Halloween 2009

I was slightly worried about whether we'd have a Halloween party at school this year, since the holiday was actually on a Saturday and the school is going through rough times, financially and regarding its reputation. I asked Heather last month if we would have a party the Friday before Halloween, and she said, yes, she'd be "buying candy." I was afraid, even had a stress dream about it, that she really meant she would just buy some candy, and it would be given to the kids at the counter or in class, and classes would go on as usual. Luckily, she probably either wanted to have a real party, or figured the backlash from the kids would be too much of a hassle, so we got a day of playing instead of teaching. Here are some pictures and video:

This is Albert under the hood.


That's Danny and Melanie in the "ghost house," except the lights had been turned on to fix some of the plastic sheets hanging from the ceiling.


Andrew in a pensive moment.



I see this chick every day, but I don't know her name. Nice picture, though.

I don't know who this guy is, but he has teeth.

A bunch of kids from my class and other classes watching the Simpsons Treehouse of Horror.

Not the best picture of me, but me as "Queen of the Nile" with some kids I don't even know.

My third-grade class playing some game. Plus an extra kid one of them brought along--the plaid one.

Lucille (formerly Kitty) and Jane (Mingyu's daughter)

Good ol' Kevin. I'm so glad I don't have his class anymore. It's nice to just talk to him in the hall.

More Simpsons

This is one of my fourth-grade classes. They came as terrorists. I think it's funny that Alex, as a terrorist, is still thinking about germs, and has a mask that looks like a cute little bear.

The same class attacking Leon (and Tom defending him, I guess). They love him.

Not the best picture of me, either, but you can at least see what the costume looks like. It was a rental.

This video is reasonably self-explanatory.

The first boy to come up to me for a treat is Johnes. Isn't he precious?

I think it's funny how at least half the kids have no idea what they're really supposed to say when they want candy on Halloween. Most of them were saying "trick or trick," and others were mixing up either word with "trip" or other words that sound similar to "trick" and "treat" (which, by the way, sound very similar to each other for them, due to the inability to pronounce the short i properly).

Actually, having the Halloween party is quite a draw on the energy, and most of the teachers were exhausted at best, and kind of pissed off at worst. Because the kids are so excited, and want to go get candy, see the ghost house, watch a movie, watch the Simpsons, or just play in the halls, it's hard to actually organize anything. But we all still feel responsible for our own kids, so with half of them in the class, and the other half wandering around, we feel torn and stressed all day.

Additionally, there was this riddle activity that I had to emcee, which I was technically told about, but the Korean teacher who told me about it did such a poor job that I wasn't even aware I was involved, until someone came and got me and they handed me a microphone. All I had to do was read off clues from the projector and call on kids to guess the answers for candy. Then they found that they needed more riddles so all fifty or so kids who were there got some candy, so I had to come up with a bunch of riddles on the spot. It was no big deal, but kind of stressful. I'd like to think I was pretty funny up there, but most people watching probably didn't get my comedic genius.

Finally, to add a little salt to the ol' stress wound, none of the foreign teachers were told that the middle school students were to continue with their regular classes, and we only found out about this when we saw one of the Korean teachers doing a class, and I asked Heather about it. She always manages to forget these details. So Leon and Emily had to teach a class at the end of the day, with no time to actually plan the lesson. I was lucky enough to have no middle school classes, so I kept watching the Simpsons with my kids and some other random ones.

On Saturday I went to Seoul with Leon and we met a friend of his from England there, as well as Emily and her boyfriend (now our new part time teacher) Michael (I call him Miker, because the kids do). We went to three areas of Seoul.

This is at the Ice Bar in Apkujeong. It was supposed to be a superheroes theme, but a lot of people already had different costumes:

This dude won the costume contest.

I went as a zombie schoolgirl, because I figured it'd be warmer than the Egyptian gear, what with the knee-high socks and long sleeved shirt. I was still freezing for the latter half of the night, though. It got cold in Korea wicked fast just now.

There was a little show at the bar:

We also hit up Hongdae and watched some people dancing on a balcony at the bar next door (everyone in our bar was thinking, we should have gone to THAT bar), then back to Itaewon for some kebab, which took forever to get, but was quite good.

