Besides December - when the big event of the month is Christmas - there seems to be an outing for the school within the first or second week of each month for the fall. In October, this was the Seoul Festival.
A small handful of parents came to help. The teachers made sure all the kids and themselves went to the bathrooms before everyone piled into a presumably rented bus for a three hour long ride. During this time, I was speaking to the person who I thought of an amusing fellow teacher who speaks broken English and Mandarin, Mr. Se, and the librarian. The librarian Mrs. Lee needed his help to translate what she was trying to say to me. They reassure me that they are on my side, said they wanted to be friends, and that they are rooting for me. I am grateful. It occurs to me once again that these are the barriers that language can present when everyone is not versed in the same one.
This is what it is like to in essence be born again in another country. This is what my parents went through when they immigrated to America - until a reliable relative introduced them to Chinatown, where they can ask around about everything in the native tongue.
When everyone was let out of the bus, we went through a small labyrinth of a park where many men in dark suits stood. "They're the president's guard," Mrs. Lee explained. We never saw the president. Instead, the kids went with their respective homeroom teachers to the portion of the festival named Safe Seoul, where policeman, firemen and other public service agents presented the benefits of safety in a fun and cutesy manner. There were maybe up to fifty tents spread out sporadically over a large flat baseball stadium sized area. Mascots included The Mask, two man sized pink and blue inflatable pigs, a guy in a robot suit with stilts inside, among others. After taking pictures with their classmates and teachers, the kids were led around to the booths.
The medical booth consisted of CPR dummies with an explanation of what someone should do if another person is unconscious. The firemen had a truck instead of a booth, wherein the kids climbed the ladder onto a type of water slide, and slid down. The street safety had a drawing of the crosswalk, where a traffic cop talked about the walk and stop signs. There was also an alarm booth, where kids distinguised between fire alarms, carbon monoxide alarms, and the emergency evacuation alarms. A guy in a wetsuit pretended to be drowning in a tub while the kids were supposed to toss him a lifesaver. This was a lot to organize, and it was very impressive.
Lunch was a picnic with many korean styled sushis, with spiced vegetables as a side dish, and chopped up fruit.
Next were the schools' presentation booths, sectioned off in another area. As my school is an elementary school, the kids mainly looked at middle schools as their next step, though we saw many middle schoolers looking at high schools as well. Most of the middle and high schoolers were taller than me, so I felt a bit stunted. Here were the activities that elementary school prepared for kids from all the schools. Our school had a soap making table, whereas some of the other schools had projects with plaster models of the islands around the area, lip balm making, handbag decorating, and a ball made of plastic packing strips.
After this moderately tiring activity - you try running after students when they're excited about something - there was either free time, or we could follow the first grade teacher, who led us around in the museum part of the Korean Broadcasting Station. The exhibits separated by different genres and age group, so the basement was about how technology for cameras, tv, and microphones advanced over time. Then the next floor was about cartoons, the next was about live action kiddy shows, up until the final floor, which was about dramas set in the traditional ages and classics.
This was the last event of the day, after which time, we were all packed onto the bus and driven back to the school. A teacher made a small fuss over the kids putting their snack trash in the backyard/gym area, but since they told me not to worry about cleaning up, I went back to my dorm/apartment and disappeared for the rest of the day.
A small handful of parents came to help. The teachers made sure all the kids and themselves went to the bathrooms before everyone piled into a presumably rented bus for a three hour long ride. During this time, I was speaking to the person who I thought of an amusing fellow teacher who speaks broken English and Mandarin, Mr. Se, and the librarian. The librarian Mrs. Lee needed his help to translate what she was trying to say to me. They reassure me that they are on my side, said they wanted to be friends, and that they are rooting for me. I am grateful. It occurs to me once again that these are the barriers that language can present when everyone is not versed in the same one.
This is what it is like to in essence be born again in another country. This is what my parents went through when they immigrated to America - until a reliable relative introduced them to Chinatown, where they can ask around about everything in the native tongue.
When everyone was let out of the bus, we went through a small labyrinth of a park where many men in dark suits stood. "They're the president's guard," Mrs. Lee explained. We never saw the president. Instead, the kids went with their respective homeroom teachers to the portion of the festival named Safe Seoul, where policeman, firemen and other public service agents presented the benefits of safety in a fun and cutesy manner. There were maybe up to fifty tents spread out sporadically over a large flat baseball stadium sized area. Mascots included The Mask, two man sized pink and blue inflatable pigs, a guy in a robot suit with stilts inside, among others. After taking pictures with their classmates and teachers, the kids were led around to the booths.
The medical booth consisted of CPR dummies with an explanation of what someone should do if another person is unconscious. The firemen had a truck instead of a booth, wherein the kids climbed the ladder onto a type of water slide, and slid down. The street safety had a drawing of the crosswalk, where a traffic cop talked about the walk and stop signs. There was also an alarm booth, where kids distinguised between fire alarms, carbon monoxide alarms, and the emergency evacuation alarms. A guy in a wetsuit pretended to be drowning in a tub while the kids were supposed to toss him a lifesaver. This was a lot to organize, and it was very impressive.
Lunch was a picnic with many korean styled sushis, with spiced vegetables as a side dish, and chopped up fruit.
Next were the schools' presentation booths, sectioned off in another area. As my school is an elementary school, the kids mainly looked at middle schools as their next step, though we saw many middle schoolers looking at high schools as well. Most of the middle and high schoolers were taller than me, so I felt a bit stunted. Here were the activities that elementary school prepared for kids from all the schools. Our school had a soap making table, whereas some of the other schools had projects with plaster models of the islands around the area, lip balm making, handbag decorating, and a ball made of plastic packing strips.
After this moderately tiring activity - you try running after students when they're excited about something - there was either free time, or we could follow the first grade teacher, who led us around in the museum part of the Korean Broadcasting Station. The exhibits separated by different genres and age group, so the basement was about how technology for cameras, tv, and microphones advanced over time. Then the next floor was about cartoons, the next was about live action kiddy shows, up until the final floor, which was about dramas set in the traditional ages and classics.
This was the last event of the day, after which time, we were all packed onto the bus and driven back to the school. A teacher made a small fuss over the kids putting their snack trash in the backyard/gym area, but since they told me not to worry about cleaning up, I went back to my dorm/apartment and disappeared for the rest of the day.
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