Springville World Folkfest - Day 6

Saturday, August 1st

Today there was a swimming and pizza party at the Springville pool for all participants and host families at 10:00. My girls were super excited to go. After a quick breakfast we headed to the pool and while everyone swam (My Koreans, Alisha and her two boys, and AnnaLynne (David had to leave yesterday to go back to for work), and Amanda and her 3 kids. The Mexicans didn't swim. I didn't swim either, I figured I would be there if Amanda needed help with her little ones, which she did. Her children are not little fish like Malinda and Alisha's are. At 12:00 out came the pizzas (there were like 150 of them) and they were devoured within minutes. We had a good time just chilling, eating, and visiting.






Hye Jin, I wish the picture of the other girls had not been blurry


After all the morning fun was over we stopped by where Dennis was working and gave him some cold pizza. On the way home I took them to the Dollar Store so they could buy (Chinese made) trinkets to take home with them. Then we headed home to chill until 4:00 when they had to be at the Springville High School for dinner and other evening activities that were only for the dance participants. So Dennis, I, Alisha and Amanda had 4 hours until we had to be back to the closing night ceremonies (actually 3 hours given the 1/2 hour trip each way). We found the performances tonight for the most part were repeats of dances that were performed sometime during the week. The highlight was an encore performance of the Chinese 1000 Buddha hands. That was my all time favorite performance of the entire week. The Koreans played the same music (at least it sounded like it to me), but for tonights performance all the kids had their drums tied to them by some of the sashes they wore. The poor things were wearing their drums for hours as they were close to the end of the program. They told us (rather showed us through language barrier sign language) earlier that their shoulders get really sore. Some of the Korean girls are such tiny little things and their drums are pretty good sized.


But it was spectacular to see them marching on stage playing their hearts out. It was a bittersweet moment when the folkfest ended. On the one hand we were glad for all the driving to be over and ready to get back to a normal life, but sad to know that our new friends would soon be leaving and we would never see them again.

As was the case all week, they fell asleep in the back seat on the way home. I would have thought them utterly exhausted and would go right to bed. Wrong again. They went down to their room and I went about folding the clothes I had washed and dried for them to pack. When I took their folded laundry downstairs, they made a fuss that I shouldn't come into their room, so I stood outside the door until one of them came and got the clothes. I caught a glimpse of them sitting on the bed writing on the cards they had bought at the store that afternoon.

A while later they came upstairs and told us to sit and gestured to the couch. Then they brought out gifts. Each one in turn presented us with a gift and a thank you card. After reading the first card the other two girls told us "not read now - tomorrow". It embarrassed them to have us read the cards in their presence. We in turn gave them each a journal and told them it was for them to write about their experiences here in America. We all hugged each other and headed for bed as it was going to be an early morning wake up call in a few hours.