I want to catch you up on some pictures of the past month.

First, Chuseok at school:

I took this video as I walked into the classroom.  Like last year, everyone came to school dressed in their traditional hanbok.  The video continues until Thomas - the first one hiding under the table - jumped on me.

We gathered in the library.

They practiced their bows.

Then we went outside to play games.

This is Thomas.  As you can tell from the video and this picture, he doesn't like having his picture taken.  But then he got a hold of my camera and took a few pictures. They weren't bad.  Here are a couple.

I like the fuzziness of this one.

Then, for the Chuseok long weekend, a group of us went to Seoul.  We walked around the many different areas of Seoul and ate a lot of good food.

This was in Insadong

On Sunday, some of us went to the largest church in the world.

Inside.  They had a specific section for foreigners where you could listen to a translation of the sermon in seven different languages.  It was certainly a big building.  There are church buildings about as big as it in Grand Rapids, but what makes this the largest church in the world is the amount of services they have.  I'm not sure how many that is, but we attended one at around 2:00 and when we got there, there were large numbers of buses leaving from the service before us.  I think they probably run all day.

And we went to a coffee shop which had Dr. Fish - where you sit with your feet in a tub full of fish that eat your dead skin cells.  It was so ticklish that it was hardly bearable.

And we went to another strange coffee shop: The Cat Cafe.  It's a coffee shop with about 20 cats of different varieties just wandering around, walking over your tables and inside your bags.  It was kinda cool, but also kinda strange.

They even had one of those hairless Russian cats.

Then my friend Frank (on the left), who lives in Seoul, took us to the river where we found a playground with a merry-go-round.

And then to an island on the river with a relaxing park.

And that was our trip to Seoul.

Then this last weekend, we went to Boegyeongsa (the nearby temple and mountain that I like so much).

We hiked up quite a bit of the mountain this time - almost to the top.  It was a beautiful day.

That's me at the top.

 Let my finish with a short, romantic tragedy from my kindergarten class:  

 At the end of every month, we have a birthday party for the students who had birthdays in that month.   At one point in the birthday party, as a good photo opportunity, we ask each student to call someone up from their class (who isn’t also celebrating a birthday) to give them a birthday hug.  Sometimes the birthday hug also comes along with a birthday kiss!  Now, in my class I have three girls and eight boys.  And, maybe because there are fewer girls than boys, the children have already decided which boy each girl is going to marry.  Ruby and Andrew, Rachel and Robin, and Ellen and Alex.  My kindergarten tragedy occurs between the last of these couples: Ellen and Alex.  You see, whenever it’s one of these students’ birthdays they predictably call up their ‘assigned’ significant other for their birthday hug (and sometimes kiss)…  except in September… because Ellen’s and Alex’s birthdays are both in September…  so they can’t give each other a birthday hug/kiss because when it comes time for it, the other isn’t in the crowd of students who they can choose from...  Isn’t that so sad?

Thanks for reading,
Michael