Happy Chinese New Year!
Sunday and Monday of this weekend is Chinese New Years, or Lunar New Year, also celebrated here in Korea. This year is the year of the Dog, which also happened to occur in 1982: the year I was born. Kind of a weird coincidence.
It's not like New Years at home, though. There's no whistles, tacky hats, or alcohol pouring into the streets. Everyone just visits with their families. So for us foreigners here, we're just going to enjoy our 3-day weekend quietly.
Here's a funny fact: In Korea, everyone turns another year older on New Years. So, in Korea, I'm actually considered to be 25. I can't believe I just aged two years . . .
At school today we had a Lunar New Year's party to celebrate and, well, to give the teachers a break from teaching. All the kids wore their traditional Korean clothing that they wear on the actual Lunar New Year's day and other holidays, called hanbok. They were so cute! They all learned how to bow properly to their parents and then we played traditional Korean games. Even us English teachers had to wear hanbok. To give a description, hanbok is pretty much the most unflattering thing you could wear. It's basically a big moomoo with a little jacket on top - and excellent thing to wear if you were trying to hide an illicit pregnancy. But other than that - I would consider is a major fashion faux pas.
Don't worry, I took lots of pictures of the kids, I'll post them on here as soon as I get my computer (which will hopefully be tomorrow!).
Korean word of the day: Jiggum (Now!) You can imagine how this word would come in handy in the class room.
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