Wonderful smell by the way, if you have not experienced it before...just kidding. Fall is really come to Seoul as the air is now chilly and the leaves in the park are starting to change. It has even been chilly enough at night that we have attempted to turn on our heat. So far our attempts have been unsuccessful as we are just randomly pushing buttons and turning dials. At least we know how to turn on the hot water. We were able to see fall in its colors as we went to the Seoul Tower this past weekend. It is like the Space Needle but on a little mountain so you can see 360 around Seoul. We also got to see a martial arts ceremony which is a fun experience.
We also got a chance to celebrate Halloween last Friday. While they don't celebrate Halloween here in Korea, our hagwon, school, does. We got to dress up on Friday, as a bumble bee and bear. Matt's costume was a Korean pun. He was dressed as a bear and as GomPlayer. That is a popular media player here. All the kids know it too because we use it to show their favorite part of class, DVD class. Gom in Korean means bear. Many of the older kids and Korean staff that got they pun thought it was very funny. We got to play Halloween games with our kids in the morning and then have a costume parade/walk down a catwalk. It was really cute. There were a lot of red Power Rangers and princesses. Our afternoon kids got to go to our school's "haunted house" throughout the week. This was a room that had been converted and was full of Korean staff members trying to scare the kids. While most of the older kids seemed unphased, or pretended not to be scared, by it, Eileen had the one and only class that had to be escorted out early. So many kids were crying, they could not finish. It was probably that one kid got freaked and his poor, hysterical crying got everyone else a little on edge. It was pretty sad, but most other classes seemed to have a lot of fun. We also got to stand in our classrooms while kids knocked on the door and said trick-or-treat.
Two things that we have recently started: a photo food diary and photo claw machine diary. Everyday at lunch, and some dinners, so far we are taking pictures of the food. As we thought that Korean food was just like other Asian food at home, we were in for a bit of a surprise. It is a different kind of cuisine and thought it might be interesting to folks back home. There is an album of pictures if you click on picture link to the right or below. The claw machine diary came about from seeing so many of this very popular street corner game. There are two on almost every street corner, and these are not they type of claw machines that you see back home. They are full of the most random and odd stuff, and most are directed towards adults. There are pictures with labels of some of the prizes we have seen and we are going to keep adding to it. There is everything from vacuum cleaners, to security cameras, to MP3 players, to underwear, to tools, and just about anything else you can think of. This also is an album under our pictures or below. Both of these albums will be updated as we get more material.
