Children's Day! Parent's Day! Teacher's Day!

Saturday, May 15 is teachers day in Korea. This is the blackboard I saw when I started 1st period English class on Friday.

Some holidays in Korea are totally different from the holidays in the US, while some are similar. Korea has Children's day, for example where kids get presents from their parents. In the US, a huge anthropomorphic rabbit gives painted eggs to kids to celebrate the resurrection of a mediocre carpenter who died over 2000 years ago. What a bunch of wacky Koreans, right?

So it turns out that Children's day is for kids of elementary school age. We get the day off from school and people around town hang out and picnic. I didn't know that this was a "little kid" holiday until I got back to school and talked to students. When I told them that we had nothing similar in the US they were shocked. I was pretty excited to be here for a new holiday and walked around most of that day with a joyful grin on my face. I was at the store and saw some of my not-so little students and bought them an ice cream each...and also paid of all of the meat they were about to barbecue while wishing them a happy children's day they entire time. Maybe I was trying to make up for all the children's days that I had missed in the past. No matter what the kids had a good day, regardless of the fact that they were too old to officially have fun that day.

The following Saturday was Parent's day. It comes as no surprise to me that in Korea they do away with the inefficient separation of Mothers and Father's day and instead combine them into one streamlined super day. In fact, Children's Day is on Wednesday and Parent's Day is 3 days later just so Korean's can maximize and focus their love into one concentrated multi-day blitz. This leaves them able to remain detached and emotionally distant the rest of the year. I tried explaining the fact that we have 2 distinct holidays for our parents in the US and you could almost see them connecting the dots in their heads...America wastes time and emotional energy with 2 holidays...emotionally draining...they have no bullet train...barely usable cell phones...slow internet. So when they were done laughing at me and the US, they told me about Teachers Day.

I told them that every day was Teachers Day at my house and it was clear that their English comprehension was right where it needed to be: sitting lazily directly under the hilarity of my one-liners. Apparently for teachers day, students give carnations to teachers. I immediately pictured students presenting me with carnations and within an instant being covered with them pinned to my clothing, walking around looking like a floral zombie.

At the sports school, I was greeted with an awesome blackboard when I entered the classroom. It didn't matter that the lesson had failed and that the kids were pretty bad. It was a great display.