Truly, it was more than Olympics. On May 15, Daejeon Foreign Language High School (DFLHS) held its Sports Day. A hundred students from the different language majors (German, French, Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, Russian) came together as one.
The Sports Day contained seven events – badminton, table tennis, soccer, basketball, dodge ball, jumping-rope, and running – and all the events except jumping-rope and running already had one week of qualifying round to pick the strongest competitors. Only the finals were gamed in the very day.
One of the very special features of DFLHS Sports Day is that each major has long-lived tradition of cheering songs. The Chinese Major, famous for their magnificent cheering songs, uses music from the famous soundtrack of Kung-Fu. and French Major sings Joe Dassin’s “Aux Champs- Elysees.”
“When I bump into someone much older in my major, the first thing I ask is ‘did you have the same cheering songs like now?’ You might regard it strange, but these songs are the history and symbols for the major,” says second grade Chinese Major Sugi Choi.
Another fun aspect of the day is how colorful it is. Each major has a symbolic color related to the major: English has orange color, German has white, French is pink, Spanish is green and obviously Chinese is red. Japanese is blue one and, finally, Russia’s color is black. It is an obligation for sudents to wear T-shirts of their major’s color.
Spanish and Chinese won first place in overall events. French took the ‘most-passionate-in-cheering‘ award and English took the first place in ‘impromptu-dancing-competition‘ after a hundred students danced the ‘horse-dance‘ from PSY’s “Gangnam Style.”
“In DFLHS, everything is run by major,” said DFLHS principal Kim Won Myeong in an interview. “This has pros and cons, and one of the cons is that you don’t have any chance to communicate with other majors. The Sports Day is the only time when each of the majors have the opportunity to counter others face-to-face. We hope that by Sports Day, our students learn how to cooperate and communicate with others. That’s what the future global leaders need.”
