Buddha's Birthday

We had this Friday off to honor Buddha's Birthday, a national holiday. We decided to visit a Buddhist temple to honor the occasion. After doing some research, we found that one of the more famous temples in Seoul was only a few stops down on the subway. The temple is called Bongeunsa, and we had seen it in passing on the way to a field trip with our kindergarten classes a month ago. The temple was founded in 794 AD, and is quite impressive. More and more buildings and halls were added throughout the years, but in 1939 a fire destroyed nearly all of complex. It has since been rebuilt and renovated. It consists of several buildings and worship halls, and a giant statue of Buddha. During the holiday, the temple was incredibly crowded and adorned with lanterns. Our Korean friends explained to us that if you wrote your name and address on a lantern and hung it up, then Buddha would bring good fortune to your family. Unfortunately, the cheapest ones cost 20,000 won (about $20). Instead, we opted to wait in line and pay 1,000 won to use a ladle pour water over a golden baby Buddha. This practice is symbolic of washing away bad Karma. After that we went inside the main temple, where we had to remove our shoes before entering. Bong-Hee, one of my Korean friends, showed me how to use the prayer mat to bow before a statue of Buddha three times. After that we continued to walk around the temple complex, taking in the beauty of the various buildings and decor. Finally, we ended our visit in front of a giant statue of Buddha, the largest such statue in Korea. I was a little disappointed to read that it only dates back to 1996, but the statue is still impressive.

Children's Day, Parent's Day, and Teacher's Day

I have been extremely busy the past few weeks, thus have not had a chance to blog very much. In Korea, the month of May contains a string of holidays to honor various groups of people. First was Children's Day:

Children's Day

Children's Day is a national holiday, which means we did not have class on May 5th. Our school celebrated before hand by taking our kindergarten kids to The Wizard of Oz. The music was different, and the entire play was in Korean, so my job was to sit there and make sure that the kids behaved. The kids seemed to enjoy the show, and the performers came out after the show for a drum-line performance, which was pretty cool. Our afternoon kids had a speech contest, but because my kids are at such a low level, I typed out an outline for them. The speech was about themselves, so all they had to do was fill in the blanks writing what foods they liked, words that described them, etc. After the contest, they had some snacks that were prepared for them to eat.

As is so happened, Children's day coincided with Cinco de Mayo. So, since we had the day off, we headed to Itaewon (the foreigner's area in Seoul where the American military base is located and where several embassies are near) for some Mexican food and drinks. The restaurant we went to was overpriced (as so many foreign restaurants are), charging around 15,000-18,000 won (about $14-17) for a meal. The food was mediocre, but as was the case for St. Patrick's Day, the occaison was honored. It was our Korean friend, Ernest's, first time having Mexican food and he seemed to enjoy his fajitas. The restaurant even let us wear the sombrero they had during our meal.

Parent's Day

Parent's Day in Korea is the same weekend as Mother's Day in the US. We devoted one of our periods to making cards for their parents. The pictures tell the story:

Teacher's Day

Teacher's Day was yesterday, so many of my students' parents sent gifts for me. One parent sent a cake for me and my co-teachers to split, one sent Korean pastry-like treats, but the rest gave me skin products or beauty products. I got four bottles of after shave, skin moisturizers, shaving cream, shampoo, toning face mist, and scruffing lotion (I have no clue what the latter two are). I also got a bottle of fruits and passion body spray called "F/P Homme." I would make some sort of joke here, but I don't think anything I say at this point will be funnier than what you just read. I think men use cosmetics here more than they do in the US, but I was still shocked at the amount of beauty products I received. Tonight we are heading off to watch South Korea take on Ecuador in a soccer match. It should be a lot of fun. We bought some South Korean soccer jersies to wear to the game. I'll leave you with a chance to see my pile of skin products: