Easter in Korea

This will now be my third Easter spent in Korea, and usually it passes silently without much acknowledgment.  Here it's seen as a religious holiday, and so many non-religious Koreans or non-Christian Koreans might not even realize that the day is passing. My mother always is astounded by the fact that I never know when Easter is here, and she always needs to inform me of it's passing. Some years, after the fact. But this year, Easter has been all around me.

In America, it's tradition for kids to get hard boiled white eggs and dye them or color them  and give the eggs as gifts to family and friends. I had never though much about this in Korea, but one big problem here is that it's impossible to get white eggs here, or at least white chicken eggs. They just don't seem to exist here.  And so, dying eggs lacks the same punch as it would at home.

So, when I attended my Korean class on Friday, which is run by a Catholic multicultural center, I couldn't help by take a picture of their solution to the brown egg problem. A plastic wrapper that proclaims "Jesus has been resurrected!" with a "Happy Easter!" on the other side. I couldn't help take a photo. Of course, as yesterday was Earth Day and we were coincidentally studying about environmental problems and reducing waste, I couldn't help think about the wastefulness of these little plastic wrappers that everyone ripped off immediately to eat their egg in class....

Then from Korean class I was off to work. We had planned an Easter egg hunt in the park outside our school for the students, but due to the rain yesterday we had to move it indoors to our little gym. Which meant not nearly as much fun. Of course, in Korea, I've never seen those little plastic eggs that open to fill with little treats, so we had to improvise. We made laminated eggs instead.

There were three variations of eggs, and each one was worth something different. One candy, one a snack, and one a storybook. The kids were only allowed to find two eggs, and they had to be different kinds of eggs. Oh, and they only had 30 seconds to do it. But, despite this, most kids found at least one, many two and they were quite happy with their gifts.

 Hunting for "eggs"

 Su Yeon with her egg and prize

 

Since the egg hunt was so short, I decided to give the kids a break today. We didn´t have a whole lot of work to do today, and rather than review for the test (which the kids never like to do anyway) I decided, why not have a fun day of doing some crafts. These kids study all the time, I think sometimes they just need a break to relax. So, I found a pattern online for a "heart sheep" and this is the fun that ensued.

I could show you about 20 more photos of my students and their sheep, but I don't want to bore you to death. Anyway, I hope everyone has a good Easter. I will probably spend mine in Chuncheon, the city of lakes and home of 닭갈비 so look forward to some photos next week!