Celebrating America's Birthday in Korea

So most of you that know me from back home know that I love my country. I felt a bit sad to be outside of America for the 4th of July. Never fear, I came up with a battle plan to combine the two cultures. One of my fellow co-workers is married to a US Air Force guy. She lives very close to the US Army base and has access to almost all of the conveniences of America. We invited all of our Korean co-workers. They kept asking us why we were so excited to celebrate our countries birthday. I found this to be a bit odd since they are a fairly new democracy but we promised them a good time.

I started the festivities on Friday by having my classes sing "Happy Birthday" to America. Here's a video of my favorite class.

We gathered at my friends house and her husband went to Taco Bell to get us some food. There's nothing like eating American junk food on America's birthday. Also you add the fact that Mexican food is non-existent in this country and it made for a pretty nice treat. Our Korean co-workers showed up shortly have that and made the Korean "junk food" called ddeokbokki which is a spicy, rice cake, ramen noodle, fish cake filled, soup-like mixture. I think we really mixed up the cultures!

We also taught the Koreans American drinking games. It was really fun to teach them about America!

When it was time for the fireworks we headed to the roof...I mean helipad to watch them. Yes, my friend's house is so posh it has a place for helipads to land. There were signs everywhere that were written in Korean that I'm sure told us to, "Keep Out." We disobeyed them and went up there anyway. I managed to fall up the stairs since I'm special like that but they view from the top was amazing. You could see the entire city! We watched the fireworks and sang patriotic songs with the fellow military people who also broke the rules.

On a side note, when I returned to school on Monday my kids asked what I had done that weekend. They all knew I was excited about America's birthday and I told them I had celebrated it. I asked them what they will do to celebrate Korea's Independence day on August 15th and they told me they would just stay at home and relax. One girl told me, "Teacher, I think that people in the west like to party a lot on holidays and people in the east just like to relax." My response was, "I think you're probably right. Fair enough."