Painful bowing, impossible games, and pretty dresses...

"Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire."

- Gustav Mahler

    Next week Korea has one of their two major holidays, Chuseok.  Chuseok is basically Korea's Thanksgiving.  It is a holiday to celebrate the harvest and spend time with family.  To celebrate Chuseok, we had Korean Day with our kindergartners.  We spent the day wearing the traditional clothes called hanbok and learning traditional games, dances, bowing, cooking, and writing.  We also were able to take adorable pictures.  This picture was a feat to get 8 of 10 kids smiling, 9 looking at the camera, and 9 smiling but I'll take it!  

Our first station was to listen to traditional stories.  Korean Day is the only time in our school year when the Korean teacher's are the main teachers and the lessons are taught in Korean.  So from what I can gather the story was about an evil old man who had a monster? Who knows, but the kids thought it was hilarious.

We then moved on to calligraphy class.  I am amazed that these kids know how to read and write in Korean because we only teach them English at school, there parents must teach them Korean at home.  These papers say their names and honor your parents.  

The Korean teacher had even prepared a paper for me.  Notice how shaky my brush strokes are compared to the 5 year olds?

After writing we were obviously famished, so we went to cook jeon which is basically a savory pancake.  It is wheat flour, egg, and vegetables fried.  Each of the kids got to spoon some of the mixture on the griddle and then flip it in the pan.  It was delicious and I may have eaten a whole pan by myself.

Every single one of the kids shut their eyes as they flipped the jeon.

Our next station was traditional games.  This game is called jegichagi.  It is basically hacky sack where you kick it with your foot and try to keep it in the air.  I found the game impossible but the kids loved it.

It was also very funny to me that we needed to teach the girls how to "properly" hike up their skirts.

My favorite station by far was the traditional dance station.  The kids loved learning the dance and all looked adorable doing so.  

My favorite part of the dance was when the went down to the floor and did a head bobble back and forth.  It was adorable.

The girl on the left is Liana.  Her hanbok was my favorite of all the student's hanbok.  She looks like a Korean Snow White!

We then learned how to do a traditional tea ceremony.  The tea ceremony is supposed to be very slow and graceful.  Those are not words usually used to describe 5 year olds.

At the same station the students practiced their bowing.  On Chuseok the children of the family will do a full bow to their grandparents.  A full bow for girls involves going from a standing position, to a cross-legged sitting position, bringing the forehead to the floor, and then standing up again.  All of this is without touching the floors with their hands.  I attempted to do this bow once and ended up crying on the floor because I got a muscle cramp on my foot.  This bow is almost impossible but amazingly all of my girls could do it.

The boys bow is much simpler.  They just kneel to the ground and stand up again.

Our final station was a picture station.  They all look so cute and their hanboks all so different!

They also each took photos with me.  The ducks we are holding are traditional wedding ducks.  These ducks are traditionally given to the bride and groom because ducks mate for life.  Its a bit weird that my students and I held them for the photos, but those were the instructions given by the school principal who was also the photographer.

This girl has grown the most since the start of this school year.  Not only has she grown taller, she has grown so much in her academics and confidence.  Every day she surprises me!  Her mom is the school's secretary and her grandmother is the school cook.  The hanbok I am wearing is the one her grandmother wore to her mother's wedding.  It is a custom made silk hanbok.  It was beautiful, just not on me.  Also hanbok are not the most comfortable dresses to wear.

As you can see Hanboks are not the most flattering style of dress but it was fun to wear for one day.

Finally yesterday was picture day for my students.  While the hanboks were adorable, there is nothing cuter then them in their best outfits with giant bows and gelled hair.  And this photo has all 10 facing the camera!

This year the Chuseok holiday and Hangeul (Korean alphabet) day have landed perfectly so we have the whole week off of work.  So tomorrow Lindsey and I head to Japan! We have had this vacation planned for so long, I cannot believe it is finally here!  

Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee...

"Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face."

-Mike Tyson

   This week I reached my two year anniversary of living in Korea.  To celebrate I went back and read all of my blog posts from the past two years.  My very first post was entitled "Fear."  I had so many fears going into this experience.  One of my fears in that post was that I would not succeed in my goal to get into better shape while I am here.  While I am by no means in perfect shape, I have made huge progress and am extremely proud of myself.  I dragged Lindsey along to try out a boxing gym owned by a Canadian coach in February and we have been going 3 times a week since.  

  

These photos were from our very first day.  We were super cool and asked the coach to take photos of us.

This was probably in our second week learning our first punch.

Now we are featured on the gyms posters and have appeared on a Korean television program when it visited the gym. 

But last weekend is our biggest accomplishment of all.  Last weekend, we participated in a national boxing tournament that is held every four months.  Now before you get super excited, we participated by sparring with our coach so no one was actually fighting back BUT it was still a huge accomplishment to get in the big ring and show off our skills and there were a couple of coaches who complimented us on our skills. 

Obviously in boxing you compete with people in your weight class.  The average woman in woman in Korea is 5'4" not to mention generally they are of a very small build so finding woman to fight Lindsey is difficult enough much less trying to find someone to fight me.  Thankfully our coach, Ju-Young, was willing to take one for the team and let us beat the crap out of him! Ju-Young was a professional boxer but unfortunately broke his hand ending his career, so even though i'm sure getting hit over and over repeatedly is never pleasant we are no where near to what he got as a pro.  We each sparred for 2, 1-minute rounds.

In this video you will see the referee "take a point."  If this was a real fight he would have been docked a point because he was bending down too far.  If this was a real fight I also would have lost a point because I hit a little too low in one shot, oops.


So it might like look super impressive watching, but that was actually really hard and I am proud of myself.  I have gained so much strength and endurance and hopefully next time I can have a real fight!

After the sparring I was feeling pretty good about myself and then the cherry on top: they gave us both a trophy and certificate!!!!

 In the blue is Coach Ju-Young (who we sparred with) and in the black shirt, the Canadian owner and coach.

This is the first trophy I have ever won in my life! I was so excited to get it and it will be displayed in my house for the rest of my life.  Even if I didn't exactly win, this trophy represents all the work and sweat we have put into this sport this year.  Also how cool are our matching pink and blue shoes?  We had by far the coolest shoes in the whole tournament.

The certificate is in a fancy folder like you get your graduation diploma in.  I took both to school on Monday to show my kids because you know I get my self-esteem from the approval of 5 year olds.  They were super impressed that the certificate says my name and that it says winner.

My aunt shared this photo from right before I left Wisconsin for Korea. I have done so much and changed so much in the two years I have been here.  I have 1 more year in Korea and I can't wait to see what it brings.