HALLOWEEN (a la Korea)

What happened to our school??

Who haunted these hallways? hehe, me!

Korea does not celebrate Halloween, but they do recognize that it is a Western holiday. A few Halloween decorations and a limited amount of costume supplies are stocked in the local "everything" store in order to cater to the foreign English teachers who have to teach their students about Halloween. But other than that, Koreans don't decorate their houses, don't dress up in costume, and don't do trick-or-treating.

Shyla, the amazing spider!

Teachers in Costume, Watch Out!

a Mum-a-mum-a-mummayy

All wrapped up, what to do?

Kids posing during Mummy Relay

Too cute!!

Schools here almost always do some sort of Halloween celebration for the kids to teach them about this very Western holiday. That included the school I work at too, and we went all out! We decorated the hallways of the 6th floor to a festive and spooky sight. We transformed each classroom so that we could host a variety of activities for the students. There was a "Pin-the-Face-on-the-Jack-o-Lantern" game, a scary story room, a Mummy Relay game, and a craft room where they could make masks. We had a short Halloween movie for them to watch, and a photo room where they could dress up in various costumes we provided and get their picture taken. And we had a "Gross Room", where the kids stuck their hands in black boxes and had to describe what they felt (we said mashed bananas were brains, peeled grapes were eyeballs, noodles were worms, sticks were spider legs, frozen hand, zombie hair, etc). And all of us teachers had to dress up! A coworker, Shyla, had a great spider costume she made, which was so perfect since she was in charge of the gross room....the kids loved it! Some of my Korean co-teachers were cats, witches, pirates....and Laura, Jacquie, and I were Sailor Scouts from the Sailor Moon cartoon anime we grew up with. I ran the Mummy Relay room, which is where the kids get a roll of toilet paper and try to wrap up someone on their team like a mummy. Best mummy wins candy, or course. It was great to see the kids having so much fun, and they were hilarious! We tried to get some good action shots of them :)

I love it!

And the best part...throwing it around!

Can't mess with these girls!

Sailor Venus pose, what what!

Sailor Venus, Sailor Jupiter & Sailor Mercury

Now, back to our costumes. All of us girls liked the Sailor Moon show when growing up, and since we are in Asia for Halloween and all together for the school Halloween activities, we thought it would be fun to dress up together. It worked perfectly for the 3 of us too. Laura was Sailor Jupiter because she has longer brown hair, Jacquie was Sailor Mercury because she has short brown hair, and I was Sailor Venus because I have the long blonde hair. But in order to make this vision happen, we had to physically make the costumes. So we went to the market and sifted through the random fabric till we found the right colors for our bows. We found an amazingly bright orange dress in one of the clothes piles at the market, which suited for the orange skirt I needed. And then we got ribbon and other necessities for all of our accessories. We glued, sewed, and tied together everything ourselves and, considering that, they didn't turn out too bad if we do say so ourselves :) Some of the kids thought I was trying to be Wonder Woman, but a good enough amount of them could tell we were Sailor Scouts, so that's a win in my book :)  Technically, for those fans out there, we were missing 2 other scouts in our sailor-posse, but oh well we just told people that Sailor Mars and Sailor Moon were out fighting villains. The kids might think we're a little crazy now, hehe!

Bye bye for now!

Dangerously Cute!

At the market today we finally saw the puppies and kittens that they sell there. They are soooo cute that it's dangerous. You just want to take them all home with you and hug them all day long. Not just because they are cute, but because you also feel bad for their living situation. The old man who sells them does not seem to love them very much, and they look malnourished. At least I was able to confirm that Koreans do not buy live puppies and kittens for the meat, thank goodness. They actually do have them as pets, but more in the suburbs where they have houses.

We were able to realize that it would be really hard to have a puppy with our schedules. So we reluctantly tore ourselves away from the puppy stand empty-handed. I don't think I should go to that part of the market anymore, hehe, too tempting!

Fireworks!!

Busan had a fireworks festival this weekend! I wasn't sure what the festival part would entail, but I do know I like fireworks, so I definitely wanted to be there! 

We recently got a new teacher at our school, so Laura and I brought her along with us to join our adventure to Busan. Apparently the rest of Korea had the same idea though. We left for the bus station at around 4, and there was a huge line for the buses to Busan. Then, once we got on the bus, we had to sit through over 2 hours of traffic to the city. Once we got to the bus arrived we then had to take a taxi to the other side of the city where the fireworks were actually going on. Since Busan is the 2nd largest city in Korea, and there was traffic within the city, this took a while too. But, finally we got there and found the best spot to stand among the crowd of Koreans. The crowd was insane, and there was not much of a festival, just a few food stands around. But that's ok, because the fireworks were amazing! 

Woooooow!

Brilliant!

Ooooo!

Awesome!

Whoaaaa!!

Ohhhh!

The bridge is on fiiiiiire!

Fantastic!

Wow!

Amazing!

Gorgeous!

Aaahh the colors!

Beautifu!

Oooo so bright!

They're going off from 2 sides!

Bridge after the explosions are done

 

and Changwon Fountain

I can't forget to show the fountain in the center of downtown! It's pretty cool, and at night it lights up a little and has music....not too shabby.

Changwon by Day

A tiny park

Another angle on tiny park

Cats Bar!

So much garbage!!

One of many sets of tall apartments

Buildings by day

Street sign

Since I'll be living here for a while still, and I actually really like this city a lot, I wanted to post some more pictures of my current town, Changwon! It's a decent-sized city, and I live 2 blocks from the downtown area, which spans for about 6-7 blocks or so. It reminds me a little bit of Seattle, which is probably why I like it :)  But it's not by the water and, while it is cleaner than a really big city, it still is kind of dirty in some parts. By now, I have more or less gotten used to the strange and random smells of Korea that hit you at every turn....although every once in a while I am hit with a whopping whiff of super fish smell, or deliciously fragrant grapes, or a lethal mix of sewage and sulfur....just depends on the day, what street you're on, etc. There are several little parks and patches of trees and grass in various spots of the city too, which is nice. I haven't been able to snag a picture of it, but on nice days the ajimahs (little old Korean women) get together their with their scissors and trash bags and they cut the grass in the parks together. They all wear long sleeves and long-brimmed hats as their unofficial uniform because none of them want to get any sun exposure. Cutting the grass is a social activity for them, and they like to make the parks look nice. I'm not sure if there's some benefit to using scissors, though :) There's a nice park near my place that has a playground and a windy path encircling the area. That's where I usually go running. It's nice to have the green throughout the city. Not sure how long this will last though, because it definitely feels like winter is coming...