Field Trip

It's funny that I enjoy fieldtrips now as much, maybe even more, than I did as a child. This morning we packed the kindergarten kids onto our four Swaton buses (equiped with tvs playing cartoons for the kids) and left for Say Department store. I know, a field trip to a department store doesn't sound very educational (unless we're trying to teach the kids to be material monsters), but this isn't like a department store in the States. Actually, all the big stores here are much more than we come to expect from a department store. Korea, with it's focus on practical usages of space, manages to turn every store into what we would call a mall. This Say Department store was equipped with a theatre where they were putting on a Korean folk tale play for us and a couple other Hagwans. We arrived first and filled about 1/4 of the auditorium and I was impressed by how uneventful moving the kids from Swaton to the play was- they behaved well, stood in line, held one another's hands, and were seated without a fuss. As the other schools arrived, I felt very proud to be working for Swaton. Kids were running everywhere, crying, fighting for seats and the teachers looked drained. After everyone was packed in, the lights shut off and the kids went nuts. The play was in English and a little Korean as well, but most the dialogue was English. It was cute, simple. A story about karma and the benefits of being a humanitarian. At one point, the hero was rewarded a payment-free credit card and he broke into this rediculous song, "I am rich, I am rich, I have a credit card." Myself and the other foriegners were falling out of our seats laughing. I wonder if this educational message is going to be the ruin of these children in the future...The play ended with the words, "open up your hearts, open up your hearts and love everyone." Sweet. We lined up, held hands, packed back in the high-tech buses and returned to school.