Day 90

HALLOWEEN

Some people may not know this, but Halloween is a purely American holiday.  The costumes, the candy, the decorations, the school parties (for young people), and the copious drinking (for the slightly-older young people) are all 100% American.  A Halloween celebration in any other country is generally  held in a bar and filled with drunken foreigners.

Korea is not unlike most other countries in this regard.  I've now experienced Halloween in two non-American countries, Australia and South Korea.  In both countries, a few bars advertise their Halloween parties with scantily-clad blonde girls and cheap alcohol.  The only people who show up are Americans in crappy costumes (because costumes are surprisingly hard to come by) and a few other foreigners (usually European men) looking for easy prey to take home.

But this year I was treated to a fairly good school Halloween party!  My hagwon (that's the after-school school where I teach) holds a Halloween party each year, complete with costumes and trick-or-treating and scary stories.  All the teachers dress up too.  I got into the costume search pretty late in the game, and all I could find in my size was a vampire cape.  I bought fake teeth but they had a funny taste and were too big for my mouth.  Here's some photos from Halloween!

All the teachers at my hagwon in one photo!  Is that Psy?!

This is apparently a famous character from a comedy show.  He's a beggar
who sells flowers and dances.

In the middle is a witch... not sure what the other two are?

OPPAN GANGNAM STYLE!

I'm a vampire but my hair is covering up my blood.  My fellow waigukin (foreigner) is a lumberjack.

Okay, so my fake blood isn't very convincing.  It's really hard to find fake blood here, so I used lip gloss.
One of my cute students took this photo!  (She's actually way taller than me.  But still cute!)

Eric is the white drummer from a well-known Korean band.  The other guy is a Mexican.

My younger students were a bit of a handful during the Halloween party.  In fact, I was supposed to take them around trick-or-treating (all the teachers bought candy for the kids) but they literally ran away before I could get out the door.  They all came back, though, so I guess it was fine.

Two students wore these Scream masks.  None of the students have any idea what it is.

This girl is a doll, and brought an actual carved pumpkin and insisted that I light a candle inside it.
In retrospect, I should have made her leave the top off, because it quickly began to burn and the room
smelled like burnt pumpkin for a while.

Scary?

The older kids were much more fun.  They brought a huge tub of Baskin Robbins, turned off the lights, and told some genuinely semi-scary stories.  There was lots of screaming.  Good Halloween!

Lots of snacks.

And now for...

MORE RANDOM KOREA PHOTOS

I never get sick of posting pictures of weird things I see in Korea.

Not sure what this is advertising but I'm pretty sure the bulls are photoshopped.

McDonalds often has weird stuff in other countries, but sadly everything is pretty vanilla here.  No kimchi nuggets or spicy dakgalbi wrap to be found.  They do have one cool feature, and that's delivery service.  All those mopeds in the front are for delivery.  Thank goodness we don't have this service in America, phew.

This place is always pretty busy, and has two floors.  It's surprisingly nice.

Now for a few photos from the grocery store.

You can buy prepared raw meat to bring home and cook for an easy meal.  I thought it was a great idea.
 Sadly, this tasted pretty awful.

Um... are those wood chips?

Those are sticks.  Definitely wood sticks.

Somehow Koreans eat this?  I think they might boil it and drink the water as some sort of 'herbal medicine.'
Still weird to see bags of wood chips in the produce section.

This is a bucket of octopi on ice.  Just reach in and grab one!

Uh... shouldn't that kid be in the seat part?

Koreans are surprisingly unconcerned about crushing their children.  I think you can get arrested for this in the states.
At the Costco food court people take this to the next level, and just leave the cart (with kid) in a corner while they eat.

Oh hey, Lindsay Lohan, what are you doing here?  (That is Lindsay Lohan, right?  It looks an awful lot like her.)

Something tells me Miss Lohan isn't getting paid for this.

I found a fish shop that sells fake, self-propelling jellyfish!  Might have to pick one up, I really want a pet.  :(

They look surprisingly realistic!

For those who didn't see on facebook, my Psy socks.  So cool.

This is a Korean jelly sandwich.  It's a rice cake (like bread made from rice... a bit gummy but good) with
strawberry jelly inside.  And a cute heart on the front, because we're in Korea and everything is adorable.

There's that jelly!  Yummy!

A nice Engrish sign on the Seoul subway.  "Think creative all that you!"

KFC is surprisingly popular here, and seems to be open 24/7.  This photo was taken at 4:45am and there are people inside eating.

Delicious drunk food?

One of my students has a KFC notebook!  Love it!

Here's a car full of lettuce:

The only part not overflowing with lettuce is the driver's seat (thank goodness.)

And a matching cycling club:

What did I tell you?  Literally everything is cute in this country.

In other news, I'm having a bit of a humidity problem in my apartment.  My kitchen wall has some tiles at the top and, now that it's getting colder, water is condensing on the tiles and dripping down.  This is causing a mold problem.  My windows are foggy all the time, even when I leave the windows open.

Foggy windows.

Water condensing on the tiles.

However I can't really complain because my floor heating just got switched on, and it is AMAZING.  Imagine that your entire floor is toasty, even your bathroom tiles.  I don't have to imagine.  It's fabulous.  Why the rest of the world hasn't adopted this system yet is entirely beyond me.

And lastly, today I made a bunch of middle-schoolers go on a scavenger hunt.  I teach a Spanish class two Saturdays a month, and today they had to learn propositions.  I hid clues all over the school--including some fake ones if they looked in the wrong place or tried to cheat.

My students deciphering a clue.  Too bad this one was fake.

Their last clue led them to a convenience store down the street where I bought them drinks as a reward. I think that despite my lack of fluency in Spanish, I'm still a pretty great Spanish teacher.

That wraps up things for today.  I'm going to try and see a lantern festival in Seoul tomorrow and maybe visit some museums in the near future.  I doubt they'll be as riveting as the penis park's museum, but hey, they could still be cool, right?

Until next time,
Ashton