Ok, so Friday was Halloween at ECC. Because we are an English teaching school, we celebrated Halloween, even though this is not a known or celebrated Korean holiday. If you would have asked me about a week ago how excited I was about it, I would have told you EXTREMELY. My school requires that everyone dresses up. I LOVE Halloween and I love coming up with ideas of what to be. So this year I got the idea to be crayons. I recruited all of the Kinder teachers who teach English, which is 4 foreigners and 3 Koreans and we all agreed this would be age appropriate and really cute if done properly. The only guy kinder teacher, Jason, decided not o be a crayon but agreed to be a crayon box. So there were going to be 3 Korean, 3 Foreign crayons. (One Korean teacher ended up getting super sick and wasn't there for Halloween... but that's another story...) Anyways, so all of us went downtown to get solid colored shirts and matching tights. We also got felt and and lots of black markers to start the construction of our super sweet costumes! They only took a couple hours to make all of them and turned out so super cute in the end. You have to check out the pictures on facebook to see for yourself.
Anyways, so like I said, had you asked me a week before I was super excited about Halloween day at ECC because the Kinder kids all get dressed up and then we go to a local park and all their parents come. We parade the kids around and they all sing songs and do dances for their parents and anyone else who happens to be walking around the park. The foreign kinder teachers were also given the assignment to learn 2 dances so we could stand in the front and lead the dance for the Kinder kids to follow. This was a joke within itself because we had 4 days to learn the dances on our own and we all know how much I hate dancing and how scared I am to do it in public. But I learned them and finally accepted that I would be doing them in front of tons of people. However, lets just say Halloween turned out to be not half as fun because we were told 2 days before that it would be inside at our school and the parents were no longer allowed to come because of Swine Flu. Swine Flu is now in Bongseong Dong (which isn't a city, but more like a neighborhood) where our school is, and Koreans are super duper paranoid to begin with and now that its in our area there is no way we can let the kids be around it. This sounds good right, but do you really think that our kids never go outside so we are protecting them. Plus, one of the Kinder teachers I mentioned above was sick and has been out this whole week we all think because of Swine Flu. (although everyone is keeping it on the hush and nobody will confirm that what she has. But I know she must have it because getting a day off when you are sick is almost impossible at ECC so to get a week, she MUST have it...) So anyways keeping kids in a school where it is obviously present is silly, but I guess I don't make the rules and quite frankly have no say in anything, so inside it is. Whats funny though is I overheard a Korean kinder teacher explaining to someone why the parents were no longer allowed to come. I didn't hear the whole conversation and things didn't quite translate but from what I could tell, parents were not allowed to come because they could get Swine. From who? I wondered. And then I heard more of the conversation. Basically, without completely being said, Korea as a whole blames foreigners for the Swine Flu here and basically she was saying something to the effect that the kids are immune to us foreign teachers, but their parents are not. ha. I couldn't do anything but laugh even though I was kinda upset. It was a relief that I wouldn't be dancing in front of the parents, but at the same time, how was this going to be any different than the practices we had been having the past week for this. It wasn't. Halloween took place on the 6th floor in the activity room. The Kinder kids did get to do trick-or treating and us foreign teachers got to pass out candy to them but it still wasn't as much fun as I pictured it would have been at the park.. oh well.
So the Kinders leave at 2:15 then my next class isn't till 3. For our afternoon classes, the way it is had worked in the past is that the kids go around to all of the classes and go trick-or-treating and then all go upstairs and watch a movie together. This was also changed due to Swine Flu and we were told we were allowed to give our kids candy but we couldn't take them around to the other classes. We also wouldn't be watching a movie together and would have to figure out an activity to do on our own with them. I guess a lot of the teachers didn't care though because many teachers were still taking their kids around the school to trick-or-treat and several rooms had multiple classes watching movies and hanging out together. You better believe for my first class I obeyed the rules but when I saw this happening, I decided to do it too. I took my second class around the halls to other classes asking for candy and then I just kinda let them go crazy and do whatever. This is pretty much what all classes on my floor decided to do because there were kids running around everywhere. I guess it was kinda fun. :) Unlike my Kinders, where all of them dressed up, I had one class where none of them dressed up. This is my least favorite class and they are at the age where they think they are too cool for that. Then when I asked if any of them wanted face paint, they all refused (fine by me.. my face painting skills are not up to par) until they noticed that everyone in other classes were having fun with it and then they all asked if I could paint their hands. They still didn't want me to paint their face because they still wanted to be rebellious but they liked me painting their hands secretly. What weirdos.
So that was Halloween. The dance for kinder went pretty well and I was surprised by my abilities. Don't get me wrong, I was still awkward and not good, but it was good for me. We didn't get either of the dances fully on tape but we do plan to maybe tape it on Monday so I have it to post to facebook like I promised. :)
I hope everyone had a great Halloween! I miss you guys!!
No comments:
Post a Comment