Why Not, More Chusok Pictures

So my boss asked me to take pictures with my camera for him, and I ended up taking about 180 of them. I figure I can post just a few more of them up here since I skipped a lot of the cutest ones.

Thomas, somehow dressed just like Aladdin

I think his name is Martin, but I'm not sure. He started at our school about a month ago and would cry all morning. I was actually able to stop him from crying when I taught him how to do a high five and distracted him from thinking about his mother.

Lucy, she talks pretty much all class

Gloria

Barbie, one of my favorites

Lyn

Iris

Cindy, one of my favorites

Amy, she started a month or so ago. When she first started she would just sit in class and stare at me like I was crazy. She eventually warmed up.

Semi fixing Gemma's hair

Isabel, with Joo sneaking into her shot

Joo, working it for the camera

Chusok Party

So as everybody who reads this blog knows (or lives in Korea), this weekend was Chusok, one of the biggest holidays of the year in Korea. Since it fell on Saturday, my school took Friday off and Thursday was mostly Chusok activities. I made the decision to stay out until about 4:00 Wednesday night since I didn't have to teach in the morning. Let's just say I wasn't looking or feeling my best, so I was fortunate that all I had to do was take pictures, and didn't have any pictures taken of me.

Speaking of pictures, I'm going to tell the story of our Chusok festivities with the Kindergardeners through some photos.

So every one of the children dressed up in some fancy traditional Korean outfits. All of them were just ridiculously bright colors. The girls wore little dresses and the boys wore outfits that looked like what Aladdin wears.

7 year olds David, Chris, Alyssa, Brian, and Jenny

More 7 year olds Michael, Catherine, Barbie, Euris, Dorothy, and Monica

One of the activities was to put down two floor mats and have the kids sit back to back with legs out. They then tried to push with their feet and hands to send the other kid forward off of the mat. It's like backwards sumo wresting in a way.

7 year olds David and Ryan

Cindy vs. Isabel

Another activity was to have the kids arm wrestle. I'm not really sure if this is actually a Korean tradition. I always associate arm wresting with fat, sweaty middle-aged truckers with thick forearms.

I don't really know these two kids because I don't teach them

The kids then played a game where they had to throw these darts into a box. The darts were made of two chopsticks taped together and then a felt cone on one end and a traditional looking tail made out of felt. This game was fun to watch because some of the kids are so uncoordinated.

Gloria lining up her shot

I'm not sure of this girl's name because I don't teach her

The next thing they did was took these things that looked like bicycle streams with a weight attached to them and threw them up in the air and kicked them. Non of the pictures of this turned out because they were moving so much. It was cute when they just put them on their heads.

Euris with a nice mop top

The next thing that happened was the two female teachers in the room sat down on chairs and let the kids throw the toys into their dresses.

Semi teacher and Kelly teacher

With one of the groups Kelly teacher sat all of the kids down and told them a story for about twenty minutes or so. She is an excellent story teller, and held the kids attention for the entire time. I couldn't understand a single word she said.

One of the final activities was to teach the children how to bow, so here is Joo. Joo is Kelly teacher's daughter.

Next was a game where all of the girls sat down next to each other, like below, and then they have to close their eyes and the boys come and sit down behind them and I'm not even really sure what happens after that or why any of it happens. None of these events were really explained to me. Oops.

Daisy, Lyn, Isabel, and Joo, some sassy little girls

The View from the Top

Hi everyone, I thought I would use my extra time tonight to write a blog post. I had a class I didn't have to teach and I'm really happy about it because they are all apathetic middle school kids who I hate trying to teach. Otherwise things are going well at school, I just finished my evaluations for this month and the week is almost over. Wow, three months. This Friday we actually get a day off for Korean thanksgiving, which is awesome.

So Korean thanksgiving, or Chusok, is apparently the like a Korean Christmas in terms of how big it is, but we got really screwed because it fell on Saturday. If it would have been on Thursday we would have gotten Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday off. But here we are, anyway, I'll just enjoy my one day. I haven't really gathered what happens on this holiday except for the fact that they all travel to see their family and then eat rice cakes or something. It means that the roads will be ridiculously congested, too. My student was telling me that if it takes three hours to drive somewhere you can pretty much expect it to take eight or so. Ha ha, have fun Korea.

So anyway, about this post. I had made this hiking trip about a month ago to an observation tower that is located in our town on a hill that borders it. It kind of got pushed on the back burner for other posts and other life activities I guess. Right now is as good of a time as any though, I think.

I made the hike by myself on a Sunday afternoon. It was pretty muggy at that time, so I was really sweating my ass off.

The observation tower from below

Its a really nice hike, and not too long either. It probably took me about fifteen minutes to walk there and then about fifteen or so to walk up the hill. At the entrance of the flat area on top of the hill is this sign:
So I don't really understand why it's called a mountain fortress and talks a lot about a wall and a walled city. Hmm, some great blog writer I am.

Anyway, when I got to the clearing at the top of the hill, there was a huge work out area. It included some hula hoops, a padded running track, plenty of apparati (is that the plural for apparatus) for doing crunches, push ups, pull ups, and some other zany exercises which are kind of like an elliptical machine, a giant ship steering wheel, and a small rotating platform so you can twist your midsection. I'll do a post on Korean workout parks before winter since they are everywhere and they are pretty hilarious.

The park. I think the red logs are balance beams.

The observation tower from directly below

So after climbing up the 40 or 50 steps to the top of the observation tower, there's a breathtaking view of the city. It's easy to see that the city isn't huge or anything, but it's definitely not tiny. The town is basically bordered by this long strip mountain/hill or whatever and then on the other sides it's mostly fields of rice paddies.

Looking southwest

Looking south

Looking southeast

So that's basically the town I live in from above. You can kind of see where I live in the picture looking south but it's not too easy to describe, and I'm lazy. Oh, the last thing I'll put in here is this crazy sign I saw in the workout park at the top of the hill. I think it's something about keeping healthy.