LCI's First Ever Halloween Spirit Week!

WHAT- A- BLAST! LCI's first ever Spirit Week was exciting, but quite exhausting! There were a number of factors that played into it all. By the afternoon breaks on Friday, all the teachers had their head of their desks to rest for a short five minutes before putting a smile back on their face to teach until 6:30pm. It was such a fun week for the Kindergartners who experienced the fun dress up days that we (the teachers) also enjoyed when we were young...and not so young if you had dress up days until senior year of high school, like me! All of the staff thought it was so disappointing for the elementary students (as young as 1st grade) who didn't get to participate in Spirit Week, but often saw all of us teachers dressed the part. I must remind you though, of the constant pressure students have to learn, learn, learn here, so it just wasn't an option for them according to our Korean staff who we begged to let them participate. Regardless, it was a blast for everyone, including the elementary students, who really enjoyed seeing the teachers dressed up every day! The Spirit Week dress up days were as follows:

Monday- Pajama Day!
Tuesday- Crazy Hair Day!
Wednesday- Backwards Day!
Thursday- Sports Day!
Friday- Halloween Dress up!

Those were the exciting parts of the week...now for the exhausting. As I mentioned two months ago when I arrived, many parents were very worried about the amount of time we were here before we came to school to see their kids as a "quarantine" against the Swine Flu. Well, that worry has continued to escalate quite rapidly since then and is at it's peak about now as a few Koreans have died from it, there are a number of cases in schools, the medical field predicted it would reach it's peak around October/November, and the biggest announcement that the Korean government was thinking about closing all schools in the country for 2-3 weeks to prevent any rapid outbreaks! Well, that didn't happen. But, many schools are closing for a minimum of three days to a week due to the amount of students dropping schools for up to a month making classes sizes little to no students and the number of parents calling to complain about their concerns. On top of all this panic, our head supervisor was gone the entire week due to her mother being seriously ill, and my (as well as a handful of other teachers) supervisor, Katie, was in and out all week as she just found out she is pregnant and has been advised to rest with the amount of stress around the school. That means we were left with two supervisors doing four people's work load. Although we all felt tired, we can't complain compared to the exhaustion that Rebbecca and Michelle (supervisors) showed by Friday. At this point, LCI has had no "serious patients" but has decided to close down for one week. The staff now has an unexpected but much needed nine day break (Oct. 31st-Nov. 8th) to enjoy!

As exciting as that is, for now, we have lost a week's pay and the options for making that time up are LESS THAN THRILLING. One of the teachers said, "If we have to work five, six day weeks (Saturdays) in a row, someone REALLY will die!" So that option has been eliminated and talk of taking winter break days away has been mentioned, but won't slide either with all teachers having vacation flights booked months ago. However, everyone is excited for the break and rushed home to look up inexpensive flights to warm places near by. Britney, Shauna, and I have booked a flight to visit Taiwan from Sunday to Saturday. Some other teachers mentioned travels to Thailand and the Philippines. From the sound of it, everyone is going to have a blast and hopefully take the time off to get some well needed rest. At least that's what the three of us plan to do as we lay around the beaches for five days! :)