Assemblies

We had an assembly yesterday it was extremely informative! The children all lined up in perfect rows on the soccer pitch in front of the school. Once they were all in place the teachers all lined up in a row about 20 feet in front of them. One of my co-workers grabbed the mike, stood up on the raised platform above the heads of stock-still students and began barking orders. His voice echoing off the walls of the nearby apartment building was bombarding my ears with static noise, but the result of this static was astounding! The students in varying orders (think squadrons) were squatting down and then standing up shouting "Samgye! Junehakyo!" Then the next squadron would squat, "Samgye!" then stand "Junehakyo!" and so on and so forth. I think the funniest part of this particular scene is that "Samgye! Junehakyo!" means "Samgye (my town) Middle School!" so the students are squatting and standing to the chant of their middle school. Once all the squadrons had been ordered, squat, and stood, the children, in one grand block, marched forward a few steps, turned around and marched back a few steps. This shouldn't be reminiscent of Hitler's army of perfect Arians but rather a sea of black bobs and white skater shoes scuffling about in the dirt. Talk about discipline! I think that if my teachers had asked me to do this when I was a middle school student I would have keeled over laughing!! They finally stopped marching and with a last resounding boom they all adopted a stand still parade stance and locked their hands behind their backand  the principle began to speak. The rest of the assemlby was normal by American standards and since I didn't understand a word of it a mute point but for several minutes I was still struggling to tuck my smile into my appropriate pants and act like an adult.

Tomorrow my students and I are going on a field trip! We are going to a park and then to the movies. I have never heard of a field trip quite like this one so i'm pretty excited to see what this is all about and hopefully i'll get an opportunity to relate to them on a more personal level!

Anyeong!