School Concert - 만세!

Setting the rockets off

Today was our school's festival day where the students get a chance to show off their singing and dancing. Unfortunately we seem to have lost a lot of talented kids with our 3rd years from last year graduating, so it was a lot shorter this year than last, which included more singing and a pretty good attempt at a rock band. But there were still some pretty good highlights and about 12 performances all up. Our VIP guests (from the Board of Education and PTA) even let off rockets to open the day! Also, my favourite group actually choreographed their own dance rather than just copy the music videos. Unfortunately they chose LMFAO's "Shots" as their song, which I had to question the suitability of. The two boys in the yellow shirts (In-Hyeok and Gi-Tae) were also definite favourites of mine last year so they know that I know who they are and got really embarrassed when I asked them whether they knew what the song was about, especially because they know I have a zero-tolerance policy on swearing (in either language) and they've seen what happens when someone swears in front of me. So they were very nervous today that I was going to be offended, and the leader, Gi-Tae, even asked my co-teacher to take me to the bathroom or something when they were on. Like I was going to miss them! Haha^^

Anyway, so the first one is a group of second year boys (year 8) dancing to Infinite's "BTD (Before The Dawn)" which to me actually sounds like "before the derrrrnnnnn" in the video. Oh and 'Infinite' is pronounced 'Infinity' in usual Konglish accuracy. I only got a little bit because the boys in this group are usually quite studious and relatively quiet, and I never imagined that they were into dancing.







Second is a group of 3rd year boys rapping, guest featuring Yong-Hyeon, who is kind of like our school's own K-pop idol. I missed the huge cheer they gave when he came on in the video but he's really popular and so is his girlfriend, who was leading the cheer squad, so they got a lot of love from the crowd :)

Third is the much anticipated 3rd grade boys dancing to "Shots" and "Party Rock Anthem". The bit where the camera starts shaking is me sniggering in a very unladylike manner at the lyrics ("they need an excuse to suck our *****") because this was supposedly the "clean" version of the song, and you can hear one of my co-teachers afterwards laughing and saying something along the lines of "[lucky] that no-one else but Amy knows [what it means]!". These guys are by far the best and started making their dance and practising some few weeks before last semester ended - so like 2 and a half months ago. It shows - they rock!

**P.S. A bunch of 3rd year boys have been singing "SHOT SHOT SHOT SHOT, SHOT SHOT SHOT EVERYBODY!" and dancing every time they see each other in the corridor since this morning.

Fourth is a group of 3rd year girls dancing to Lady Gaga's "Pokerface" and doing a pretty good job of it! I didn't notice at the time, but if you watch the video, the kid who unfolds the piece of paper (the program), reads it, puts it away, then keeps turning around and talking to his friends about the dancing is Gyu-Seop whose girlfriend is one of the dancers. He seems less than impressed at his girlfriend's moves for some reason!





Last is a group of 3rd year boys who are also a bit more serious about dancing. Unfortunately they also chose Infinite's song, as well as what I think might be "내꺼 하자 (Be Mine)", and are a little better than the 2nd year boys (I think they practiced more). I don't know if you can hear it or not, but I was asking one of my girls which group was better in the background. I have the whole one here so you can see the cool kick move here. Sorry for the shakiness - my arm was getting tired by then. Some of the students in that group are (were) also my favourites from last year so I had to get the whole thing ^^

*Sorry that the videos are all over the place - they won't stay put!

 Update: I don't know what the hell is happening out there, but there's evidently some sort of marching practice for ducks going on in the corridor outside my staffroom, as all I can hear is one boy chanting "오!  리!" (Ori = duck) and then someone on a quacker responding - *quack quack!* - as they march up and down the corridor.

**3pm update: am now exhausted from running the "English quiz" stall this afternoon. There were four scrambled words around the room and students (in groups or singly) had to make words of three letters or more - 6 for 1st year, 8 for 2nd and 10 for 3rd. If they made all their words from one group of letters they got a lollipop, if they did it from more than one they got fruit Mentos. Feels like we had at least half of the student body come through our room at some point, most of who preferred to scream, cajole or plead for candy or bitch in Korean about how hard it was rather than do the damn quiz and earn it. One 3rd grade girl in particular who was a complete bitch face to me last year was the worst - she wouldn't even ask for it in English, and kept pulling on my arm. Finally snapped after about 15 minutes of this and got rid of her by leaning in close and said "What's that smell? Have you been smoking?" THAT much English she understood. Anyway, I'm sad that I missed out on facepainting! And fairy floss :( But on the bright side, I DID get a balloon poodle from one of the girls! ^_^