Halloween & Pepero Day

Wednesday, November 12, 2008

Since Halloween is not a widely celebrated or participated in holiday out here in Korea, I made sure to give my kids as close to a real "Halloween" experience as possible. They had always been telling me, well for about 3-4 weeks before Halloween, that they wanted to experience Halloween like in North America. I felt bad for the little munchkins when I heard that they had never gone trick or treating before!!

I told them about when I was little and used to take out a pillow case and fill it to the top with candy and eat candy for the next few months... well until my parents would decide the candy had gone bad. I still think they took it and ate it themselves. Also, I know parents have to check their children's candy (especially after hearing about all the tainted candy this year in Ontario) but I think parents totally take advantage of it and steal a bunch of the good candy "to test it". Ha!! Evil. Matt and I also reminisced about the intense candy trading that would go on after one would arrive home... "I'll trade you 3 caramels and a sucker for that bag of chips and a hard candy?" This would go on for days... especially when you would run out of a certain candy or snack that you preferred and your sibling or friends still had many. Maybe sneaking into your sibling's room and finding their candy stash under the drawer in their bed and taking what you desired was a little evil, but sometimes you needed it just that bad... and I... I mean... hypothetically, one doesn't get caught ;)

Anyways, I made my kids say trick or treat at my door to come in and then we made Halloween masks and I gave them lots of candy throughout the class. We also played pin the tail on the black cat. I almost got mobbed a couple of times leaving classroom with the candies because they figured out saying "trick or treat" gets the candy from the bowl into their mouths.... it was fun. The kids had never heard of "pin the tail on the donkey" so my game was a huge hit and they laughed so much. I would spin them about 20 times and then point them in the wrong direction... when they felt the door they would turn around and say "TEEEEEEEEAAAAACHER!!!!" I laughed hysterically to myself the whole day. One kid even pinned the tail to my penguin calendar which is on the opposite wall from where the cat was.

The next day we had Halloween at Kyle's work. It was done on a Saturday and I went down with Kyle to keep him company. I ended up doing a whole bunch of balloon jack-o-lanterns and then I got suckered into face painting. I was quickly put to shame by Ryan (Kyle's coworker from Scotland who finished his contract today and flew home an hour ago) who has a degree in art. I held my own, but he was definitely one-upping me the whole time. It was fun. Kyle was dressed up as well, more forced to dress up, as a Korean Grim Reaper. This only consisted of him wearing a black robe that came down to his knees and a funny looking wire hat that hurt his head. He looking nothing like a grim reaper. Phil, the new guy from England, was forced to be a clown in a one piece... so funny, Andrew was dressed up like Jet-Li (definitely forced and he took of his fake hair every second the director was not around) and Ryan just refused to put on his costume.

One kid saw me from the back sitting in the computer lab printing some stuff for activities and thought I was one of the teachers wearing a blonde wig, so he came in to see my costume and when he saw it was someone he didn't know he jumped like a foot backwards and didn't move or saying anything. Then ran out to tell someone I was in there and Kyle told him I was his wife, the kid wouldn't leave me alone after that. It was nice to meet some more of Kyle's student's though. His kids are definitely more a handful than my own... no doubt.

But that was Halloween. I didn't get any candy. I got candy yesterday because it was "Pepero" day, which is a day that a chocolate company made up to sell more chocolates. I got about 15 boxes of the chocolate covered wafer sticks and a bunch of large single ones... quite the stash. I am sick of eating them though, so I am slowly going to take them back to work as if I bought them and give them to the kids as rewards.

Jennell was out on the weekend. It was great to have her out. So relaxing. We went out for lunch at a local restuarant here and then we went to watch the new James Bond movie. I liked it even though all the reviews are awful. Everyone I went with liked it.... so I don't think its that bad. I can see if you are a hardcore Bond fan that you may not like it, but it was good. Then we came home, sat around and chatted and Jennell and I played Nintendo DS against each other. SO MUCH FUN! I have been playing by myself since I bought it but she bought one after trying mine so now we can play together when she comes out. We went out for coffee at our favourite coffee shop and had freshly baked chocolate cake (single cakes that they bake for you when you get there) and hot chocolate. The next day we spent the entire day taking pictures. It was a lot of fun. I will post Halloween pictures and some fall pictures right after this.

Well... there is another long awaited update. Next time, I will try to talk about how I am tired of male taxi drivers not listening to me because I am female, plastic surgery in Korea and I will post you a video of one of the most popular Korean songs right now so you can fully understand the "cutesie-ness" and "annoying-ness" and "some other descriptive word I can't think of right now" music and commercials and everything we see and hear everyday.

Love and miss you all. 170 days to go!!!! And the exchange rate still sucks!