Happy Halloween!

Ahnyosayeo! As you all know, this past weekend was Halloween weekend!
Though Korea does not celebrate Halloween, my school and friends sure
do! We had a Halloween party for the kids which included a haunted
house, candy, scary movie, and face painting! All of the kids dressed
up and looked adorable! I worked in the haunted house and it was so
much fun! I wore my pig costume, had my face covered by a mask, and
crawled around grapping the kids legs! They were pretty freaked out
and some even cried! Koreans think that scary is fun, so they really
forced the kids to go into the haunted house and laughed through the
whole process - quite entertaining ;) It was so much fun playing with
the kids all day, I really didn't want to go back to teaching, but
such is life. The rest of my weekend was spent partying in costumes
in Ilsan and in Seoul, where a lot of other people dressed up too.
Sunday night Taylor, Nate, Christina, and I dressed up fancy, went out
to dinner, and saw Jerkly and Hyde the musical. We have a great center
here in Ilsan, there are pics included of it on facebook. The show
was in English and the singers were fantastic - a lot of fun.
Swine flu is becoming more serious in Korea these days and the campus
that Taylor, Nate, and Christina work at was closed last Thursday and

Friday. My first grade class only had a third of the students present
today, some of the having swine flu and others scared they will get

it. There is a possibility that my campus will close for a week, in
which case I will have to make up the days during a weekend, so it
would be three weeks of working straight through....not fun! Some of
my co-workers are feeling ill as well. Today in the office we were

discussing how its strange that some of us don't have swine flu......yet....


On a related note, Koreans take health here very seriously! They
believe that kimchi (a notorious side dish which consists of red
pepper paste and cabbage) can prevent anything except fandeath (did
you know that you will die if you sleep with teh fan on!). If you get
sick in Korea, you go to the hospital and will be treated with a
variety of pills, they are not scared of the effects of medication

here. My students write journals, and in many of the journals they
write about how they have to stay healthy by keeping up with physcial
activity (jumping rope, tai kwan do, hiking ect) and not overeating.
One common thing that Koreans and other Asian countries believe is
that your bloodtype defines your personality. Students have asked me
what bloodtype I am (type B is considered the worst) because similiar
to astrology, a person can tell a lot about someone from their
bloodtype. There have been many books writeen about the subject and
even movies! Despite the health craze out here, alcohol is still
prelevant. Korea is ranked 4th in the world for drinking and it is
considered a staple of maniless (the more you drink, the more manly
you are!). Though Koreans acknowledge that alcohol is dangerous to
your health, the culutural relevance outweights the health treats. It
is common to find people passed out in bars, street benches, and even
on the street (not sure what they are going to do now with the cold
weather).

To end today I posted a link to a youtube that was made by some
forgeiners who live farther North then me which my friends and I have
found to be very entertaning, might give you a glance at suburban life
here in Korea. That's it for now, but will update later on. Hope you
are all staying warm