As you know, this past week was Halloween! This is technically not a celebrated holiday in Korea. In the states, as kids, we would dress up and go door-to-door trick or treating throughout our neighborhood. However, in Korea, your neighborhood is probably a huge apartment complex and going door-to-door in a high rise, is just not the same.

However, the kids do still dress up for school and even academy. Most of our students simply donned a pointy hat and called themselves a witch, while others insisted they were dressed as a ‘student’. We had a few Harry Potters, an Iron Man, and of course a few princesses showed up! Our desk staff helped paint faces for kids without costumes and we served Tteokbokki (Korea’s super popular snack made from rice cake and spicy sauce).

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The celebration lasted all week as some of our students dressed up for the official day, while others were dressed by their parents on the wrong day! Overall, the kids seemed to really enjoy the holiday as they went from classroom to classroom saying their carefully memorized, “Trick or Treat” and holding out their hands or pumpkins for candy.

After the school celebration was finished, Ryan and I went to the popular foreigner district in Seoul, Itaewon, for some Halloween fun ourselves. It is super hard to find a costume in Korea, unless you want to wear a rubber mask or make it yourself. Continuing our couple’s costume tradition, Ryan found a sweet fur hunting hat and made a rifle out of cardboard, while I found some darker face paint (SUPER difficult to find!) and made myself into a deer. There were many people out celebrating and we had a fun time at Rocky Mountain Tavern meeting some new people from Canada and checking out all the creative costumes.

Hope you had a great Halloween, too!