Jack's Wedding

February 25th I went to my first Korean wedding...well, half Korean. My co-worker Jack married Jung Mi in Yongju, near Andong. My friends and I ended up missing our bus because we were standing at the wrong gate, but caught the next one and arrived 5 minutes before the wedding started. Now, if you've never been to a wedding hall, like me, you probably would be expecting a wedding like you'd see in North America. Some things were the same, but imagine it being 10 times tackier. The ceremony was really nice and sentimental, but the hall itself was interesting. The wedding attendants were dressed in high school band uniforms and carried swords and trumpets. They held the swords up like an arch for the bride and groom to walk through. Then there was the bubble machine. I suppose bubbles add a touch of whimsy, but seemed out of place at an indoor wedding.

The wedding itself was nice, I especially appreciated that the pastor (or something) translated in broken English. I guess he wanted Jack to know what he was agreeing to. After the ceremony they bowed to their parents and some of Jung Mi's friends sang songs to them. Then Jack had to do push-ups with Jung Mi on his back to prove he was strong. It was pretty funny and apparently hard to do in a tux.

There's no reception at Korean weddings, so we ate the buffet then caught the next bus back to Seoul. At least we attended the ceremony. Apparently a lot of Koreans just go for the food and drop an envelope of money in the basket, they don't even watch the wedding.

The push-ups.

The mothers with the band members.

Graduation

Its finally here. All our little kindergartners are moving up to elementary school so to celebrate we had to put on plays and force the kids to memorize until their heads exploded! Yay! My class did Hansel & Gretel with me and the Taekwondo dance with their Korean teacher. Then they did a traditional drum song.

Sol-nal

To ring in the year of the boar we had a whole of week of Lunar New Year themed events at school. To cap it all off the kids wore their Hanbok (traditional Korean dress) on Friday and we played a bunch of Korean games and ate ddeok-guk. Ddeok-guk is soup with lots of Ddeok (rice cake) in it....not my favorite. Koreans are supposed to eat it on Sol-nal and it ages them one year. Now, I'm 27 in this country, but 25 elsewhere.

We did some Korean wrestling in the library, of course we teachers had to show the kids how its done! Sadly, Miriam won the match, but then Shaun defeated her. The kids had a really fun time playing around, too, once we let them! To see the death match between Shaun and Miriam click the link.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0kojCbOrkFU

The kids also made lucky bags. Since hanbok don't have pockets, traditionally the men and women would carry small purses to keep money and stuff in. The translation of the Chinese character on the bags means "lucky bags." Here you can see William and Jinny holding their bags proudly.