Happy Children's Day!

Children's Day at Expo Park

Balloon vendors

Do you have clean, white teeth--or evil black teeth?! (These two middle school girl volunteers let me take their picture)

Carriage rides for families at Expo Park

Wanna pose on the police motorcycle Jimmy?

Yesterday was Children's Day in Korea (well, in South Korea anyway--North Korea celebrates International Children's Day, which is June 1st). All week I had been asking my students how this day is celebrated, and each day I could see the excitement growing in their eyes. To Korean children, this day is as good as an early Christmas--the entire day is devoted to giving them gifts and experiences that will light up their faces. It's also a day spent exclusively with family.

Children's Day is a national holiday, but since it fell on a Saturday, the kids didn't get a day off from school. But we noticed a drop in numbers at AP, and the kids that did come in were loaded with presents and goodies from school: candy, little trinkets and toys, special t-shirts and hats. (The fact that their veins were pulsating with sugar made teaching interesting...) Most schools even took the kids out in the morning to a movie at either Primus Cinema (the new theater in Sokcho) or the IMAX (the futuristic building on the left in the first photo). Many of my kids were gushing about seeing the new Spiderman 3 movie!

The kids had told me that the big Children's Day festival would be happening Saturday at Expo Park (there is a track and field there where Paul and I run in the morning, which is where they set up tents and have demonstrations onstage sometimes). Certain hotels also had special Children's Day buffets at a reduced price for families. At 9:00 am yesterday I walked down to Expo, just to see what was going on. Already that early there were kids out making crafts, playing field games, and enjoying ice cream and cotton candy. And of course, there were plenty of kids rollerblading, riding bikes, and scooting around on 4-wheelers and mini-motorbikes. (You can rent any of these at Expo, and they are a huge attraction for the kids. I know that my nieces and nephews probably won't ever get to Sokcho, but if they could, I would love to see them on these mini-bikes--they would have a ball!!)

Sadly, Children's Day doesn't extend to those over the age of 12, so my middle-school students didn't get to celebrate in quite the style as the younger set. However, I did see many of them working as volunteers, and they seemed to be having as much fun as the little ones.

And Paul and I are still kids at heart, so how did we celebrate? We went to a matinee of Spiderman 3 ;) It is unusual that Sokcho gets American movies on opening weekend, so we had to take advantage!