Gym Day and Holidays

On Sunday May 2, CIS hosted their second annual family gym day. CIS rents out a gymnasium near Yangjae station (about 15 minutes from CIS), hires a company to run the day (slightly counter productive in my mind since this means the whole day is conducted in Korean...), and invites all the kindergarten families to come out for a day of fun (moms, dads, siblings, grandparents, you name the family member and someone probably brought them). The staff had to report to work at 8:15 (on a normal Monday-Friday I am not even awake at this hour) and we were able to leave around 4 pm or so. Five of my Bambis came for the day - Brad, Gina, Justin, Ryan and Warren and we had a lot of fun running races, dancing around being silly, and competing in other various activities.

The teachers had to participate against each other in a lot of events as well, and somehow I ended up getting roped into doing every single event. For the final event, a huge blow-up obstacle course was brought into the middle of the floor. You had to run up a small ramp, shimmy through a hole, climb up a wall, slide down, and than make it through one more hole at the end. There were spots for 4 people to go at a time, so of course after all the kids and parents went, the staff lined up for a show down. I ended up running in a heat against our 3 tallest female foreign staff members. I was managing to keep pretty good pace with them, until we all dived for the first hole at the same time. The other three, being a split-second ahead of me, made in into their holes no problem. My hole on the other hand, collapsed in on itself, resulting in me going head-first into a wall, and bouncing backwards. Much to the amusement of the rest of the staff waiting their turn, I went flying backwards, head over heels. I tried to pick myself up as gracefully as possible, but it was quite an embarrassing spill to take in front of a bunch of students and their parents. Of course, this particular event was touted as the "highlight of gym day" by all my co-workers and my principal was doubled-over with laughter for a good five minutes.

Lucky for us, we had a holiday this past week, so even though we worked Sunday for gym day, we got Wednesday off for Children's Day. Last year I spent Children's Day in Tokyo (and traveled on pretty much every other holiday), so it was interesting to see what Seoul is like on a public holiday when everyone is off from work. The streets were practically deserted. I would say there was easily 75% less traffic on the roads. Many stores and restaurants were also closed for the day, giving my neighborhood an almost ghost-town feel. I didn't do much on Wednesday, I meet a co-worker and we went to the gym and I caught up on some cleaning and laundry that had gotten pushed back from the weekend. Boring yes, but seeing as the holiday is focused on Children, I felt it would be best to avoid places where parents would bring their children. On Thursday at work I asked all my kids what they did on Children's Day and most of them went to a park with their parents or someplace like Lotte World or the baseball game. Many of them also told me about the presents they got.

Speaking of holidays, this weekend is Parent's Day. Basically it just combines Mother and Father's Day into one day, but the big thing to give on this particular day is carnations. So, on Friday after work, the streets of Gangnam were LINED with tables selling little baskets of carnations. The sidewalks here are all ready narrow enough, given that people use them as places to park their cars and the motorcycles use them as a road, but then you add in a table of flowers with sales people every 5 feet and it becomes almost impossible to walk. I think what should have been a 10 minute walk ended up taking double the amount of time.

I continue to be amazed at how much my Babmis know and how quickly they learn. Justin in particular makes things interesting. Since his English is much further along than my other students, he can usually understand much more of what I say and often questions me. The other day we were discussing why some months have 30 day and some have 31 and I brought up how February only has 28 days. Justin quickly raised his hand and asked "always 28 days?" Not wanting to get into the concept of a leap year (and assuming they didn't know any better) I said, "yes, always." Justin's hand shot up and he announced, "my dad said that in 2012 February has 29 days." Darn...caught in my own lie. So I had to attempt to explain the concept of a leap year anyway, while my other 8 students looked on clueless. Here is another conversation that Justin and I had that gave me a good laugh.

Justin: Ms. Gaard, I know everything
Me: Really? Everything? What is 2+2?
Justin: 4 (said with a bored look)
Me: What is 4+4?
Justin: 8 (again, said with a disgusted look of 'why would you ask me something so easy')
Me: What is 8+8?
Justin: It is a secret.
Me: But I thought you knew everything
Justin: It is a secret. I know 100+100 is 200

Next weekend is the lantern parade for Buddha's birthday which a handful of my co-workers and I are planning on attending and then the weekend after is Buddha's actually birthday which means a three-day weekend in Busan!