Finally, My Very Own Blog: You Needed Your Daily Dose of Adorable?

Easter anyone??

I hope your Easter Sunday was full of family and food, as it should be. My Easter was practically non-existent, because it's not really a recognized holiday in Korea. Due to the huge Christian population, it is known, and has it's own Korean name, but it's really only recognized by Christians, and even with that community, it does not seem to be a very big deal. Furthermore, the whole Easter Bunny, egg dying, ham eating, basket full of candy giving hoopala that I grew up with is not a part of it. "No egg hunts?" you say, "Those poor children!"

Ah, but that is where the ESL teachers come in. One of the funnest parts about teaching in a foreign country is I get to be the one to expose kids to fun holiday stuff that they don't normally get to do. Korean's have plenty of their own cool holidays, but they don't celebrate Halloween and Easter, two of the best holidays for children. (Although Children's Day, Pepero Day and getting 'bow money' on other holidays are all pretty cool.)

So during the week before Easter Sunday, my kids were busy coloring and cutting little paper eggs, which I then used to do egg hunts. And wow, did they love it! In every class, I had kids begging me to let them go out in the hall and rehide the eggs so they could do it again, and then challenging me to provide several good reasons why not.

And of course I incorporated learning into it, what kind of teacher do you think I am? Each egg had a letter on the back, and after the hunt was over, each child took their eggs and tried to make as many words as they could. Whoever made the most words was the winner. For the prizes, I had a grab back full of candy. One of the items was a Cadbury Egg my mom had sent (she sent two, and I can only manage to eat one each year, so I offered the other one up for a prize.) I just assumed the Cadbury Egg would be the first to go, because it's like the Holy Grail of Easter candy (along with those huge eggs I used to sell for middle school fundraisers.) But no one wanted it. Why? They had never had one before. They all went for the $1 chocolate bar that you can buy at any convenience store, because they knew it was good. Even when I pointed it out and told them it was one of the best candies in the entire world, they passed it up. Finally, in the last class, a girl chose it, but only because one of her classmates had actually tried one before and could vouch for its deliciousness. I won't see the girl until tomorrow, and I can't wait to hear what she thought of the Cadbury Egg.

So while I missed out on the family and ham this year, I did have fun with Easter, and I was pretty glad I could share the joys of the egg hunt and Cadbury with my students. Here are some photos of my youngest and cutest class during the hunt. They are all first and second graders, and just ridiculously adorable.

David, minus a few teeth, shows off his eggs.