Kindy Field Trip

Once a year, our tiny Korean worker bees get a field trip to a sad little amusement park, Songdo Resort, which consists of a very sad reptile (and other bizarre mostly-albino animals)house, a murky pond, and some very scary rides for children. It was fun. It was fun for me, anyway, other than a little nausea (I'm really getting old, I used to love amusement park rides).

We arrived at the park around 9 in the morning, when it was completely deserted. I don't know if you've ever seen a deserted amusement park, but it is an eery and depressing site. Luckily, our small charges noticed very little of their surroundings in their euphoric enjoyment of being released from school for one day with the added benefit of their strange waeguk (foreign) teachers at their disposal.

Here's a picture of the whole gang, minus Mr. Park and the Korean helpers. You may notice a lot of hats and visors. These children came ready to battle the sun in many forms, as any good Korean does. Unfortunately, most of the students had ditched their protective gear by this time. Oscar, fourth from the right on the top level of children, sadly is not wearing the HUGE visor in the exact style of the Korean grandmothers who cover every piece of exposed skin when they leave the house.



Ethan and Remy playing with Beth Teacher's glasses.


Here he is again. Remy is the most joyous child I've ever met. He is sincerely confused by any negative emotion expressed by the other students. He is also a fabulous dancer.

Claire has also discovered what you can do with these chips. Less fearsome than Remy, she plays the always-calm to his constantly-exuberant.

So, this picture is sideways (which I am too computer illiterate to fix now that I've uploaded these photos and don't have the original on this internet cafe computer), but if you just tilt your head a bit to the side, you'll notice the really cute picnic lunches that all the students' mothers prepared for them. Since it was a special occassion, there were a lot of chips and cookies and fruit drinks, but the substance was very healthy: gimbap (korean sushi roll with no raw fish, but usually canned tuna), and cherry tomatoes. This is Mandy, my smallest child (really still a baby, weighing just 15 kilos, or 33 lbs at 6 years old). Eating with them was really the most fun part of the whole day since, 1)Koreans have to share food with you (no matter how strange a stranger you are) and 2)their picnics are so different than ours and they ALL had been sent with almost identical homemade lunches which they all ate with little chopsticks that they carry in a little plastic container with them to school everyday.