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Sunday, November 14, 2010

Halloween 2010

A few weekend ago I got to experience my first ever Korean Halloween and all I have to say is they are nothing like the ones at home.

The days leading up to the weekend in a quick nutshell:
  • Well lets start with the a big basic of Halloween the Pumpkin:
    • Search all over for pumpkin for the past few weeks.
    • Find a huge one in the Sewon Market but realize that it wont be easy getting it home on the train.
    • Search our small local market and Lotte the weekend before Halloween and come up with only a green one.
    • Search up and down our streets on Wednesday and find one but can't carry it myself and Ryan is at the art supply store.
    • Go back after work and the store is closed.
    • Have Ryan the most amazing boyfriend in the world go to the dentist Thursday only to come home with a huge somewhat orange pumpkin.
    • Jump up and down like a crazy woman and hug him multiple times.
    • Another side not finding anything pumpkin to eat involves us going to Costco to get a pie or eating pumpkin bread that is good but very different from the local Tour Lesour Bakery.
A few pictures of the pumpkin:

Why yes it is green

Getting ready to kill the poor pumpkin


Brains

Drawing the face for me.





You can see it in our window!

Zoom

  • The second most important part of Halloween the candy:
    • We went to Costco a few weeks ago and saw they had all their Halloween stuff out and got really excited in hopes of finding some good old "American" candy.
      • They had lots of Mentos, Snickers, Hershey Bars, and most of the stuff we can find at our local shops.
      • They also had all the typical hard healthy vitamin candy Korans seem to love.  Yuck!
      • They didn't have any M&M's, Skittles, Sour patch Kids, Baby Ruth's, Paydays, Tootsie Rolls, or any of the good stuff.
      • So we decided to hold out for a bit and see what we could find in town as Halloween got closer, not smart.
    • So in the same Suwon Market we found our nice huge pumpkin in we also found, well, nothing again on the candy side other than some pumpkin flavored candy that tasted nothing like pumpkin or candy for that matter.
    • So once again at Lotte Mart we were sad to see the candy selection was no better than it normally was there. 
    • So for Halloween we enjoyed the left over Skittles from my mom and dad and some random candy the kids had given us at school

  • Now on to the custom part of Halloween:
    • We had not planned on dressing up, however the week before Halloween we were informed there would be a party and we were expected to dress up.
    • This would of been just fine and dandy had I been at home where you can buy hundreds of types of costumes or where I could of just opened up my closet and put one together. 
    • So the hunt was on and well just as with the pumpkin it didn't look good.
      • They don't put out anything Halloween related till the week before if not even one or two days before. 
      • Options for women are pretty much witch or well witch unless you want to go to Seoul or order one of the Internet and we had time for neither of these.
      • Ryan was set with an army outfit he had from last year and just needed to pick up a few guns, face paint, and make some holsters.
      • I ended up picking up a witch hat and broom at E-mart on Wednesday but was still not too happy.
      • So come Thursday after trying on a black dress and trying to be happy as a witch I decided to get Ryan's thoughts on making my own outfit.
      • With much support I headed off to Dream Works (our local school supply store) to pick up random things to try to fashion together a Jellyfish outfit for school the next day; I know not the best planning in the world.
      • So with loads of beads, random foam pieces, and some Christmas decorations (you know those shiny strands you put on the tree) I was on my way.
      • Once at school I met up with Ryan who had a fresh military style hair cut to run things by him.
      • Still unsure how to go about it because the idea of an umbrella was just not working out with what we had and carrying it around was not going to happen.
      • Ryan spent his break running out for me to try to come up with something and came back with one of those little mesh tents you use to cover food, two different clear umbrellas, zip ties, screws, and Velcro. 
      • I was a tad on the confused side but once filled in thought he was a genius!
      • After work we headed home and spent an hour and a half getting ready for Friday as we watched Chicken Little.
A few shots of the making of the coustomes:

Look he is so happy about arts and crafts!

The start

The end! (It's a jelly fish!)

  • The Halloween Party:
    • We had to be at school at 11 to start decorating.
      • First we had to blow up balloons, black ones, orange ones, purple ones, white ones, clear ones and even some with hearts.
      • Then tie a string to them and have Ryan tape them to the ceiling. Odd I know but I guess helium is expansive here.
      • Ryan also got the job of umbrella and table hauling and set up.
    • Lunch with our boss and fellow teachers.
    • Get dressed and wait for the kids to come
    • Laugh as the kids call Ryan a watermelon and try not to smack them as they pull on my "hat"
    • Line kids up for the "Halloween Parade".
      •  Take them up and down the street in 4 different groups for about 3 hours
      • Stop at 4 different places so the parents could hand out candy
      • Get candy from the kids and turn around and pass it off to other kids.  Yes I know me giving away candy sock however I bet you would give this stuff away too!
      • Make sure not to lose any kids or let them get hit by cars
    • Get the kids all seated and some what quite for performances.
    • Watch performances and get roped into the costume contest.
    • Say good bye to everyone, clean up and head out!
The school decorations:



Why yes those are hearts!


Once done at school we were thankful the week was finally over!  We stopped in to Pizza School to get a potato pizza and a spicy Mexican bite before heading home to relax and watch Halloween Town.  We sadly spent most of Saturday just recouping from the crazy week and cleaning up here and there.  Sunday we headed to Lotte Mart for our weekly puppy petting and picked up a few spices I needed for Kimchi Stew.  Later that night we enjoyed only somewhat burnt stew, rice and cinnamon spicy apples.  After dinner I finally got to do what I had been waiting all month to do, carve up the pumpkin!  Once done we put three candles in it, shut of all the lights, put it on the table by the window and then ran down to see if you could see it from the street.  It looked so cute however I now fear our neighbors think we have lost it. 

So over all Halloween is nothing like it is at home however it was great! Sure I was really bummed out about the candy, the fact that they don't play any Halloween movies on TV here and that I couldn't find anything pumpkin flavored however with Ryan's help and some really cute kids at school it turned out to be amazing!

School kids:










































 


























I have some amazing videos of these kids doing their preformance on my facebook page.  I have made it so all the videos can be seen so if you want feel free to check them out!  http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=201802686



2 comments:

Chas said...

1. I love your pumpkin! Green is my favorite color and the smile is awesome, it looked hard to carve.

2. I have had that vitamin candy, and I agree, its yucky!! not what you would for Halloween

3. I love how you guys got to have parties at school and dress up. We didn't get to do that..boo. Your kids are cute. I'm glad you got to celebrate Halloween even if it was a little different, I can tell you had fun!

Megan said...

It was kind of odd having a Hallowee Party instead of like a "Harvest" party or something. We even get to have a real Christmas party! Things are so differnet hear I am sure they all can also say the Pleadge of Allegiance without anyone thinking twice or a parent calling the govenor of a state to complain!

Wow ok small random tangent there...oops!!