Happy Halloween from Korea!!

We celebrated with the kids all month long during our Camps on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Here are some pictures from the 2nd grade camp last week. Tonight we are having a few people over for Halloween and we’re baking an Apple PIE with our new oven!!!

We made pumpkin masks, skeletons, watched Winnie the Pooh Halloween, Charlie Brown, Disney, Sang songs about pumpkins and witches, and ran around like mummies! It was all quite exciting. Here’s a few pictures from the camps.

Kate, “Make a witch hat if you are finished!”

“OK”, says the cutest 2nd grader ever.

Everyone is almost finished, even teacher Chang!

I didn’t really help much, I was just playing with the kids

But the pumpkin masks all got finished!!

They weren’t happy then… but they were soon enough when we gave them candy!!

The sixth graders got to run around in toilet paper like they were mummies. This was mildly successful.

What a mess…

Tank, Chad, Kate, Teacher Joe (our main co-teacher) and some of the 6th Grade Girls

Two weeks ago Samcheok hosted the SAFEM Exposition. It happens every few years, no one was able to tell me how often. This week long event is the biggest safety fair in all of Asia. Samcheok was flooded with people from all over to visit booths about safety. Last Thursday our Camp was cancelled and we got to accompany the 5th and 6th graders on a field trip to the Expo.

Inside a Tank

Peace

I have to admit that on the surface this was all fun and games but I think I can speak for both myself and Chad in saying that the exposition of the military gear was a bit unsettling. A lot of what we encountered was very familiar. I do not know the specifics but I do know that the US was the designated country to help South Korea get on its feet after the Korean War. Considering how familiar these tanks were I assume that they might be one of the few American things we have encountered here.

Anyone know more about this?

Daddy, look! We got a new car!

Okay, so we got into it a little bit . . . For the kids.

Teacher Joe!

Teacher Cha-duh

Do you remember us mentioning the creepy mannequins that stand on the side of the road to direct traffic? Here are a couple of examples.

Another main highlight for us was the indoor cave reconstruction.

Kate the Stalagmite

This was really fun. We ran around the plastic rock with the students for a while but then we got separated which was great for a photo shoot.

Chad going down the Ice Shoot!

At least someone in Korea is painting!

Flash backs to the Knife Edge (inverted) on Capitol Peak!

Henry is back! Chad takes a fierce approach to conquering this gigantic bat!

Treasure Chest! I felt like the Little Mermaid but not as graceful. . . no mer-tail.

I took this picture for my Mom. Are they not too cute? I am not sure where they but their little sweaters.

Here is the stage that we could here from our apartment late at night. This is a Chilean band, it made me think of my boys back home.

Dancers from Thailand (Marlie do you have one of these outfits yet!?) (My friend Marlie is teaching Thailand right now. Chad and I want to go and visit her in January!)

This is the huge smoke stack-cake in Samcheok. I just thought you needed to see it.

This is our grounds keeper/bus driver! Check out his fancy bus driving outfit!

This brings me to an interesting and off topic point. I think that through out this blog you have probably picked up on the fact that the social system here is very different from in the States. AKA WOMEN ARE NOT SEEN AS EQUAL. Another piece of the social differences is the hierarchy of position. So, for example, this bus driver is supposed to treat me, a teacher, with more respect than he would treat a fellow bus driver. I am not supposed to treat him with the same respect as I do the principle. This has been incredibly difficult (possibly even more difficult than knowing that they are always going to go to Chad about anything and not me). I grew up with my parents pounding into me to treat everyone equally. Everyone should receive the same amount of respect. The fact that it is offensive to some that I treat someone “bellow” me with the same respect I give to someone “above” me has been incredibly difficult. This part of their culture is incredibly difficult to adjust because in my opinion it is WRONG!

Well, we are here to promote change, to help bring Korea into the Western World. How much of that can I do without offending everyone? A thin, wavering line. All I know is that I will not stop respecting people. i just need to figure out how to respect without offending others. Wow.

I just had to get that out there. One of the reasons I know I will never make Korea my permanent home.

Happy Sunday! We are off to play Badminton!

Sports Day consisted of warm up stretches, speeches in Korean, speeches in Korean, cheering and running, relay races, games, relay races, games, cheering, dancing, really races and speeches in Korean. Oh, and the teachers all were a uniform and the kids all wear white. The kids are then tagged with either yellow or blue to designate which team they are on.

Finish Line!

Tug of War!

This is Teacher Kim. She acts as out co-teacher and English speaking connection!! She has been absolutely wonderful to us. She usually teaches at a Guendeok branch school but the branch school joined us for sports day!

Chicken fighting. Falling. Like what we weren’t supposed to do in the pool when we were kids. The do it on the ground as part of school.

Aerobics. . . what we would call organized dance party for minors. We practiced the dance with them. Pretty fun. We’ll show you when we get back. At my other school, Jang Ho, the students wore spandex midriff and back exposing, bell bottoms, corp tops and halter-mini dresses. Electric green and yellow with kelly green ruffles. Whoa Nellie.

Dress the little guys in clown outfits for their relay race!

Not only the kids do relay races. The parents are major participants in Sports Day. Sometimes they are competing alongside the children, other times against each other. My favorite of the parents vs. parents games is the one bellow.

1. Inflate balloons.
2. Place filled balloon into a huge trash bag.

3. Compare balloon-stuffed trash bag height.

4. Relay race with the balloon-stuffed trash bags.

This kid is the only one that held my hand as I played surrogate Mom.

After I acted as Sports Day Guardian to a few children Chad got to play Mom too. The teachers thought he looked sad because he didn’t get to play.

He caught it!

Waiting for out turn.

We had to squat the whole time. They constantly squat for EVERYTHING! Have we mentioned that? Western knees don’t work that way.

We won!!