Sports Day in Jangan Elementary

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Every year my school has a sports day, which all students and their families attend. It's a big community occasion in which everyone participates. For the previous two weeks the students practiced for the different events, and in the week before we all cut classes for a final run through! I had my role too - holding the ribbon (springy bandage) at the end for the races, and participating in the teachers versus parents relay race!

It was a beautiful Saturday morning and the school was draped in bunting. Tables and chairs were set up for our visiting dignitaries (local mayor and politicians) and families were gathering on rugs under the trees with breakfast hampers. We kicked off events around 9am with speeches, singing the National Anthem and school song. Then the games began! All (84) students were put into two teams - white and blue for the different events, as well as some individual races.

First was individual sprint races for each grade, including the kindergarten children (who were adorable running as fast as their tiny legs would take them!). Then they had one of the randomest events I've ever seen. They brought out cardboard balls on top of sticks, held up by two teachers. Then they spread beanbags on the ground around the sticks. Each team (white and blue) had to try and break their ball open first by throwing the beanbags, releasing a stream of banners and confetti. Much more entertaining than the egg and spon race we had at home! Then the younger children ran a race against the opposite team which involved pushing a large ball around a course and bringing it back to the next group in their team, the last groups raced to push the ball back to the start of the line. For some reason this neccitated the wearing of pink fluffy pointed hats.

Afterwards there was an obstacle race. For the younger ones, this meant running across beakers and crawling into a tube before emerging and running for the line. For the older ones, this meant hurdles, skipping through a hula hoop, before having to sit on and burst a balloon before making it to the finishing line. Then they finished up with a relay activity where groups from the same team had to take it in turns to throw a giant dice and complete whatever activity it showed up - skipping, throwing a ball back and forth etc.

Then it was time for the parents to get involved. First up was a "parents pulling their kindergarten children around a course in a basin" race. The kids were obviously delighted, especially when they nearly got tipped out on the corners by the more competitive parents. The 4th grade homeroom teacher got the biggest cheer as he raced with his daughter in the basin. We also had a parents sprint race, and at the end the men got toothpaste as a reward and the women got a box of soap. Then it was my turn. Teachers lined up versus the parents for the relay race all banter and friendly rivalry. We had been told to throw the race away beforehand but we kept it a close one! The parents won but we all got given four boxes of soap as compensation.

Easily the funniest race was the adjumma race. Two teams of eight grandparents lined up for this one. A large barrel was brought out for each team and a small child was out inside the barrel, which was then filled with plastic bags full of goodies. The objective was that each adjumma had to run to the barrel with a net, the small child would place a bag inside it and the had to run back to pass the net over to the next person. The team that finished first got points for the white/blue team. It was brilliant!!

There was a lot of music and dance featured too. We had some 1st and 2nd graders dressed up performing a bellydance (not concerns about over-sexualisation of children here), kindergarten - 3rd graders dressed up in something that vaguely looked like a matadors outfit (but had a belly top) performing another dance, and 4th-6th graders in different outfits performing on traditional drums. We finished with a whole school synchronised dance to "Dokdo is our land", which is about the Japanese/Korean argument over the island of Dokdo.

Events finished with a whole school skipping competition and tug-of-war. Everybody managed to win something in the prize giving ceremony after. When we'd finished tidying up, all the teachers went out for lunch together. We went to a place near Ilgwang beach for some "steamed angler fish". I immediately saw how things work in our school, the menfolk had arrived first and ordered themselves some Makkoli (thick milky rice-based alcohol). The women got sprite! Fortunately I was allowed a small cup of Makkoli too!The meal was nice enough, at least it was cooked! The fish was weird with some strange 'feelers' coming out of it, and a lot of squidgy grey matter, so after eating as much meat as I could, I just focused on eating the beansprouts which were in some kind of liquorice sauce. Another random day in Korea!

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