Sports Day 2013

It was the first of May and time for my little school’s Sports Day. Contractually I was supposed to have the day off with it being Workers’ Day and all, but the school asked me to come in because all the other teachers had. Worker’s Day is not a public holiday in South Korea. In return for working I would get paid overtime. Pay or no pay, I was not going to miss the chance to take photos of this lot, especially the incompetently funny first graders.

The school population being as small as it is, we were able to start and spend most of the day in the gym. Like with most gatherings in Korea official duties HAD to be observed before any fun could be had. Anyone who knows me knows how much I hate this. I count official traditions at the number one reason I left the Boy Scouts. Why would I want to stand and raise a flag, say an oath, watch others get awards (get one myself when I don’t care what it is) and generally waste time when there is fun to be had elsewhere? At least here I get to walk around and take photos.

I was supposed to help with the events, but no one ever really told me what to do and somehow I ended up doing nothing. That was just fine by me, because I could just have fun snapping photos.

Shooting indoors can be tricky. Light changes rapidly when you change angles and often the shutter speed is too slow without me realising it.There are so many photos that are just too blurry to be any good. Despite that I got a fair amount of OK shots.

The action started off with the first graders. They are old enough to understand what competition means and too young to be good at it. They generally try very hard, but all too often they just plain suck. That is exactly how I like it because it guarantees that I will be rolling on the floor with laughter at some point.

The kindergarteners were also in on the action. They are even more incompetent than the first graders, but their lack of understanding and urgency do not make them nearly as funny as their slightly older fellow students.

One of the more unusual events of the day was the card flipping contest. A collection of two sided coloured cards were place on the floor and the fifth and sixth graders were arranged around it. Some cards were blue side up and some white side up. When the referee blew the whistle everyone rushed in to turn cards over and show their team’s colour. It starts off rather orderly but quickly spirals into controlled chaos. My favourite parts were when one student would turn cards over with another student just following behind undoing the first student’s hard word. There were also the annoying yet funny moments where two students would “fight” over two cards. They would spend a good few seconds just turning over each other’s last card. Blue-White, White-Blue, Blue-White…

No sports day would be complete without short sprints…

…and a super all-in relay.

Of course, at the end of the day there had to be a loser. Crying Cathy here took a spill earlier and came last in her sprint. She would likely have lost anyway, but I think the fact that she was not able to at least give it a good old college try upset her. As she got closer to the finish line she came closer and closer to tears.

Already sad, she was then in the losing team for the relay. At least she was still gracious enough to put her hands together for the other team.