The hours of daylight grow longer, the leaves have returned to the trees, and the school year is officially over after tomorrow's graduation ceremony. It's hard to believe that school is done and harder to think about the fact that many of the students we have grown to know and love won't be back next year as families move, go on furlough, students graduate, etc. It is definitely a bittersweet time of year, but we can look back on our first year of teaching, marriage, and living in Russia (how's that for a busy year?) and see a constant stream of God's blessing and guidance.
Before the school year could officially end, we had to have once last event: field day! All of the students grade K-8 got to participate in IA's field day today. We held the event on Yelagin Island, an island in the center of the city that is set aside for recreation and enjoyment with no vehicles allowed. The island has walking paths, canals for boating, playgrounds, fields, and several gorgeous old buildings that have been restored in recent years. The grounds were beautiful as grass and leaves have finally returned from their long winter hiatus. Flower beds were filled with gorgeous tulips and it was a bright day with a brilliant blue sky.
The students were divided up into six teams based on colors (red, grey, white, black, blue, and purple) that tried to include an equal balance of students from all grades kindergarten through 8th grade (the high school students were busy sleeping away after last night's prom:-)). The day started off with a treasure hunt and continued with sack races, a water race, an eating race, and an egg toss before culminating in a game of tug-of-war. The parents and teachers were so inspired that we had our own shot at tug-of-war after the students. The dads and male teachers went head to head with each other, which inspired the Korean mothers to take on the female teachers and other mothers. All I can say is that our Korean mothers are strong as they sent our teachers down to defeat:-)
Here are some pictures from throughout the day!
The chairman of IA's school board giving out instructions for the treasure hunt.
The beautiful neoclassical palace that stands on one end of Yelagin Island.
Flowers!
Misha (elementary school aide), Amanda (making an ugly face), Jarod (science teacher and basketball coach), and Katya (2/3rd grade teacher and our Russian language teacher)
The sack race!
The water race. Students had to fill their mouths with water and run to fill a bucket at the other end.
The food race. Students had to run down to this bag, take one item out of it and then eat it all before the next member of the team could run down. The first team to eat all of their bag won. I'm glad that I didn't have to eat any dry ramen noodles:-)
The egg toss! One of our little elementary school students got hit square on the head by an egg, which shattered all over him. He thought it was very funny; I was sad that I didn't get a picture of it!
Tug-of-war, everyone's favorite game!
Me, struggling mightily in a losing effort for my team of teachers and dads.
The female teachers, pulling as hard as they can!
And the victorious Korean moms!
And one last final scene from field day: a video of two of our student teams playing tug-of-war. The video quality may be poor, but the excitement is still palpable:-) Thanks for reading!
-Matt
