The actual holiday is tomorrow, but we celebrated it at school on Thursday with another event day. All of the kids came to school in their hanboks, traditional Korean dresses, and were even more mind-bogglingly cute than before.
The bad news is, us teachers had to wear them too... They're really pretty, generally, but the whole point of them is to make the wearer look morbidly obese. Sweeet. It's basically a three-part outfit. The first is a white shift dress with a lot of fluff in the bottom to get that sweet triangle look we're going for. The next is a tank-top dress, generally embroidered or otherwise embellished. The last is a sort of cropped jacket, long sleeves, usually in a different color than the dress part. It ties in the front with a one-loop bow that I could not for the life of me figure out... Embarrassing.
There were a bunch of activities related to Chuseok, including an extremely dangerous and confusing game called Noeltwiggi that basically involves launching kids off a seesaw; jaegichiggi, basically hackie sack; some game that involved rolling a hoop; and another that basically had the kids slamming pieces of paper together... None of the teachers really understood what was going on there.
Which activity did I have the pleasure of being in charge of? GUESS.
Of course the kid launcher. Me and one of the Korean teachers were supposed to demonstrate, but of course I've never played this death trap of a game before so it probably just made the kids even more confused than before. That, and I screamed like a little girl the first time we got it to work because I was flying through the air in this ridiculous purple and pink monstrosity of a hanbok...
At least the kids thought it was funny?
At the end of the day, we got a bunch of songpyeon, the traditional Chuseok rice cake. Apparently each Korean holiday has its own traditional rice cake. Songpyeon come in a whole bunch of colors and are filled with sesame seeds. I'm still skeptical about the rice cake part-- it's really chewy and kind of sticky-- but the sesame seeds were reaaaally yummy.
They really do like them, I swear.
I made the mistake of going to Homeplus yesterday (basically a superstore-- groceries, clothes, electronics, home goods, jewelry... everything you could ever want in a single five story building)... OOF. Imagine a city of a million people going to the one biggest store two days before thanksgiving. That's what I unwittingly walked into.
The point of that tangent was there was an actual MOUNTAIN of songpyeon at Home Plus. Seriously, there was a woman standing next to it, weighing them and giving them out to people and the tower of delicious was taller than she was.
Insanity.
We also got a gift from work for Chuseok. The principal, King Teacher, calls us all into his office, and we're all like what on earth is happening right now?? But then he gives us these giant gifts, actually like 2 ft x 3 ft for Chuseok. We all thought it was going to be food so were really stoked, but then we opened it...
It was like a hygiene gift set. 2 soaps, 2 shampoos, 1 "romantic scent" body wash, and SEVEN tubes of toothpaste, including one "red" flavor (not cinnamon, the jury's still out on what "red" flavor means) and one green tea flavor.
Hopefully King Teacher isn't trying to give us all a hint?? I shower every day, I promise...
This was so funny! The part about the kid launcher made me choke with laughter...well done.
ReplyDelete