korean culture week

This past week was Korean Culture week at our school. Basically our school just took some time out of the school day to honor our host country. It was a great time. We had three different assemblies throughout the course of the week. The first assembly consisted of a group of korean kids performing dances and music. The second was a series of performances put on by our faculty and students (more on this later). And the last was a group of adults who also did cultural dances and music stuff. Additionally we had local artists come in and display their artwork and other korean talents.

The assembly put on by our faculty and students was probably the most entertaining. Over the past few weeks tom and i have been taking korean lessons at our school once a week (tom is easily the best in the class...show off). Anyway, our beginner class had to perform during the assembly, so tom and i and about 6 other teachers sang "Arirang" which is a "classic" korean song (like Yankee Doodle Dandy or something like that in America). The song is pretty funny. There were two lovers. The man was going to leave the woman but before he finished passing through the mountain to leave he got a foot disease and had to come back to the woman. Charming.

Another highlight from the assembly was a puppet show put on by a group of students. The puppet show was entitled "Puppy Poo." Yes..like poop. There was a korean author that was a Christian and liked to write books about redemption and weak things used for great purposes through children's stories. So the story our students chose to perform was a story about how there was this dog that pooped. The poop thought that itself was dirty. The ground said it was dirtier than the poop. Then there came this dandelion that said it needed the poop. So the poop ended up fertilizing a beautiful dandelion. The poop found its purpose in giving life to something else. The performance consisted of a large poop cut out on a stick that our students gave a voice too. It was so weird and so funny. Only in Korea.