May Days

In the past couple of weeks, it seems May has brought on holiday-after holiday. First, Children's day. Then, Parent's day. Last Sunday was Mother's day (well, not here) - and finally, tomorrow, there's one that concerns me:

Teacher's Day.

On May 15th, it's celebrated by having students present gifts, including Carnations to their teachers - well - it used to be celebrated on May 15th. According to my adult students, school is now usually cancelled on Teacher's Day, because parents were taking advantage of the opportunity, in order to bribe teachers. Korean Public classrooms have 40+ kids per room, so some parents attempted to sway the teacher's attention by giving a 'gift' of money.

Still, my morning adult-students surprised me by arriving this morning with Carnations (the flowers in the this picture), a cake, and declaring 'we're having a party!'. This, of course, being the same group that i've been teaching for 9 months - i've come to expect them to be awesome.

That's them, up on top (minus two who were absent, and one who was late).

The school administration also presented each teacher with carnations, as well as some sort of Vitamin C powder (that tastes like Fun Dip). There aren't many exceptions that will allow a man to say that he was 'touched' by receiving three colorful flower-arrangements, but I think it's fair to say that Teacher's Day is an exception.

Tomorrow, GEC has a planned cultural trip, where we'll head onto some island for a group picnic (which means no work - that's how I like my Fridays). Should be interesting.

Cheers!