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!