Parents' Day

Close on the heels of Children's Day is Parents' Day. Which is surprising because I would have thought the corollary to the Peanuts strip is that in Korea, every day is Parents' Day. The school did not forget about this holiday either. They sent home a little basket of carnations and a card:

Carnations seem to be the official flower of Parents' Day.

Here's the back of the card:

"Mom, Dad, I love you"

Unlike Children's Day, school is open on Parents' Day but Tek happened to skip that day because we took a road trip. (More on the road trip later.) They seem to be very good at observing holidays at the day care.

Every day is Children's Day

If there's a Mother's Day and a Father's Day, why isn't there a Children's Day? Everyone knows the standard answer to that question:

In Korea, however, every day is not Children's Day. Children's Day is limited to a single day, May 5th. It's an actual holiday (a "red day" on the calendar), so ironically, Tek will not be spending Children's Day with his peers at the "children's house" (the Korean term for preschool), but with his family. They didn't forget about him, though. He came home today with a pile of gifts. 

They do seem to like to give out snacks at the preschool here. They also gave the children a T-shirt to wear as a uniform when they go on school outings. The kids were given a heavier shirt and pants set in March, but the weather is getting too warm for that. We have not yet opened the wrapped gift. I think we'll save that for Children's Day proper, since we have not gotten him anything ourselves. 

Back home, of course, today is that traditional American holiday, Cinco de Mayo. Happy May 5th, everybody!

Festival of Cuteness

Every year in January Tek's daycare puts on a show, an elaborate performance with sets, costumes, and choreography set to recorded music. They call it a Jaerong Janchi 재롱잔치, which I've translated here as "Festival of Cuteness".

On Tek's first day at the school, we saw his classmates practicing, but didn't really have a sense of what it would be like. There was no way Tek could have participated even if he wanted to, as there simply wasn't time for him to practice before the performance. We did go to the show and take him along with us.

What a shock we got. These are kids between the ages of 2 and 5. I can only try to imagine the amount of time, effort, and money that went into this thing. It was on the one hand impressive to see what these kids could do; at the same time distressing to know that this is where the school is expending its efforts. Most of the parents seemed to really be into it; many had brought fake bouquets with flashing lights in them, which they held in the audience during the performance.

The performance was scheduled for an hour and a half, but probably ran closer to 2 hours. We only stayed for the first half.

Here are a few still images from the show:

The set

The little ones

Three-year-olds

Four- and five-year olds (performing to "We will ... we will ... rock you!")

It appeared that the costumes were ordered as one-size-fits-all for each class; the taller children were showing a lot of belly.

I've prepared a 4-minute video of some of the highlights. It's too big for upload to blogger, you can view at Vimeo using password "korea" here . At 1:13, check out the prize-winning parental sign.

Anyone recognize the song at 0:51? It sounds so familiar to me, I wonder if it's a Korean-language version of something well known in America ...