It's Playday!
Pictures taken September - October 2005

About once a month at Herald, we take the morning kindergartners out of the classroom to do something fun. It's not fun and relaxing, however, as we take a royal beating from the kids and still have to go teach the afternoons afterwards. An apt description for playdays might be "fun and exhausting," or perhaps "fun and detrimental to one's long-term survival as a functional human being."

Still, they're a rattle in the routine and a welcome change from time to time. Here are some pictures from the two I've attended thus far.

Sports Day was a time for little children to fall down and hurt themselves, and their parents to run around and play silly games. Herald Kids School
Hope You Will Make Many Memory Today!! There's some kind of freakish obsession in Korea with "making memory": every activity under the sun is
touted as a Memory for family or lovers. I think perhaps this is why Koreans take so many photos - they're afraid they'll forget their Memories and
all the cash they forked out will be wasted. If this is the case, blogging is tailor-made for Koreans.

My student Maria being happily dragged through a three-legged race by her parents. Ultimate Memory Explosion!

Brother and sister prance-athon. Korean children learn to prance from a very young age.

If you fail to limbo under this bar, you will shame your ancestors for all eternity! The
Kim family comes to Sports Day to win.

This log running race was ostensibly supposed to encourage teamwork. What usually
happened was the biggest kid on the team went tearing off on his own, dragging
the log behind him and leaving his loyal team to chase behind screaming wildly in
Korean.

Mike slow-dancing with the day's host, for reasons I can't quite remember. I do recall
that the host was an ass and kept calling me Charlie on the microphone. I'm not a Charlie.

Tom blew my mind when he showed up in a Leafs hat. His dad is apparently stacked
and goes to Toronto all the time. Anyways, I now declare Korea to be Leafs Nation #2.

After a long day in the sun, nothing satisfies like Beard Papa's Pipin' Hot Cream Puffs.
Tell Beard Papa what you want, baby. Tell him your dreams, your fantasies. Tell him
you want his pipin' hot cream.

The culmination of Sports Day was a great big circle of love.

And the hills surrounding our field were lush and gorgeous. They reminded me of this
one time I was watching the Discovery Channel and saw some nice hills on TV.

Sports Day left me tired from running and aching from being run over and smothered by a gigantic inflated beach ball, but it was nothing compared to the physical rigors of next month's Birthday Party...

First we imprisoned the naughty children in Green Bubbles of Solitude. This is standard
birthday procedure.

Then other things happened, like sweet potato pizza and delicious chicken pieces and
fat kids eating two slices of birthday cake with their hands. This caption has nothing
to do with the picture, by the way.

The most popular attraction of the day was the Slide of 1000 Terrors. This slide was formed from the femur bones of many fallen neon warriors,
twisted by dark design into Rollers of the Damned. The kids seemed to like it.

Yup, they had a whole lot of fun.

"Chris, you're a pussy," you must be saying. "You took pictures of kids ripping down a slide? And you think that's tough?" Well, yeah. You're not seeing the whole picture. It's hard to take photos of yourself being abused.

When I hung out in the ball room, Sam devilishly convinced several children to take flying jumps onto my balls. Appropriate, I suppose, but very very painful. On the zip line many children were tickled and had to let go of the handle, only to fall, laughing hysterically, directly onto my balls. When I went down the Slide of 1000 Terrors, kids rode me like a toboggan and I made the terrible mistake of going face first. My balls were pummeled by neon torture rollers as the weight of ten children pressed me downwards, and then I rammed face-first into the wall at the bottom of the slide. Would I be a masochist if I said it was good times? Because I laughed the whole way through.

However, it's ironic, I suppose, that playing with children is now the reason why I will never be able to have children myself.

The bruises remain, a patchwork all over my body, and I ache like Grandpa. Every week the parents write notes to me in their kids' Roll Books, wishing me well and hoping that I will make good memories here in Korea. I already know what I'll write back this time:

11 more playdays to go!