I forgot how much I wanted to talk about Halloween here. Korea does not celebrate Halloween so it is made into a big deal at the Hogwons as an "English" Holiday. Ryan and I were told that we were in charge of creating a Halloween party. Normally they had the children Knock on classroom doors and have a teacher or two jump out at them but since there were fewer staff in on the Halloween party we needed an alternate scare tactic. That being said, Ryan and I dreamed up a maze room filled with bags of gross feeling substances to touch as well as a hand that reached out to grab them half way through and a scare at the end as well. There was haunted music to boot and initially we planed a games room as well as we had more time to fill.
Of course, a few days before Halloween all of the elementary teachers want to be involved in Halloween giving us 8 teachers and 80 minutes with the students rather than 40. There was a miscommunication (is that what not being told means?) about the activities planned as they wanted to proceed with the games room but only had two games to play in them for an hour with the children. They of course had decided to do a snack time but did not inform us.
As Halloween is an English Holiday all of the fame or blame (depending on how the activity goes) tends to rest on the foreigners so we spent an entire night preparing more activities to fill this supposed time gap that was never really there. Regardless, Halloween was a success in that we scared the little kids so badly that some of them couldn't move and stood in one spot screaming rather than running for the door.
We scared them to the point that I felt horrible because they were screaming, but oddly enough, they loved it and wanted to go again. I just don't understand these children.
There'll hopefully be pictures of us in our costumes coming soon, assuming we can find a scanner somewhere.
!-->side note from Ryan: Thanks for all the birthday wishes! According to the Korean method of figuring out age, I'm now 26, so for all you suckers who were just a little ahead of me in the "seniority due to age" department, EAT THAT!
Seriously, they count the time in the womb when they consider your age, and they don't pay attention to month, only year, so basically it boils down to the idea that when I was born I was 1 and then a month and a half later when New Year's rolled around, I turned 2. Neat, eh?