tanksgibing.

Continuing with the theme of introducing Western holidays, I took a stab at explaining Thanksgiving and the whole turkey concept.  I started out with the standard "trace your hand turkey".  At first the kids were so pumped by the mere fact that tracing your hand results in a pretty good drawing of a hand.  I had to steer them away from putting nails and rings everywhere.  I stressed that we were making a bird, and then the whole bird idea took on a mind of its own.  

Here is Sally and Jake in the process...

This was the end result of Cherry Class' Turkeys... they look more like medical testing turkeys.

And this is what Jake perceived as a Thanksgiving Turkey...

he was so proud of his artwork that he wouldn't let me hang it up, he wanted to take it home.  (my favorite part are the sun's facial features).

why does the sun go down?

Last summer, my curious, 4-year-old cousin Sloan asked mom why the sun goes down? Mom, thinking it best to always tell the truth to a 4 year old, decided to try to explain the solar system and the orbit of the earth around the sun and how the earth spins on an axis thus exposing the sun to one side of the earth and then to the other.  when all she really needed to say was that the sun goes down each night so it can come up the next morning....

It was a sunny fall day in Seoul, after an afternoon of touring around the palaces that are placed in various areas smack dab in the middle of Seoul.  It is such a beautiful thing because there is the hustle and bustle of the city happening all around, and then you enter into these gardens where the palaces are and you are transported into another quiet world.  well we were taking a cab back to another part of seoul called Itewan, where we were going to have dinner.  our cab was in the left hand turn lane, a couple cars back, and we were on a fairly big street so there were 3 lanes of traffic on either side.  the traffic and pedestrians are nuts here, people always darting to make the light to cross the street, and cars always running red lights or speeding and swerving in and out of traffic.  well the light turned green for our lanes of traffic to go, right as a little girl, holding ice cream, and wearing a pink little sweat suit, was finishing running across the road.  we saw her scurry in front of the line of busses, and all held our breaths.  all of a sudden one of the busses stopped, and we could see everyone on the bus standing up, and some covering their faces or their mouths.  we looked down and saw the little girl laying in the street next to or under the bus, and her pink little body was not moving.  my heart sank so low in my chest, it has never reached that point in my body.  i felt so sick and so sad.  all of a sudden it was our turn to go, and the cab proceeded forward, turned left, and we were onto another street and on our way with our journey.  just like that, our world kept moving, the earth kept spinning, the sun kept moving in the sky and soon went down.  The little girls fate I will never know.  but the sun went down and came back up the next morning just like it was supposed to.  

I was so saddened by that sight, and I will never forget what happened that saturday in Seoul.  It mainly made me realize that the world does keep going.  all day i have been thinking about her family, and her, and all of the possibilities of what could have been the outcome of that accident.  Did they spend the whole night in the hospital? Was she dead right there in the street? Did she stand right up and brush off her pink sweat suit?  I will never know.  All I know is that the sun is going to go down every night, and come up again in the morning, and i just have to be thankful every day that I am here and healthy and happy and just keep going. 

koreas finest.

One of Korea’s favorite past time, other than soccer and baseball, is hiking.   Hiking is not only a great exercise, but it is a social event, as well as a fashion statement.  Koreans LOVE hiking gear.  They dress alike, and love every little accessory that goes with it! My first experiencing hiking here was on Dobongsong (I could be way off), a mountain right outside of Seoul.  You have to take the subway to the base of the mountain, and right when you get off the subway it is a fury of people everywhere.  There are little paths of shops and restaurants all over the place.  It reminded me of a ski resort.  The shops sold every things imaginable that had anything to do with hiking, and every Korean on the mountain had purchased these accessories and was wearing every bit of them.  They all had bright colored jackets, and snazzy pants, and intense boots, and backpacks filled with more accessories and their picnic supplies, and of course, can’t forget their walking sticks. In America the women participate in book club, or garden club (you know who you are), but in Korea, they have hiking club.  You would see these packs of women, or really old couples, or a whole family with their little, little kids.   Out of the 9 million people that live in Korea, I would say about a million of them were on that mountain on Sunday.  You had to wait in line to hike…

It was the most rewarding and oddest thing I have ever seen.  There were so many ways in which it reminded me of the sport of skiing.  There is the obvious, the fact that you simply go up and down a mountain.  But also people’s obsession with having the latest and greatest gear, how the more popular days you would find yourself waiting in a line, and how at any break or at the end of the day you would find yourself eating and drinking.  Of course, the main attraction to the hike is the picnic...

The top of the mountain was beautiful (despite the crowd), you could see all of Seoul sprawled out below...

and the leaves are turning, making it officially my first fall...

halloween.

Last Thursday was the Halloween party at school.  Everyone dressed up and there were games and candy, the whole jig.  Korea doesn't normally recognize Halloween as a holiday, so it is our job to introduce the holiday to the students, so the concept of Trick-or-Treat had to be practiced.  Along with Trick-or-Treating being foreign to Korea, so was the concept of adult costumes, at least where I was looking.  Wednesday night I had to find a way to make my own costume with the limited resources at my disposal.  It worked though, and come Thursday morning I was a fat pumpkin.  

Lesley was a Suji Kids College Kid, as you can see by the hair and the Gym uniform.  

And then there was Daniel...

...and Donny...

...and Jake...

...and the preschoolers... 

and of course Iris.

There comes a time in every Halloween when the kids figure out the stuffing of the pumpkin costume is in fact newspaper, and that was the end of my fat friend...