christmas at school

So today was the last day of school before Christmas break. All of the male teachers dressed up as Santa and since I don't have a morning class I had to be Santa's Helper all morning and help them hand out the gifts. The whole thing was pretty cute but I thought it was strange that the parents brought the gifts in beforehand and then we handed them out....so some kids got these huge elaborately wrapped presents and others got little unwrapped boxes and stuff. Strange system it seemed to me. And the kids weren't allowed to open any of the gifts at school. That, I think, was partially because the kids would have been upset if they got colored pencils and the other kids got Nintendos or whatever, but also partially because apparently it is Korean tradition to not open gifts in front of the person who gave it to you. I also thought it was pretty funny that almost none of the kids believed in Santa and all spent the whole time calling him Anthony Teacher or Jason Teacher or whatever. But then you could sometimes trick them when a new teacher was dressed up by saying "Well if Shane Teacher is Santa then who is that?" and pointing at the new teacher dressed up as Santa.

All in all it was fun but pretty stressful and really hot in that costume.

We also all got a bottle of wine from the Director of the school which was pretty nice I thought. Kind of a strange gift to hand out in the middle of the day at school though.

Then after school I had to go back to the recording studio to record some more...still really strange to me. It is really bizarre to hear your voice as a recording.

Tonight Kyle is coming over and we will probably get dinner and then all of my coworkers are going out to celebrate the fact that we don't have to work in the morning.

Tomorrow almost all of the teachers are going over to two of the teachers who are married, Danielle and Shane's apartment for a big turkey dinner. What is really funny to me about the whole thing is that no one has an oven so we are baking all of the turkeys we got in these toaster ovens that are half the size of a real oven. But apparently it can be done.

Hope all is well with all of you!

Merry Christmas if I don't hear from you before then!!!