Halloween Party

I invited my 8am class over to my house for hiking and a Halloween party this weekend, and it was a blast!! 3 guys and 1 girl met me at the subway to start our hike at 1. We went to Suraksan (the mountain by my house), and I think it was bigger than they imagined...It was hard for me too since I haven't really been hiking in quite a while. We got pretty far though. The mountain goes through stages. There are pieces of really hard hiking, but between are easy transitions. We had 1 more really hard piece to go before getting to the top. But when we were done, we had reached "our top". So we were really happy about that. The leaves were still changing colors, so it was beautiful. I only have one picture of our time together, and the students have the other pictures. So I'll post the other pictures sometime this week.

It was fun to go hiking with people my own age and to have a more friendly atmosphere. We joked around and they tried so hard to speak English all day. I know it was difficult, but I was so proud of them!

At home, one more girl came for the party, so there were 3 guys and 3 girls including me. We ordered pizza and chicken. We also made deokboki (a ricecake spicy stew) in my house and steamed sweet potatoes!! It was really fun, and I loved seeing how to make this very traditional Korean food. We just sat around and talked, and then I brought out the pumpkin. It was huge!! We drew a face on it, and then cut it together. I showed them how to scoop out the seeds with their hands (as children typically do in the US), and then we put a small candle inside. They took pictures of it and we must have sat there for 20 minutes or so just looking at the pumpkin and talking about Halloween. What a great time!!