My name is Maximus Decimus Meridius

Josh:

So the day after my humiliating defeat by a toy machine, we decided to go out with everybody and go see Robin Hood. It turns out that every other foreigner in Pyeongtaek showed up in the same exact movie theater at the same exact time. It was really weird that despite our best efforts to include everyone who might want to go, we still ran into a multitude of foreigners. There really isn't much to that story other than the fact that we ran into other foreigners.

Around this time I started to notice my eye was hurting whenever I would blink. It didn't feel like anything was in it; it just felt like I had a bruise for some reason. When we got home from the movie I looked in the mirror and sure enough my eye was swollen. I had and still have no idea what happened. I'm guessing that it was because of the dust from China and the fact that I almost always wore my contacts. Obviously I stopped wearing them for a while but it was just really strange because I was unable to blink for a few days without it hurting. I decided to wait a day or two and then go see the doctor. It cleared up within a couple of days but it was just really weird to me. I only bring it up to document that at some point my eye started acting strange and then magically fixed itself.

Now if you'll follow me, we will travel back in time to Thursday 5/13/10. I forgot to mention this very important day thanks to the fact that my notebook is a little out of order (way to go, notebook):

It was a normal day for me. I got up, got dressed and headed out to work. As I walked towards my building, I looked over at our soccer field and was greeted by this sight:
I thought, "Holy crap! They've finally rallied to try to kill me!" as any reasonable foreigner would. After calculating how many high school students I could possibly take, I suddenly remembered that today was Sports Day. I breathed a sigh of relief and ran inside the office to drop off my laptop. I had heard of other teachers having something called "Sports Day" before but I never really grasped how big of a deal it is in Korea. Sports Day is the one day of the entire year where everybody (teachers and students alike) can just relax and play sports together. They even go so far as to have each class pick out team colors and order personalized jerseys for every student. When I arrived, the opening ceremonies were just beginning. I stood next to Ms. Kim and started taking pictures.















All three of these pictures are group shots of all of my students. They divided the school up by grades so the left were my first graders followed by the second and then third graders.










One of the teachers came up to the podium they set up and started making some sort of announcement. Ms. Kim leaned over and explained that they were going to sing the Korean national anthem before they began. They had one of my first graders come up to the front stage and conduct while all the other students were singing. He seemed really embarrassed but be did a good job and shortly after, he ran back into line. The principle then stepped up to the podium and apparently gave out some sort of award (I have no idea what it was for):
After that began the stretching led by one of the teachers with a really loud whistle.
















So after stretching everybody headed to the bleachers to watch the first graders play the starting game of soccer. They already had all the qualifying matches before and these two teams were competing to be top of their grade. As I was looking for a seat, a couple of students asked me to sit with them and even offered a board for me to sit on instead of sitting on the grass or concrete. I thought it was really nice of them so I took them up on their offer. The student sitting next to me would frequently comment on what team was better, what country their colors were, etc. "This team, garbage team. Other team better." I think I'm going to have to use that expression. "Yeah, well you're a garbage teacher!" I don't know how you could recover from a blow like that. Anyway, the game started and within the first ten seconds one of the teams scored. I remember certain kids being into watching sports in high school but they are nothing compared to these students. Everybody, and I mean everybody, would stand up and cheer as loud as possible. High school in America had a lot of students who were "too cool" to cheer. In Korea, it's cool to cheer and cheer loudly.



They also had drums and symbols that were constantly being played along with people who were cheering. Some of my favorite cheerleaders were the designated flag bearers. The second everyone sat down they would start fighting with the flags. When they saw a teacher looking at them they would immediately go back to waving the flag:



At one point they decided to create a super mascot and try to put everything on one person. Needless to say, it didn't work out very well but it sure was funny to watch.
It was at that point that I noticed that not every student had their name in Hangul. Some had personalized names in English. I started taking pictures of all the really funny ones. I'll start with this one for the moment and move onto the better ones later:

Here is a video of them cheering (during the second half). You will notice that they don't say "fighting" but instead say "hwaiting" because there is no "f" in the Korean alphabet. I thought it was amusing.



So during the second half of the game I switched sides so I could talk to other groups of students. I also decided to try to take team pictures. I was about to take a group shot of one team when the homeroom teacher wanted to jump in so I managed to get him and his team in the shot (the homeroom teacher is a fantastic guy who has a music studio above the English Zone and he even gave me a key to use it because he learned I play guitar. He said he wants to jam sometime and I thought that was one of the coolest things ever).














After the soccer game I waited and said, "Good job," to the players. They started changing their shoes for some reason and I noticed something really funny. My guy students had really really girly socks. In fact, one sock said this:
You probably can't read that very well but it actually says, "I am pretty girl." Yes, that is being worn by a guy. Apparently it's really common for guys to wear socks with teddy bears or cute little frogs on it. I guess it's just a thing here. I know that you would be laughed out of school if any guy tried to wear socks like that in my high school.

