Happy Halloween!

Friday October 28th

The Halloween celebrations started off on Friday with a party in the afternoon for our older kids. We were told to dress up so us four foreign afternoon teachers tried to hunt for any sort of Halloween costume possible on the island. It was a little difficult as Halloween is a relatively new holiday for Koreans; they have only incorporated it recently as they are adopting other western traditions. Also, Koreans are definitely not big on variation, so unlike America where everyone is trying to out-do each other with the most creative costume, 99% of the children were either in matching witches or wizards costumes, or were a princess. All the costumes came from the same store (Homeplus; pretty much the super super walmart of Geoje) so really the biggest difference between children was which color they had chosen. Anyway, we scrounged up some stuff last minute, for as cheap as we could, and ended up as a ghost, the guy from scream, some sort of vampire, and a weird ghost/zombie outfit I made about ten minutes before the classes arrived. We were pretty proud of ourselves for showing the Koreans how it was done, as all of the Korean teachers chose 'cute' costumes such as cats and bunnies. However, when the children bounded up the stairs about 75% of them screamed and ran away, and three started bawling so badly they had to be taken to the office to calm down and miss the festivities... needless to say we were told to dress a little more 'happy' on Monday for the kindergarteners celebration. I guess not only have the Koreans not added the trick or treating part into their Halloween celebrations, but they also aren't quite used to the whole scary aspect of it either. It was still a fun celebration though with a few games and a talent show where pretty much all of the boys showed off their Taekwondo moves and the girls performed a dance to RollyPolly by Kpop (the insanely big pop band here at the moment).



wonder why we made so many children cry...

               On Saturday the 29th I made a very poor decision and was talked into going to Okpo Land Theme Park. This old amusement park sits on the ridge above Okpo city on Geoje. It was shut down in 1999 after its SECOND fatality where a young girl fell off a "chick shaped sky bike". The owner quickly shut it down and disappeared so as never to have to pay the family any money. It is rumored to be haunted so a group of people from Geoje thought Halloween weekend would be a perfect time to go check it out.

I'm not sure what the truth is behind the being haunted aspect of it, but either way wandering around a deserted and overgrown theme park in the drizzling rain and darkness was about the creepiest thing I have ever done. Cracked and falling apart merry-go-rounds and other giant character figures definitely did not help. I have never been so happy to get out of a place and back into a taxi home!

Monday was our kindergarten celebration, and as I said above we were told to dress a little more kid friendly, so I borrowed a friends' insanely huge rhino costume which was a bit more of a hit. Once again, aside from a strawberry, all of the girls were princesses and most of the boys wizards or "Taekwondo Boy" which just meant they wore their outfit for Taekwondo class later. We played games again and passed out A LOT of candy while the children shouted "trick or treat!" at us in a large circle. For most of them this was the only Halloween celebration they would have, unless attending some sort of Hallween party with their parents later. It is not common to actually go trick or treating and my kids were very confused when I tried to explain children walking around in the dark going from house to house asking for candy from strangers.

Ann 2

Yenny

Monica

Tommy

Not quite sure why they always must make this face in pictures..