Halloween

Halloween Weekend

For Halloween I found an amazing wig (Cruella Devil style) and cape, Roberta and Camille went as Pirates, and Will as a dirty dirty (mind not body) man with a fro/moustache. We also invited this Lovely Korean guy, Tom, out with us. He came without a costume, so I drew on a moustache and chops (sideburns), gave him some sun glasses and he was pretty much equal to Will. We all went to a bar, in our neighbouring city, where we were meeting a heap of other foreigners. It was a pretty good night. There were some great costumes, and I met a lot of really nice new Korean friends... but there are no crazy stories to tell. I will mention though, that walking around in costume in Korea feels a little funny. Everyone stares at you as it is not something the country celebrates! It didn’t really feel like Halloween this year... I felt like we were just the usual “odd foreigners” doing something not surprisingly strange... and I never got sick on candy and besides the one day at school (more to follow) I didn’t see any Halloween decorations around in the stores.

Brighton Halloween

So Thank-Gawd it is over... and looking back on it ... it was pretty pretty pretty spectacular! In Korea, no one really celebrates Halloween with the exception of the English Kindergarten schools. Halloween is actually an interesting celebration to try to explain to students who have no idea what you are talking about. “Children in Canada and the US (interestingly not in Australia or New Zealand) dress up one night in costumes (ghosts, monsters, princesses) and go from house to house knocking on doors, saying “Trick-or Treat”... and then the house owners take a look at them and exclaim how great they look and give them candy.”.... HONESTLY what a weird weird weird tradition... no wonder they were a little lost!
This week has been loooong (and it is only Wednesday ha ha). Tuesday we arrive at school as usual and then at 9:00 just as the students are arriving we were told that we had to carve pumpkins with out students during fifth and sixth period. This is not a terrible thing... actually it seems like a great idea as none of the students have ever done this before... but... it was sort of one of the “last” straws with being told plans at the very last minute. I think Roberta and I gave the Korean head teacher looks that could kill! We both had other things planned... and of course as is the job of teaching... one must be “flexible” but Korea takes Flexibility to a WHOLE NEW LEVEL!
(Just before this we were told that after our 8 hour teaching day we would have to stay after school and decorate for Halloween).

Ok So on to DECORATING!!!!

HOLY! is all I can say. The decorating took at least three hours!!! With about 15 of us doing it! We blacked out (with black garbage bags) the classroom windows, all the walls in the gym (the gym would be the “haunted house”) every wall had decorations-- pumpkins, spiders, skeletons, ghosts), there was stuff hanging from the ceiling. As the students entered from the elevator they were greeted with their jack-o-lanterns on blacked out paper and a dead woman decoration hanging from the ceiling. After doing all of this decorating we were spent! (11 hours at the school is too long... but I know every teacher has done it before!) At the time, it all seemed a little crazy... this was the most extreme amount of decorations I have ever seen. Ironically, here I was in a country that doesn’t celebrate Halloween and I was decorating like it was going out of style, and yet back home... the public schools are wiping away traditions like Halloween (and replacing them with ‘orange and black day’) in the name of being more sensitive to multiculturalism. I don’t have an answer to this dilemma but I do think it is worth thinking about.

All in all, do you think it was worth it? Of course it was, when those kindergarten students entered the school with their costumes on ... they were astounded!!!!

The costumes were varied. We had a few red Powerangers, witches, vampires, pumpkins, Minnie Mouse, Halloween Minnie Mouse (Minnie in orange/black), Spiderman, Snow Whites, and way way way too many Princesses!!! (Korean girl’s sometimes where tiera’s whether or not it is Halloween so this is no surprise... and yes yes... their are multiple jokes going around that I need a tiera and that this is but one more way that I can easily become Korean).
So the day consisted of the classes being led around to 5 different rooms at different times (teachers think “centers’.) We had a haunted house (the gym) which was decorated like a graveyard. At one point the foreign male teachers (Ivan & Will) would grab their legs from their hiding spot under the table or they would just jump out and scare them. The next room was a “Pin the Nose on the Jack-o-lantern” room (think Pin the Tail on the Donkey). There was a bobbing for apples room... (Roberta’s) only there were no apples instead there were candy worms laid out on trays of flour. Apparently this was more sanitary... yet Roberta and I were worried about the choking hazard... yet no CPR was administered... so I guess it was a success?
There was a musical chair type of game where the children danced around and then had to stop on witches hats (remove witches hat one at a time). Then there was a “Trick or Treat Room” where the students were given these felt jack-o-lantern candy bags... if they did whatever the teacher asked (practiced english). Finally, there was my room. The “Gross Feely Room.” I had boxes with gross feeling stuff in it. I told my students that I had caught some naughty bad Brighton Students and I had cooked parts of them for dinner (brains/stomach)... MWHA HA HA... So EVIL I know... but I asked them if they believed this story and most didn’t. I then had them feel it ... and after showed them the cold spaghetti and the raw squid. YEP SQUID! It was nasty, smelly, slimy, had eyeballs... I completely recommend i! (minus the fact that I stunk like squid all day)
So the day went off without any real hitches... and we all breathed a big sigh of relief as we pushed our boys and ghouls into the elevator (to go home). Then we had to take down all the decorations for the afternoon Elementary classes (which were classes as usual)!!!!! I know three hours of decorating for 5-6 hours of fun! I don’t understand why we couldn’t have had a lot of the decorations up during the month of October.. it would have even helped with some of my phone test questions and the things I was talking about to have more visuals.. but ahh well.
I only have two classes on Wednesday in the afternoon so I went and bought them candy and I stayed in costume (surprisingly I was the only one... but everyone loved it) and we learned about Halloween through a crossword and then I let them do a word find. It was a low key afternoon but these are good classes so I thought they deserved a break and I think they learned a bit!