Happy Halloween

Korean people don't traditionally celebrate Halloween but the English academies go crazy with it. What kids in any country don't enjoy a day that's all about free candy and funny outfits? In fact, what adults don't enjoy it too?

On Friday the hagwon had a big Halloween party. My friend and fellow teacher Min has been collecting decorations for years so we went to town decorating the school. I made a CD of Halloween music and chose some storybooks and poems to teach the kids, but I was surprised at how actually frightening a lot of the children's Halloween materials are.

An event last week made me think the Korean kids don't enjoy a good spooking like American kids. We had started learning Halloween vocabulary and a few of the kindergartners pretended there was a ghost in the classroom, but the tiniest little girl wanted nothing to do with that. She was so freaked out that she spent the entire class using her arms as a vice around my neck and burying her face in my hair. Her eyes were huge enough to be in danger of popping right out of her head. I took her to the director of the hagwon to calm her down because my English reassurances weren't doing the trick, but his efforts were futile too and I had to resort to tickling her as a distraction from ghosts. She finally forgot about Casper and his friends, but I vowed to have a very un-haunted Halloween party.

We had a few hours of stories, songs, snacks, and trick-or-treating. I taught the kids to say "Trick Or Treat" when they came up to get candy, but it always came out sounding more like "Tripper Tree" which is close enough for candy in my opinion. Less than half of the hagwon's students came to the party because of fears of H1N1, so the kids that were brave left the party with a lot of loot. I made way too many orange-frosted cupcakes with sprinkles so the kids took some home for their families. Before I could wrap them up, each child would say "Tripper Tree" and dropped the cupcakes into their trick-or-treat bags to frost-ify all their candy. Oh well. One American-style cupcake probably has more sugar than they're used to eating in a month anyway!

The entrance to the school where Min had the students estimating the number of candy corns.

In the library waiting for the show to start.

The parents all sent candy to share as well as bags of chips and cookies. So before trick-or-treating we had a feast to discourage the kids from eating all their Halloween candy that night. I used the opportunity to taste test all the different kinds of snacks and I discovered that a surprising number of the chips were fish-flavored. I won't be craving those!

I don't have any pictures of me from the Halloween party, but sure enough I was dressed up as a panda. Thanks to my awesome aunt Janet, the precious panda hats have gone worldwide. The furry hats with ear-flaps are great for panda ski trips and Kate and I have both worn the panda hats for Halloween in Asia. The picture below shows a little panda who sits on the dashboard of Andrew's and my little Hyundai. These car decorations are all over Korea and they bob their heads from side to side in the sun (the opposite bobble direction of the other bobbleheads). There are a million different ones to choose from: Bart Simpson, Spiderman, Minnie Mouse, flower petals, apples, kittens.... But this panda was meant to be. Now we're on the lookout for the perfect dashboard companion for him.