Sports Day!

Today we had an event with our school and the other branch in Daegu. In our contract, we were made aware that there may be a few days in the year where we need to work on a weekend. Today was one of those days. It was a lot of fun and the weather was nice. We played games, had competitions and did some dances. The most nerve-wracking thing about the event was that it wasn’t just the children and teachers, but siblings, parents and grandparents as well.

Knowing that you may have to talk to one of the parents is pretty scary, especially since we are working for a Hagwon. They are essentially our customers?? We need to leave a positive impression with them for how we react with their kids and what our general personalities are or they may be left unhappy and decide to take their kids elsewhere. Obviously that would be quite extreme and you would have to do something quite bad to leave that impression.

It was fun, but quite chaotic. The announcers at the event spoke Korean so we just had to follow what everyone was doing. We went with the flow and it worked out! Many of the events involved the parents, so it was pretty funny to watch (especially the dads) compete and give it their all. They had a kids tug-o-war and a parents one. The kids had a lot of fun and I think the dads took it pretty seriously! Same goes with the relay race. They kids ran and seemed to enjoy themselves, and the parents and teachers (including Pat) tried as hard as they could. I don’t think I’ve ever seen Pat run so fast in my life.

The foreigners at the other branch seemed like pretty cool people and I wish we had more chances to talk to them. The two schools didn’t really interact with each other at all, it was mostly just a competition against each other. Our director really wanted to win all the events so it felt more serious than it probably should have. So luckily, since we had this even today for the kindergartens, we don’t have to come in the morning tomorrow (the kindergartens usually have class from 10-2:30). I look forward to having a half day tomorrow!

Okay, that’s all I wanted to say. It was pretty fun, the parents seemed quite friendly and even though we don’t get paid for working on the weekend, at least it was easy!