At school on Friday, we had activities planned for the afternoon, and the morning was standard lessons. As I only get two breaks per day, and on Friday they're the last two periods, I wasn't happy about the scheduling (which meant I was to teach all day with no break), but I figured for one day I could grin and bear it.
I enjoy decorating my classroom, and I may have gone a little overboard with the Halloween decorations. I had the Korean teachers from other rooms asking me to stop, because they felt they had to decorate as much as I was and they wanted to go home. I did end up slowing down a bit, but I still carved the best pumpkin in the school. :)
All of my kids dressed up, and though I had two Optimus Primes, I was still highly impressed with how they all turned out.
I wasn't the only teacher that dressed up, either. Some of the Korean teachers did small things (like my co-teacher wore an orange Casper shirt that my mom sent me), but for the most part the foreign teachers went all out. My personal favorite was the ajuma in the front center.
In the afternoon, the kids rotated to other 7-year-old classes to do different activities, similar to what we did for International Costume Day. My activities were making popcorn monster hands and marshmallow ghosts. Now, this would be a simple thing to do in America. But wondering why you can't find candy corn or jumbo white marshmallows in Korea in the fall is like wondering why you can't find Pepero in America in November.
Thankfully I have a forward-thinking mother who shipped me a bag of candy corn that arrived before the 30th, so the monster hands were saved (though I did have to tell the materials person that no, three individual bags of popcorn would not be enough for 35 kids to fill a plastic glove and could I please have some more before 1pm? Thanks so much...). I was not so lucky when it came to the marshmallows, however. I was given my materials on Thursday (after submitting my list two weeks earlier with specific instructions on EXACTLY what I needed, and how many per child I would need, and the number of children that would be participating). So instead of using these for ghostie heads:
(which btw makes for minutes of fun ages 8-80), my kids were stuck with rather strange ghostie faces made from this:
But, we made do with what we had, and the kids - after convincing them that the food dye was, in fact, food dye and not poisonous coloring that would make them sick and die- made some rather interesting ghosts. And then promptly ate them, since they don't travel well.
Clean, rinse, repeat. I then proceeded to do the same two activities with the other two seven-year-old classes, until the day was over. I have no qualms about making kids clean up after themselves (Rule number three out of three in Sapphire Class?: "Leave things better than the way you found them."), so before moving on to the next activity, kids had to make sure that all remnants of the previous activity had been spirited away into the garbage.
I then got about half an hour after the kids left to chill out from the day before our weekly meeting at 4pm. This was the first meeting where our new Vice Principal ran the meeting (the old one wasn't that great at the job, didn't know how to work with foreigners, and only lasted about 2 months). It was blessedly short, sweet, informative, and to-the-point. After which we got the go-ahead to go home early! So after removing all vestiges of the holiday from my room (I wasn't going to do it Monday morning), I headed home to change.
A friend of mine had a birthday party in Itaewon at a lovely Moroccan restaurant. The company and the food was good, but at $20 a plate for buffet (of which I only partook in two small plates), it was a bit pricey. Afterwards, I went out dancing with some friends, and then headed back home to get some sleep to prepare for Saturday.
Once I had ordered my zombie contacts, and knew I would get them in time for Halloween, I told James what I was going to dress up as. He's not the most competent when it comes to what he calls fancy dress (we Americans call it dressing up or costumes), so he asked me if I would make him a zombie as well and of course I agreed. About three days before Halloween, he told me that his girlfriend and her friend's plans had fallen through for ABBA themed costumes, and would I mind terribly doing their makeup as well? I thought it would be fun, though I had JUST managed to find enough makeup for myself and James. I told him that if they bought more makeup, I'd be happy to help. So on Saturday I woke up, ripped up some already dubious clothes of mine, and proceeded to apply my own zombie makeup. This was partly to reduce the time it would take to do everyone else's makeup, and partly to practice in private, since I hadn't done it in two years.
I then headed to Itaewon, to infect three other people. It was raining, so my umbrella effectively hid my costume and makeup on my walk to the subway. I was enjoying startling the random person by lifting the umbrella from time to time. Once inside the subway, I got the random sideways glance, or semi-aborted scream from passers-by, but for the most part people didn't pay me any mind. I did get some opened-eyes and smiles from people as I was waiting for the train to open its' doors and looking through the window at the people waiting to get out. I stepped onto the train, and stood behind someone who was holding on to the handle hanging from the ceiling and facing away from me, towards the windows and the row of seats. My transfer was about 5 stops away, and nothing of note happened until about the fourth stop. The girl in front of me, who apparently had been blissfully unaware of my presence happened to turn around. She promptly screamed, let go of the handle, and ran off into the crowded subway car to get away from me. I spent the next two stops trying desperately not to laugh, smile, or look around.
I made it to the apartment without much more ado, where James, Juliet, Rob (Juliet's best friend and roommate), and Nonkuli (another friend of Juliet's) were already there. We waited until Claire arrived, and then I started doing makeup for Juliet, James, and Claire.
After about the third layer of makeup, Nonkuli and Rob decided that it looked like too much fun, so I made three zombies, and then two more. The result was an awesome family of zombies.
Nonkuli, Juliet and I all headed down the street to catch a cab, and Juliet was enjoying herself by scaring passing ajumas and random strangers. One of them, a Korean, stopped and asked if she could take our picture. She then called her friends over and had our picture taken with them. We started talking to them, and they asked who did our makeup, at which point Juliet said that I had done it. The Koreans were all impressed, which wouldn't have been as cool if we hadn't found out that they do professional body painting, and were heading to a body art convention in Austria. I got the card of the girl who took the picture and e-mailed her later in the week. I'm still waiting for the pictures (apparently they're too big to email), but I'm looking forward to seeing them, and to possibly working with them in the future!
The rest of the night was spent wandering around Seoul with friends and scaring people. We gained semi-celebrity status in Haebangcheon, when we actually got a round of applause when we walked in the door of a bar.
I left partway through the night to go to a gothic party with Nonkuli, where I lost my wallet and never got it back. Made for a rather annoying, and cashless, rest of the evening, but I managed. I've been slowly working at getting all my cards back, though the 6 coffee cards I had from different cafes with stamps and points on them are rather irreplaceable....
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