Chuseok

Yesterday we had our Chuseok party at school. Chuseok is basically the Korean Thanksgiving. All of the kids got to wear their homboks, which are the traditional outfits that they wear for special events. They were so adorable! We had a wonderful day of games and activities for the kids. First they got to make Seongpyeon. Seongpyeong is a kind of like a ball of squished rice, filled with sugar and sesame. The kids had fun making the dok (squished rice stuff) into little bowls, then filling it and closing it up. Of course, the most fun was eating it. The next thing they did was decorate some masks. After they finished, I brought them on a prade around the floor to let them show off their masks to the other classes (and to let them get out of the classroom and have some fun). Next we made jaegis, which are basically a korean style hackysack. We also played a game with sticks and a board that you move your players around. Of course, I ended up with one crying student because her team didn't win. The last thing that we did was go out to the park to take pictures. It was really hot, so of course the kids were sweating like crazy in thier homboks, and complaining the whole time. We had to be out there for a pretty long time because they had to take individual class pictures, and a picture of the whole school. Overall it was a great day, where everyone had fun.



I leave tonight to go to Nepal. I will be there until the morning of the 27th. We will encounter some pretty harsh conditions, but I am extremely excited. I tried my best to pack really light since I will be carrying everything on my back, but my pack is still pretty full even after I removed a lot of stuff. Hopefully I will return safely in 9 days!

Typhoon Kompusa

Last Thursday Typhoon Kompusa hit Seoul. It was supposed to hit at 3:00 in the afternoon, but it hit early at 6:00 in the morning. When I went to go running at 7:00, it looked just a little windy,

so I decided that it was safe to go. It did feel pretty windy when I was out, but it really didn't seem like anything big. I saw at least 50 trees down that morning. When I was out, some guys came by in their truck and stopped. They rolled down the window and yelled "Dangeroushi, Dangersoushi, go home!" I didn't really get it, so I just kept running. When I got home, I found out that they canceled our kindergarten program for the day. I still didn't quite get it because the storm had passed and it was sunny by 10:00. Apparently the government recomended that kindergartens close for the day and other schools start 2 hours late. The roads were pretty bad. There were guardrails accross the freeways and trees down everywhere. I went for a 50 kilometer bike ride up to Seoul that afternoon and passed houndreds of fallen trees. There were also shingles all over the place, even in places where there weren't any buildings within 100 yards or so. 5 people died in the Seoul area, including one person who near where I live, who was killed by a falling tree at about the same time that I was out running that morning....

I leave for Nepal in 13 days. I am super anxious about it. I am nervous about the actual work that we are going to do, but really excited about hiking in the middle of nowhere. We'll see how it all works out.