Fin de Toma, and Singlish Festival

Por Fin! Finally!

The Toma of San Marcos is officially over.  I finally had class after about 2 and half weeks, I had vacation before that, and went to class for one week in between the toma and vacation, so in reality I had 4 weeks of vacation out of 5.  But I am so glad to be back in school, I do not do well without structure, I curse the athlete in me for that... However, the principle didn't resign, I have no idea about the public apology, and no one has been expelled or fired. So, basically the students were just supporting the other takeovers/students all over the country.  One thing to add from the other post I forgot to add, is other public schools try to take over/bully the private school kids into taking their school or they will take it.  That is a huge problem, and it happened to Tearrie's school this past week, but her own students and the police fought back.  It is a huge problem, because in one of the public schools there was a huge fire worth of 80 million pesos worth of damage.  I don't know if the students did this or someone got in there.  But it still remains a good thing that your own students take your school, our students after moving almost every desk and chair to every exit/entrance to the school, put them all back neat and orderly when the Toma was finished.  I cannot believe the other students would respect another school like that.  And the students take good care of the school while they are in toma, because they must come back to the school and face the problems the occurred while they were in charge.  One last thing about the tomas.  I think it's another good thing for the kids to be on their own away from their parents, a lot of my students told me they ate a lot of spaghetti, as it is cheap and easy to cook.(reminds me of myself in college, except with mac and cheese, speaking of which they don't have here)  So, this taste of freedom is good for them, I believe.

1st Annual Singlish Festival of San Marcos.

I was a host with one of my co-teachers Anita.  Our school hosted our first 'Singlish' Festival.  It is a contest with judges and all, with medals and plaques, for the best person who can sing in English.  It was actually fun to see these students come out and sing to a full small auditorium. I'll let the pictures do the talking, I stole all these photos from the IT guy at our school, because I was obviously hosting the event.  This took place two weeks ago the day before the takeover of my school, and I finally got the pictures from it, enjoy:

Contestants in 5th and 6th grade:

This is Ornella, she sang Madonna - Like a Prayer.

This is Antonia, she sang Selena Gomez - Who Says.

This is Olivia, she sang Miley Cyrus - Party in the USA.

This is Sofia, she sang Rihanna - Man Down. She even had the Rihanna accent going too.

This is Francisca, she sang Girls Just Want to Have Fun.

Contestants for 7th and 8th Grade:

This is Maria, she sang Katie Perry - Firework.

This is Victoria, she sang Miley Cyrus - The Climb.

This is Javiera, she sang Selema Gomez - A Year Without Rain.

This is Sofia, she sang Walking on Sunshine.

As you can see every participant was a girl. I don't know if English songs are easier to sing as a girl or perhaps 5-8th graders that are boys are still going through the voice changing process and obviously don't want to be embarrassed.  Most of the my good students in English(ones that can understand my english) at my school are girls...

More photos:

Hosts: Anita and Me.

Auditorium, we would have been outside in our school, but we got wind of our students wanting to take our school so we moved everything to Inacap, a private technical school, about a block away.

While the judges were putting together their scores, 5 students from our school sang a mix of songs included Red Hot Chili Peppers, Green Day and some others.

Our Judges.

And the winners:
I got the pictures from the IT guy. I also saw that we videotaped the entire thing. Now using some freeware video software I was able to upload the 5th-6th grade and 7th-8th grade winner's videos.  The quality might not be great, but it is here so you get a feel.

Very brave to be singing songs in another language, especially at 5th to 8th grade level.