I'm coming to town...
So yesterday I felt so very important here at my school. Since we couldn't find any expat to be Santa for our kindergarten Christmas party, guess who had to do the honors. Why, yours truly of course! Nevermind that I wasn't old enough, tall enough, fat enough or a man... Even so, I had a lot of fun doing it and the kids got a real kick out of making fun of me when I came back after it was over (at least those who had figured out that it was me...a few hadn't). Here's a pic of me donned in my Santa costume:
And then later on, Amanda (one of the other foreign teachers at my school) came into our office and told me that I was going to be one of the judges for the speech contest that the upper grades were having during their Christmas performance (which was starting in 15 minutes). I didn't mind going to watch it, especially since I had planned on going anyway. Plus since they wanted me to be there when it started I actually ended up getting out of work an hour early. Not too bad. So I came upstairs and had a seat at the judges table. The performance itself was great! In addition to the speech contest there was dancing, caroling, piano playing, and acting. The whole thing only lasted about two hours and it looked like all the parents and students really enjoyed it. Here's some pics:
After the show was over I went back down to the office to print up some stuff I hadn't finished and ended up playing the game "Mafia" with some of the kids who were still in class. After they all the kids went home, the teachers and I met the director downstairs for a late dinner. She ordered ddeokbokki, sweet potato pizza & fried chicken. It was really yummy! We sat around chatting for a while, and then Erin, Amanda and I came home where we ended up watching Love Actually, which was the perfect ending to a wonderful Christmas-filled day.
Today I'm meeting up with some friends at noon for cookie-baking, and then later we're watching anime and going to dinner. Not too bad for a Christmas Eve, though not exactly the typical holiday festivities. Of course, this is Korea, so nothing here is quite typical. In any case, I'm looking forward to it.
Merry Christmas everyone!!! :)