Happy School Festival!

The Korean high school experience is incredibly demanding and stressful.  The students' lives wholly revolve around studying for 수능 (Su-neung), the national college scholastic ability test.  Korean high schoolers typically stay at school until 10 or 11pm every night and also have classes on two Saturdays every month.  Therefore, nothing makes Korean students more excited than a special school-wide event or national holiday.  Luckily for them (and me!), they had both to celebrate last week. 

Friday, September 9th was the Dunsan Girls' High School's annual Fall Festival.  In the morning, club classes presented exhibitions to show what they've been working on; for example, the photography class lined the first-floor hallways with black-and-white prints and the art club displayed some impressive portraits in the school's courtyard.  In addition, many student organizations, including the English Cafe, cooked and sold food at very reasonable prices.  That morning, I went down to help English Cafe members prepare the food but, as expected, my girls had it all under control.  The menu consisted of chicken nuggets, ice cream, corn cheese (a little odd, but whatevs), cheesecake, and ice tea.

Delicious NOMS!

Hard at work

Costco cheesecake

Chicken nuggets!

Cheesy mayo corn mixture

The students were so dedicated to the cause.  They cut out letters out of sticker paper and stuck them on each others' backs to identify English Cafe members.  Of course, they made a set for me to wear, too! ^_^  We started cooking around 9:00am and had about a half-hour to prep before students would arrive.  As soon as the clock struck 9:30am, swarms of screaming girls came running down the hallway at full-speed to purchase their beloved nuggets.  It reminded me of Walmart on Black Friday morning, except no one (to the best of my knowledge) got trampled and everyone waited patiently in line for their turn.  Kindly note how adorable my students are... But I swear, if the students didn't have to wear uniforms every day, it'd be rather easy to mistake me for one of them! (o_O)

English Cafe members

*^^*

My students are the sweetest!

Loooong line to get food

Adorable magnets made by the Art Club

♥♥♥

In the afternoon, the entire school was bused to nearby Chungnam National University for the Talent Show.  Over 2000 students and faculty members sat in their gigantic auditorium to watch the performances.  It was a four-hour event.  Seriously, FOUR HOURS of dancing, skits, and a lot more dancing.  Koreans are undoutedly the most disciplined people I have ever met.  The show was entirely student-run and many of homerooms had all 40+ students perform a routine with complicated choreography in perfect unison.  I had never seen anything like it.  Here are some photos and videos of the performances.

The performances were so entertaining.  Some even got teachers to dance with them!  I was also surprised to hear so many popular American songs; one group even memorized several of Beyonce's music videos and danced to a medley of her songs!  Probably the most hilarious performance was one, in which students created huge cut-outs of teachers' faces and wore them, while they crazily gyrated and wiggled across the stage.  I, as well as everyone in the audience, could not stop laughing.  Secretly, I wished that they made one of my face, too!  Oh and they also hung ridiculous posters around the school with teachers' and administrators' faces superimposed on them.  Here is one of my favorites.

TEACHERS! XD

The fake and real dreamy math teacher

Teletubbies!

In conclusion, 1) my school is awesome; 2) my students are seriously talented; and 3) this was one of the best days I've had in Korea thus far.  My current goal is to learn the choreography to some Korean music videos and perform for classes with good behavior!  I love my job :D