Saturday, May 18, 2013

School Sports Day 2013

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We recently had Sports Day at my school, which in the States would doubtless be called "Field Day". Which is what I told the Principal when he asked me if we had anything like this in America. At The Heritage School, it takes up the better part of a week, and is called "Jubilee". At Oak Mountain Academy, it is organized and run by the senior class as their Last Hurrah. The Greeks did it in the nude. Anyway, at Seoul Yangmyeong Elementary School it begins with calisthenics, as seen above. There were flag-waving cheer groups, as seen below:

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Each grade gets a tee-shirt with a specially designed symbol, and classes within the grade compete against each other in one event. By and large, the events were pretty standard. Some classes did a simple foot-race:

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Others did a relay race, cheered on by other classes:

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The sixth grade did a tug-o-war. First, they were marched by their homeroom teachers to their spots along the rope:

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Then they had to pull:

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The second grade event was a new one on me. Each class had a barrel full of bean bags. They had a set amount of time to toss as many bean bags as possible into a suspended basket. I think, though, the construction hat is a bit of Health and Safety Gone Mad.

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For comparison, check out last year's Young-il Sports Day.

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