them. Pretty fun. We'll show you when we get back. At my other school, Jang Ho, the students wore spandex midriff and back exposing, bell bottoms, corp tops and halter-mini dresses. Electric green and yellow with kelly green ruffles. Whoa Nellie.

Dress the little guys in clown outfits for their relay race!

Not only the kids do relay races. The parents are major participants in Sports Day. Sometimes they are competing alongside the children, other times against each other. My favorite of the parents vs. parents games is the one bellow.


1. Inflate balloons.
2. Place filled balloon into a huge trash bag.

3. Compare balloon-stuffed trash bag height.

4. Relay race with the balloon-stuffed trash bags.

For sports day Chad and I were assigned to stamp the kids 1st, 2nd, or 3rd when they cross the finish line. Then we made them sit down in their respective line and wait to be escorted back to the holding area for the children. It was a fun way to get LOTS of high-fives in.

During one of my stamp and squat sessions teacher Kim (our English speaking guide) ran over to me, dragged me over to a line-up of mothers with their children and stuck me in a mother place. She told me "You are his mother," and ran off. No direction, just go with the Korean flow, Kate. The first kid I was mother to was not happy to be stuck with the tall white woman as his Mom, the second held my hand and my third child was incredibly cold and then told me "Good job!" in English when I caught the ball on our turn.

This kid is the only one that held my hand as I played surrogate Mom.

After I acted as Sports Day Guardian to a few children Chad got to play Mom too. The teachers thought he looked sad because he didn't get to play. :)

He caught it!

Waiting for out turn.

We had to squat the whole time. They constantly squat for EVERYTHING! Have we mentioned that? Western knees don't work that way.

We won!!

Our VP is the little guys in the blue baseball cap. He is pouring beer for everyone at lunch. The lunch that preceded the noontime beer drinking consisted of lavish sea things. . .Raw? Not sure.

Have fun? We did!

K