The Countdown to Christmas....

MORE in an effort to make it feel like Christmas and post a few of my pictures than a good reason to write a blog I thought I would post a quick message out to accomplish both goals!

This week was a shortened one at Talkster as with Friday being Christmas Day we only had four teaching days to go through before having the 25th off to celebrate Christmas. Throughout the week less and less kids have been in class with many of them either taking a holiday over the period of Christmas or going off to spend time with family in a different part of the country over the festive period.

Towards the end of the week, paticularily in my kindergarten classes I was teaching about Christmas and only then did it become apparent that quite alot of Korean's really don't celebrate at all. I know that around 25% of the country is religious in anyway but my family isn't paticularily relgious and we still celebrate Christmas, I guess it isn't really that way over here and upon recieving some very un-inventive responses from my kids when I posed questions about what presents they'd like or what they spend the day doing, it became quite obvious that they will probably just be spending the day doing very little like myself!

Seems like we didn't quite pull the trigger quick enough on wanting to go skiing, partly because the date of our break changed, but after getting Hans to search for us throughout the week, he came up empty with almost every ski resort in the entire country having no accomodation space for the three of us. C'est la vie anyway.

Today was the last day of school before Christmas so in the morning my kids had performed the singing and dance routienes that they had been practising for the last couple of months. I managed, with the help of some visual aids, to teach the kids to play 'Twinkle Twinkle Little Star' on a set of handbells so that was first to be performed, followed by a rendition of 'Jingle Bell's (the first verse of it anyway.)

The kids then did some dancing to show off their choreography skills (remember the story about the nightclub and how they like to dance in lines?) and the performed the two Christmassy numbers that are the 'Chicken Dance' and the 'YMCA'. Although not many of them are smiling in the pictures, the seemed to enjoy it. After this we sung Jingle Bells one more time to 'summon' Santa. And then each once of the kids got a present and their picture taken sitting on Santa Clause' knee.

After that we had some pictures taken, and I gave them some presents of my own and then they were allowed to go home as their parents were present. I had four classes yesterday afternoon and then I wish finished for the weekend and when Charlie and Kevin were done we headed to the usual galbi restaurant for a traditional Christmas dinner of 'Wan Galbi' and 'Mondu Dumplings'.

Charlie was getting up to head to church yesterday morning so we didn't stick around for too long and as none of us fancied going to the bar I spent the rest of the evening just watching dvds before my body decided it was time to sleep.

So I guess it's Christmas Day tomorrow..... Seems very surreal indead. I don't think there's any snow planned for Korea, but that's about the only thing that would make it seem Christmassy in anyway at all.

Anyway, I wish you all a Merry Christmas and I will be documenting exactly what I get up to tomorrow so you can hear exactly how Christmas is for 'Koreans'!

Enjoy

Ben

“Christmas gift suggestions:
To your enemy, forgiveness.
To an opponent, tolerance.
To a friend, your heart.
To a customer, service.
To all, charity.
To every child, a good example.
To yourself, respect.”

Oren Arnold