Halloween and Hiking

Greetings from Korea!

The fall weather is making for some very comfortable temperatures these days, which are getting shorter and shorter. I think the sun goes down around 6 p.m. or so now. It definitely makes me a little more homesick, because this atmosphere is the precursor to holiday festivities back home.

Speaking of holidays, today is Halloween! I've found that most Koreans have a general knowledge of Halloween, but don't really celebrate it. The Target-type store we shop at here was selling a limited amount of product, which was nice, because it gave me a chance to buy some stuff and teach my kids about Halloween. When I asked my students what they knew about Halloween, the first answer was almost always "Candy!" It seems that without even celebrating it, the children here have found the biggest benefit of Halloween is the sweet aftermath of trick-or-treating. Well, this past Friday we had a Halloween day, which included very little English at all. Let's just call it a cultural lesson, okay. Between the stuff that I bought and some costumes that my co-teacher had purchased, the students had a pretty good time. We had enough costumes for everyone to put on as they entered class and they just loved that. We also played a Halloween-themed BINGO game and used toilet paper to turn four students in each class into mummies. As you can imagine, this was quite the hit. It was really funny to see how easily the girls figured out what they needed to do to turn their teammate into a mummy, while the boys just seemed lost. They would start to pull the toilet paper around their teammate's ankles, it would break, they'd start over, one boy would yell at another boy, and it would start all over again. It was really funny. I took some video and pictures, which are posted below.

After school Friday, all the teachers went on a hike at the tallest mountain in Busan, Geumjeongsan. I was less than thrilled about going, because hiking really is not fun for me. I had gone once earlier this year and that was enough, but as I've mentioned before, you can't really say no to this stuff. So at about 3 p.m. we set out on our hike, and as we started, I looked up to the top of the mountain and saw some people up there and what looked like bridge. I jokingly pointed up to it and said to my co-teacher, "Are we going up there?" She said, "Yeah, can you do it?" I said, "Sure!" Now, I totally thought we were joking together about this, but apparently the real joke was on me, because I'll be damned if we didn't climb all the way to the top of that freaking mountain. I found myself in quite the state of shock when I realized that's what we were really doing. I would look up there and think, there's just no way. Well, by the grace of God, I got up there. It was pretty scary up there, with little cliffs and rocks that would simply drop off for hundreds of feet. I could almost sense that my dad was having trouble sleeping, but not knowing why. After all, he's the guy who freaks out when you get too close to a window in a tall building. I'm sure had he seen where I was he would have had a heart attack. Anyway, it felt good once I got up there to look down and see the spot where I joked about actually climbing this high. The wind was a lot stronger up there, and with those drop-offs that I mentioned before, it was a little nerve-racking. Like I told Brent, if it were Mariana up there and a strong gust came by, she may well have been gone with the wind. (So cool that I was able to make that joke.)

On the way back down the mountain, it got fun. We went down a different path that included different kinds of obstacles, including climbing up certain points with ropes, sliding down steep rocks and going through little cave-like tunnels. I took some pictures of all this stuff and some video as well. Also on the way down, I ran into another EPIK teacher, so naturally we started talking, because like I've mentioned before, it seems like that's just what you do. He was from England, which excited me, because immediately I thought, "Cool, I can talk about soccer with this guy." In my head, I also thought of how awful that was. It's like meeting a black person and just assuming they want to talk about basketball. Lame. Our conversation did eventually get to soccer, which I may or may have not started. A strange thing that I noticed as I was talking to him too, was that I caught myself twice getting into a British accent! Holy crap! How does that happen?! It's like infectious. I'm not sure he caught it all, but it was so weird. It was really quick and just a couple words, but still. I felt so weird about that happening.

The countdown now stands at seven and a half weeks until winter vacation and China. After that, it's a cake walk back to America.

This is where I was when I made the joke about climbing to the top.

Fun obstacles!

2,629 feet

The winning mummy group

One of my second grade classes after the mummy contest