So after the soccer game I went over and watched more students play badminton and ping pong:














Sports Day has everything: soccer, badminton, ping pong, tug of war, jump rope and another weird game.

Remember those weird jerseys that I mentioned earlier? Well here are the ones I thought were most interesting. Before I post them I want to apologize for making my blog PG-13 (only one is allowed in PG-13 movies) but I thought it was so funny that they allowed this shirt to be made. I'll let you figure out what shirt I'm talking about:




























The kids clearly knew what that meant because whenever he was losing he would point to the back of his shirt. I know that there are teachers that speak English here and I just wonder how something like that just managed to slip through.

Apparently one of my students is an electromagnetic pulse while the other is a member of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The letters with the heart turned out to be his girlfriends initials. Awwwwwww. That particular student will frequently doodle his initials and her initials with a heart in between them. I also asked him if he was a "mack daddy" and after some explaining he said, "No! Teacher! Only one girlfriend! That's what I want." Needless to say, I really like that student.

So after all these sports the kids started practicing for the team jump rope competition. They would all stand in a line and have to jump together and see how many consecutive jumps they could make. It was really funny when one student would mess up and the entire team would yell at them because they wanted to win so desperately.
Of course there were many students who just couldn't hold the urge to cheer in:
It was getting to be lunch time right about then so we all took a break and had Lotte burgers (tasty) and lots of Pocari Sweat (Powerade in Korea). I decided it was a good time to go around taking pictures.

I have even more but I realized that I've already uploaded a ridiculous amount of pictures so far. So as the day wore on we continued with more sports including a five person foot race:



They also did a big tug of war match later on



I really like all the students cheering on the side. They were like that for every single game.

Finally came the last sport of the day. I have no idea what it is called nor do I know what it is for. It seems ultra dangerous and just plain weird. Enjoy!



"Hey guys, you know what would be fun?"
"What?"
"If we ran on each others' backs."
"Yeah! Awesome!"

You'll notice the girl wearing the giraffe horns. A lot of the kids dressed up in make up and hats. This picture, however, is my favorite:

Who knew that the Joker was afraid of harmful UV rays?

When Sports Day was nearing the end I had to run into the English Zone to oversee some workers fixing the computer screen and all of the students monitors. For some reason we couldn't get the program up and running so we had to have specialists come in and fix them. They conveniently came during the teacher soccer match so I had an excuse to leave and not participate. I hadn't played soccer since I was in elementary school and I was little more than nervous playing in front of the entire school with my fellow teachers. After a little while of them fixing the computers another teacher came in a spoke to Ms. Kim (who was with me to translate). Apparently he was looking for me to participate in the soccer game. I thought, "Oh crap," and they asked me if I wanted to play soccer. I faltered a little saying I was no good but in the end I conceded and agreed to go play. I was wearing a button up and jeans so I wasn't really in appropriate attire. I asked if there was time for me to run home but they had been playing for quite some time already. I ran over to the field and found one of my bigger students and asked him for his jersey. He agreed, I ran behind a building, changed and ran onto the soccer field. It was really neat because the students were cheering as I walked onto the field. I thought, "Man I hope I don't look like an idiot." I chose a half-back position and was ready to go. Luckily, the teachers were pretty good and kept the ball near the students' goal for the most part. There were two times when the ball came my way. Both were knocked into the air and the first one I bashed with my head and managed to accidentally (I mean purposefully) pass it to another teacher. The second I stopped with my chest and it rolled (once again on purpose) to another teacher. The students cheered when they saw what little contribution I had made to the game and it filled my head with thoughts of glory. All of sudden the whistle blew and the teachers turned around, gave me high fives and we started walking back. Apparently I had missed 90% of the game. I thought it was better to have to mediocre moments than to have multiple awful moments.

After all the excitement everyone went home tired and happy. It really makes me happy to see my students having fun. As I have mentioned before, they spend a majority of their life studying and it's really good to see them able to be kids. I might have ranted about that before, but it always makes me happy when I see them having fun.

I think next year (assuming we resign) I will make my own custom jersey that with the name "Maximus". When I slowly walk out onto that dirt field, my students will cheer "Maximus, Maximus, Maximus!" I'll fight lions, slay other people violently and play soccer like a freaking champ. Dreams of glory dance in my head...

One last important note for those who want just a little bit more:

As we walked back to the stands one of the teachers said, "Senorita?" and after a second of confusion I realized what he was talking about. I accidentally asked the one student who had custom Hangul that spelled out "Senorita" (you know, woman in Spanish) for his jersey. His school nickname is "Senorita" for some reason. That means that I played the few minutes of that game wearing a jersey that labeled me a girl in Spanish. Good job, Maximus.