I ♥ Hwaseong!

    The city of Suwon is a pretty big deal in South Korea for several reasons. It is the provincial capital of Gyeonggi-do (pronounced gee-yong-gee-doh) South Korea, it is a major educational center with 14 university campuses, it is home to over 1 million people, and, most importantly for all intents and purposes of this post, it is the only remaining completely walled city in South Korea. Hwaseong (pronounced Hwah-song) Fortress here in Suwon was built in the 1700s and its walls, as well as most of its buildings, still remain completely intact today. For this reason, it is a major source of pride for the residents of Suwon so every year the city holds a cultural festival centered around the historical site. 

Map of South Korea as broken into provinces
(See: Gyeonggi-do at the top left)

View of part of the wall, a fortress gate, and the city of Suwon

Map of the entire fortress

    Ok. Don't fall asleep. I promise I will not turn "Seoul Searching" into a mini version of the History Channel. I do have a point. But I had to give you a brief background so that you would understand the topic of this post. You see, every year at the Hwaseong Festival, they hold an elementary and middle school "I ♥ Hwaseong English Festival" contest in which each school selects 10 students to participate. These students study and memorize facts about the fortress and prepare a presentation to recite at the festival. I have been working after school for several weeks now with Jidong's 10 students, trying to prepare them for the big day. They have worked incredibly hard not only memorizing tons of facts about the fortress, but doing it all in English! They are so amazing I cannot even begin to describe it to you. They make me so darn proud!

 

Practicing our speeches on the Jidong Monday Morning Broadcast

They make me so proud!!!

    Now, as with all contests, you must have judges. And who better to judge an English contest than native English speakers, right? So the school board chose several of the native English teachers from various schools in Suwon to come and judge the presentations. Number 2 nominated me as a judge and I was chosen, so I went today to Hwaseong Fortress to do what I do best here in Korea...... speak English.

    I wanted to do a quick post about the day because it was so awesome to see all these kids speaking such great English, and I got to see one of the coolest pieces of history in Korea at the same time! (Plus it gives me an excuse to post the pictures and videos of my little nuggets and brag about how great they are).

Waiting for taxis outside of school

All pumped and ready to rock!

On our way to Hwaseong!
(How could you not love these faces??)

    Anyway, there are 14 main structures at Hwaseong Fortress and judges were placed at each of the structures. The schools were split up and each was assigned to a different structure. When they arrived, the students had to first tell about the structure where they were and then the judges asked each student one specific question at random about any of the other 13 structures. (See! There was a ton of stuff they had to memorize!) I was assigned to SeobukGongsimdon (pronounced..... oh, forget it.) which is one of the artillery towers where soldiers camped out and blasted enemies with guns and cannons. We saw 9 different schools and had to judge the performance for each. It was so difficult because they were all so cute and they had all worked so hard. You could see the nerves on their faces and the tension in the air as each group came before us. But most did an excellent job and I can only dream of speaking Korean as well as they speak English! Unfortunately I didn't get to see my group because it's a conflict of interest for me to judge my own students' performance, but I am sure they did great and I can't wait to talk to them about it on Monday!

Sweet pagoda

Hwaseong Cultural Fest '10!

Kinders!
(I might steal one of these before I come home)

Waiting to receive their assigned locations

SeobukGongsimdon

My name tag and question packet

Another view of Seobuk with the wall behind it

    And now, as promised, another fun-filled ESL video from our good friend, Creepy Steve! 

(....or whatever his name is).