International Day

International Day

It was international day on Friday 15^th of October. International Day is a day when the students and parents from all over the world join and have fun together. We share the culture of our own countries, foods and we are allowed to wear our national costumes. Also students perform their talents. Year 12&13 had to make some activities for year 7 to 11 so our team (Yoon-Joo, Soo-Min and me) decided to teach how to play Korean games. We chose ‘Gong-Gi’, ’Jumping Frog’ and ‘Ttak-ji chi gi (a game of slap match)’.

            

             “Gong-gi” was origin from 5^th century by Ridian than it moved to Greece. They used sheep’s upper rear portion of the heels. It travelled the Silk Road and brought to Korea. However in Korea instead of using sheep’s heels, we used small stones. Also the rules are different from the other countries. We have five steps and we use five stones. First you throw them gentle on the ground. Pick one and throw it in the air. Before it falls down, you need to grab one of the stone on the ground then catch the one you have thrown. Repeat this until you grab all the stones on the ground. For second step you need to throw one stone and pick two stones from the ground and for third step throw one in the air and grab three stones. Forth step, grab all the stones in your hand. Throw one stone up, put four stones down and catch the one you threw before it falls. Then throw one stone (the one in your hand), grab four stones on the ground and catch the one you threw. Fifth step is a bit different. Hold five stones on your hand throw all of them in the air, turn your hand over than land it on the back side of your hand. Then throw it again and catch it with your hand. Be careful, once you drop the stone, it’s over.

            

           

           We don’t know when ‘Jumping Frog’ and ‘a game of slap-match’ begun but it existed for a long time. It’s serving a double purpose game. By making them, we need active movements of hands which develop your brain and by playing with friends you can build more friendships. Some people think these games are not easy and childish but once you played with it you can’t get out of them.

          

     

           I think the students who came to our activities found these three game fun and enjoyable so was I. They had some difficulties with folding papers but they still had fun. We couldn’t do a proper ‘Jumping Frog’ because it took so much time to fold it.

           When activities were finished, we had lunch time. Students brought their own country’s food to share with other students, parents and teachers. There are lots of Korean in our school so lots a Korean foods were there and they were the most popular foods (I guess).

          When the lunch time was over, we had talent show. Several team performed singing a song, dancing, playing musical instruments and year 7, 8, 9’s chorus. They were very good and I enjoyed the day.

It was part of the creativity and service. I organized an activity and work collaboratively with my group. I was the one who taught the students how to fold the jumping frogs. Yoon Joo was responsible for the “Gong-gi” and Soomin was helping me. There were about 4 groups, we taught those games and after two teams have finished, me and Yoon Joo changed our position so we don’t get too bored by just teaching one game for the whole day. If one of us was struggling with the explanation for the game, or having trouble with some noisy students, we helped out each other and succeeded our mission to widespread the traditional Korean games and raise people’s interests in them. We also served and informed about Korean food which we brought. It was ashamed that we couldn’t see what other groups were doing for their activities but still had fun teaching student, the Korean traditional games.