Korean Writing Competition

Today was the yearly SCH foreigner writing competition. My Korean writing teacher encouraged my class to participate, if for nothing else to have a chance to write an essay in Korean on a day other than class. It was also an excuse to miss other classes to do something really unique.

I met Bernice and Maiko on the way to the auditorium. Our teacher was one of the judges, so we had a chance to talk to her before the competition. She was wearing a gorgeous Hanbok. There were about ten students from the English international program. There were also an additional sixty or so students from the Chinese international program. The English program is the students from English speaking countries or students who are proficient in English. The Chinese program is the Chinese students that come to intensively study Korean. Because of the language difference, all of the instructions were in Korean.

After a few opening statements, guess who came to the stage? The Power Ranger/KungFu group that was at the opening ceremony. I learned here that they are a school cheer group called "Sunshine." They came back with the same outfits that I am thoroughly convinced they stole from a Japanese anime. They did the exact same dance/cheer routine, hop punch jump spin...AHHHH! Not only that, they had whistles this time and blasted their music so loud that I was sure Kim Jong Il would come from North Korea to tell them to turn it down! They ran through the audience, screeching their whistles, yelling in Korean "clap your hands." I think it is really sad when a group has to demand the audience to applaud, really an indicator that something isn't quite right with the performing group. The last thing they did that really made me feel like I would be scarred for life was that the lead Power Ranger began to lead a chant. This chant went along the lines of "Soonchunhyang University" "Fighting." This is fine, but no one was yelling this chant except the girl, not even her fellow Power Rangers. She then began to screech this chant, hoping that someone would join her. Out of what I think was half school spirit the other half hopes that she would give her voice a break, the auditorium began to repeat the chant. It was as bizarre as the first time I saw this group, what was the point of leading cheers for the school before an essay competition? Only in Korea....

We then were given the three topic choices: Family, Childhood Memory, or Embarrassing Moment. My vocabulary is still not by any stretch of the word adequate to write anything decent about any of these topics, but I decided to write about family and write as much as I could. It was a good "self test" to be thrown into a situation where I had to write about a topic completely different from what I had been writing in class. It was a wake up call for me here in the semester to continue to work on my vocabulary.

After the writing portion was completed, the judges read the essays and chose the most notable. One of my Chinese friends got second place, which was very exciting. She is fluent in both Korean and English, on top of her native language Mandarin. I enjoyed the experience and hope in the future I can write a full fledged essay in Korean.