Mother's Day

Today was Mother's Day at my school. This basically meant that I had to show up on a Saturday to go hang out with the mothers of the children at the school. We were bussed out to some park outside of Seoul at 9 AM. It was actually more of a garden. The place was located on the Han River, and it was in the mountains. Being the strapping young man I am, it was my job to carry the heavy stuff to our reserved area. It was also my job to sit there and look like an idiot all day long. I watched the kids make tie dye hankerchiefs using some type of local clay as a dye. Then we went and played with bubbles in a field. After that we went into a building that had bugs and fish. Exciting.

After these fun events, we went back to our site and had lunch. Apparently the other teachers were under the impression I would not eat Korean food, yet they still ordered me a box lunch from wherever they got the lunch. Just in case, they also bought me some sandwich from Paris Baguette (a bakery that has chains all over Korea). The Korean food was some type of beef cooked with garlic and onions, with some kimchi (pickled cabbage that is flavored with chili powder), some type of chili flavored onions, and rice. The sandwich was loaded up with all sorts of vegetables and mustard. I went with the Korean food. The beef was tasty, and I only ate a little of the kimchi. I ate all of the rice. To eat I had to use chopsticks. The good thing was that they weren't the slippery metal ones. The bad thing was is that I am still not that great with them. For dessert we had sliced up pears. We also had tons of weird cookies that the kids gave to us.

After lunch we went on a tour of the garden. They had some spots set up along the river with benches and other stuff that where moms (and some dads that came along) kept taking pictures of their kids. We then went into the greenhouses. This was pretty cool because they had some herb garden where we picked the leaves and crushed them in our hands to smell them. I found one that smelled like lemons. One of the greenhouses had palm trees and citrus trees. I told some of the parents about how I lived on a palm tree farm before I moved over. I'm not sure that they understood what I meant. There was another room with all sorts of cactii (plural of cactus for those wondering).

When we were done with our tour, we went back to our site. I guess some DJ guy set up his stuff there and he played some music while he was telling the kids to play some games with their parents. It was funny watching the parents play, because when I see adults with their children on the street they are all serious and stern. A lot of the moms aren't much older than I am, and there were definitely some hotties.

I had the opportunity to talk to some of the parents during the day. Most of them just asked where I was from and how long I had been in Korea. One set of parents apparently lived in New York and Michigan for a while and their son was born in the states. The dad works for CitiGroup in Korea and he speaks very fluent English. Another one of the moms was always chatting me up and it seemed like she was following me around. Her son is one of my favorite students. She was very pretty, so I didn't mind.

In between everything, the kids kept grabbing my arms because they all think it is cool to have me lift them up like I am doing a bicep curl. One of the girls swings up her legs and hangs upside down. Some of the parents took pictures of this, so if I can get one sent to me I will post it here.

It's been a long day and I still haven't eaten dinner yet. I might go check if the rotisserie chicken guy is on the corner tonight.