Korean Autumn

The last few months have flown by and I've been terrible at blogging and keeping in touch in general, so I'm going to take this opportunity to catch you up on what I've been doing.

In September was the "Korean thanksgiving" Chuseok. I celebrated with my neighbors/Korean family, the Hongs. I helped out with the entire two day process of making food, honoring the ancestors, and eating too much. It was great, but unfortunately I don't have any pictures. However, a few weeks later when we had another long holiday weekend, I went with Mrs. Hong and stayed with their daughters in Seoul. It was a lovely weekend. We ate at their uncle's tuna sashimi restaurant, went to Everland (a theme park), and went to the top of Namsan tower, which I amazingly had never done before.

Honu, the cutest little devil^^

The women of the Hong family.

 The fall (and second) semester of the Korean school year is a fun, but busy time. There are a handful of holidays, field trips, school festivals, and usually some special cooking days related to the harvest season. For me this entailed the district English festival and our school's festival. Thankfully didn't have to do anything for the English festival this year except provide moral support, but the school festival was a bit different. Last year I helped the kids finish up their production of the musical "Scrooge". Unfortunately it didn't go so well, so this year I wanted to do better. I asked months in advance  if I would have to prepare something with the "English drama" class and for months and months they said no. Well, about a month before the festival they said I should prepare something. Luckily, I got to do it with a Korean teacher. We chose "The Country and the City Mouse", adapted it for a bigger cast, and were blessed with some fabulous "mice" who were able to memorize their lines in a week! In the end it came out about as well as I think an English play for a non-English speaking audience can be expected to.

A building in the city and "a man" 

The mice

The next thing that came up was Halloween! As the foreign teacher, I'm taking every opportunity to teach my culture and relive my childhood, so we definitely celebrated. In each of my classes on that day we learned a bit about Halloween, made masks, and played some games. The kids had fun and are still trying their luck with the phrase "trick-or-treat" :)

Mummy wrap 3rd grade 

Mummy Wrap 1st grade 

First graders with their masks

We had a party for ourselves as well!

In the past couple weeks things have been pretty quiet. I did one hiking trip with a friend to a mountain called Naejangsan. It was a rainy weekend and unfortunately most of the leaves had fallen, but there were still throngs of people. It was supposed to be the peak leaf viewing time for this area, so it was a festive event. The base of the park was full of food tents and entertainment and the mountain itself was overcrowded with Koreans in their very professional hiking gear. It may not have been the peaceful time in nature we had hoped for, but it was a a good experience and still nice to get out. The picture at the top of this post is from that day. 

I think that's about all I've got for you at the moment. I may squeeze in one more post before the snow flies, but we'll see. If not though, hopefully I'll see you in the good ol' US of A! I've got my ticket booked for Dec. 23 - Jan. 25th, so just counting down the days :) 

If you want to see some more photos and some videos, follow the link on the right side of this page.

Happy Thanksgiving!