Sorry

I've been really busy lately, and really tired. I'm also STILL waiting for the pictures from Japan to be sent to me on a CD. I was assured they would be sent last week, but it being the end of this week now, I'm not so sure they were. Also, nothing particularly important has happened to me lately, that I can recall, so very little to write about except my trip. On the up side, though, we're having another Halloween party this Friday at work, so I'll have something up about that come Mondayish.

Saddest Paragraph Ever

Recently I read a story with some of my classes about two slaves who escape from Georgia in the 1800's. Part of the lesson plan includes playing songs like "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot," which relate to the topic. I played versions of that and "We Shall Overcome" for my classes, and assigned homework in which they would choose a song and write a paragraph about what it is about. This is what Melanie, a third grader, wrote (with errors intact; it's still understandable):

**I think slaves didn't have any hope to be free. In this sentence "Tell all my friends I'm a-comin', too, Comin' for to carry me home." I think many slaves dead and many slaves was seperate from each other. After they had be taken by Americans, there would be only death.**

Heavy stuff, man.

Entering Japan

For Chuseok (Korean Thanksgiving) weekend, I went to Japan with Leon and Emily from work, Emily's boyfriend Michael, and her friends Carly and Sam. There is a ferry that runs a few times a day from Pusan into Fukuoka, Japan, and we set up the ferry tickets and hotel stay in Fukuoka with a travel agency for under $400 for two nights. That's pretty decent for Japan. I brought 300,000 won with me, which I traded in for 22,000 yen, which is about US$242, for spending. I spent it all very easily.

After we all got to the ferry terminal around 11am and picked up our tickets, we went through customs easily, except for Leon. Because he recently extended his contract, his ID card shows an expired date on it, but his visa was extended to December. This caused some confusion with the official, so Leon was taken into a little room for about fifteen minutes. The others, not knowing the true situation, for some reason automatically (jokingly?) thought it was a racial issue (Leon is half Indian) and got kind of (jokingly?) upset. I explained. I was slightly concerned they wouldn't let him go, but they ended up just having him purchase a reentry visa, since he'd already used the single reentry on his previous visa. Or something.

Finally, it was a smooth three-hour ride into Hakata Terminal. There were tv screens, one big and a few small, in the boat, but no personal plugs for headphones, and the motor was so loud that the audio playing from the speakers wasn't sufficient. So I missed Lassie on the way, and The Incredible Hulk on the way back. I was sad to have missed that one, but they play it on Korean tv sometimes.

We took a bus to the hotel. It was a little confusing, but not too bad. In Japan, you take a ticket when you get on the bus (in the middle, not the front), and it lists the zone in which you boarded. At the front of the bus, there is a digital sign with fares listed depending on what zone you end up in. When you exit, you go up by the driver and put your ticket and your money into a slot. There is a convenient change machine, so you don't have to worry about having exact change. We weren't exactly sure when to get off, although we knew the name of the stop, because the stops have all these stop names on the outside, and I wasn't sure which one was the name of THAT stop. I started to make us get off at one point, but then these two old ladies indicated with Japanese I didn't understand and gestures that it was one more stop. So I pushed the button for the next stop, and they corrected me again, saying, no, it was the NEXT stop. Who doesn't know the difference between one and two? (It's one, by the way.)

But we eventually got to the Central Hotel, which was very nice, and had a sauna/bathhouse that we didn't have time to use. Maybe next time. I got a single room. The rooms are nice, but pretty small. The bathrooms are cool, and a subject for another blog entry.

If you're looking for pictures, you'll have to be patient. I had forgotten to check which plug converter I would need to take to Japan for my camera and iPod chargers, and had half figured it'd be the same as in Korea. When I asked Leon about it from Busan, where I stayed the night before we left, he made the outlet situation seem so alien that I figured it would be useless to bring my chargers, and I might as well save myself some space and leave them in Busan at my friend's house. When I got there, however, not only were the outlets the same as in the States, but I found out that I had accidentally left my camera on and the battery was completely spent. So I had no camera in Japan. I am currently waiting for a CD with everyone else's pictures to come to me in the mail. I hope it comes soon, otherwise I'll have to force everyone to email their pics to me in increments. I'll add pictures to this and other entries once I get them.