Field Trip with the Kiddies!

So Thursday morning, the kids got the treat of going to a Korean play as a field trip. This was only for the pre-kinder and kindergarten kids, so the play that we saw was clearly catered to that crowd. We packed about 50 kids into several buses, and trekked about a half hour to some random theater. When we got there, we had to wait for about 20 minutes before the play actually started, so we were hanging out in the lobby with about 7 other schools, all with their own 50 little kids running around and causing general mayhem. Noisy to say the least. And, in what I can only describe as an act of total cruelty, the lobby had not only a GIANT playplace area, but an ice cream shop. Neither of which, of course, the children were allowed to partake in. I don't know how many times I had to say "not today" in that 20 minute span.

The little kids really like jumping on me slash hanging on my arms. One kid in particular, Gordon, doesn't even like hanging on my arm or wrist, but instead goes for my pinky and thumb. So he will grab my pinky with one hand, and thumb with his other, and repeatedly ask/gesture for me to lift him in the air. Who am I to deny him? Thus, I comply.









When we finally got in to the theater, mayhem ensued. Imagine about 250 5 year-olds in one place. This scene is exactly as loud as you would picture it to be. Below are just our kids:


When the show finally started, I was allllll the way in the back with the rest of the teachers. As if it really mattered anyways, because the whole thing was in Korean. So all we could do was try to piece things together with body language and crowd reaction. The play consisted of a few adult actors/actresses dressed up as frogs (and by dressed up, I mean wearing what appeared to be a green bicycle helmet with frog eyes glue-sticked on.) Also, they were wearing very baggy shirts and suspenders, but the suspenders weren't attached to their pants. And they had some sweet light blue converse high-tops on. Whatever floats the 5 year-old's boats, I guess. They really seemed to enjoy it. Here's the stage after the play was over:



The play was about as goofy as you would expect it to be, being that they were entertaining children so young they still can't properly use scissors. That was, until the end of course. At this point, the protagonist frog's mother gets violently eaten by a large and evil snake. And I mean violently. Then, said protagonist frog begins weeping over her mother frog's dead body, crying for about 5 minutes and requesting her to come back to life. They then change scenes, and the protagonist frog cries over her dead frog-mother's grave for another few minutes. Aaaaand, scene. End of play. Nice. By this point, countless small children have begun bawling their eyes out, and for obvious reasons. The Korean ushers are working for their money, running all over the stands yanking each crying kid out of the crowd, thus trying to keep the crying-by-association issue under control. From our view in the back, although slightly sad, we could not stop laughing. Something about a whole roomful of crying 5 year-olds that was totally preventable seemed comical to us. In the end though, we found out that the crying was mostly contained to other schools, and not the children in ours - so we were lucky enough to not have to console small children and explain about frog deaths on the ride back.

Also, on a totally unrelated note: here is the pencil case of one of my students. See if you can find the blatant-knockoff brand in this one. It almost fooled me for a second:



On an even more unrelated note, (I just found this picture and couldn't help but show the world,) this pre-kinder named Jake just got a new haircut. AMAZING.