Christmas Party

We had a Christmas party for the kindergarten students today.  Well I don't know if it was much of a party since there was no food, but Santa Claus came!  And he brought presents!  Basically the parents were told ahead of time to bring a present without their child knowing and then the PE teacher dressed up like Santa Claus and gave each kid their present.  I'm pretty sure all the kids knew right away that it wasn't the real Santa Claus, but I think some of them were at least convinced he was bringing presents for the real Santa.  The kids, of course, had a blast getting, opening and playing with their presents and it was fun to watch.  I also learned that the best way to get a ton of work accomplished with 2-5 year olds is to tell them that Santa Claus will only come to school if they get all their work finished before lunch.  I only had to say it once and I think we got more learning accomplished today than we ever have!  Even Tommy, who lately has been complaining (instead of working) that I spend too much time sitting by Jayden and not enough time sitting by him anymore, did his writing in record time today.

 Baby Anthony with Santa

 Eric's student, Tony with Santa

In other news, the presidential election happened yesterday and South Korea elected its first female president with Pak Geun Hye.  We didn't follow the election very closely and don't know much about either candidate but we do know it was an interesting election for the country.  Pak appealed more to the older generation, while the other candidate appealed to the younger generation.  They were saying all along that it would be a tight race and would likely depend solely on which group of people had the most voters.  There are a few reasons why we think the older generation turned out with more voters.  The older people in Korea are more likely to vote anyway, as many of them remember when they didn't even have the opportunity to vote.  Also, there is starting to be more older people in the country (Korea is very concerned about how low their birth rate is and has been for many years).  Lastly, it is final exam time at the universities.  That means that not only are many younger people too consumed with studying to focus on the election, but if they are from the countryside and currently studying somewhere like Seoul or Busan, they would have had to make the trip back to their hometown in order to cast their vote.  According to polls reported on the news, South Korea's economy was the top priority for voters this election.  We heard on the news last night that the country is expected to make only a three percent economic growth this year, a steady decline over the past few years, and a deep concern to the people and politicians.  The interesting thing is, many western countries have been posting negative numbers for a while now and would probably love to see three percent growth!  The South Korean people also want to see more effective talks between the South Korean president and the leaders up North in Pyongyang.  We're curious to see what they think of a woman president and if they get anywhere with talks between a new female president and a young, still fairly new, communist leader.

One more thing (because no post is complete without a weather update!)... It's still clear and sunny and freezing cold.  We will never be fans of what feels like extreme temperatures to us.  For those of you who know just how much Eric hates the heat with a passion, especially the heat we had here this past summer, here's something that will describe just how cold it has been over the last 2 months from what he said to me the other day: "I almost prefer summer over this cold winter... almost."  :)