Of birthdays blood and invertbrates

I have had some very Korean experiences this last week, and they didn't seem all that unusual to me, so I must be getting pretty used to this place.

My school celebrates the birthdays of the kindergarteners once every two months, and I have now been to two such birthday parties. We take all six classes of kids across the street to an indoor playground and let them run around in the McDonalds-esque play place. The birthday children dress as princesses or princes. The weird part is that the 'princesses' often look more like brides, complete with veils. We take pictures with them by class, but other than that they are free to run around like lunatics. I usually spend the whole time lifting children into the air, which they of course love. The most Korean aspect of this experience is that it all took place on the fourth floor of the building. In Korea things like driving ranges and playgrounds are up on top of buildings instead of being at ground level.

After the birthday party I had one class to teach. In that class two of the children--including one of the birth girls--almost simultaneously got pretty serious nose bleeds. My school at least isn't as concerned about blood as an American school would be. Blood is immediately and thoroughly sanitized where I am from. Not so much here. There has been a lot of blood in my classes this week. Earlier I was on one knee trying to comfort a girl who was crying for no discernible reason and one of her classmates was tearing around the room at full speed and tripped over my leg. He went face-first into the ground and bit his tongue. Hmmm.... let's not dwell too much on the level of blood and tears in my classes...

Last night John Will and I went to a Korean restaurant and ordered dumplings. What showed up at our table was a boiling stew of many kinds of mushrooms and many more kinds of whole seafood, including a nine inch long octopus, a conch-looking shell with a slug-like creature inside, and shrimp complete with legs and head. (I forget that I should bring my camera to ordinary things like eating dinner or I'd have some great pics for you.) It turns out there were noodles and dumplings underneath all of that, and the dumplings were absolutely delicious. Actually it was all good, even the weird conch-looking thing. I have found that I actually rather like octopus, which is in many Korean dishes. I feel like the fact that I no longer even find it notable to be eating tentacles is exactly the sort of thing that would be noteworthy to you. Oh, did I tell you that a couple weeks ago I at a ray? It was far to small to be a sting ray, much less a manta ray, but it was clearly of the ray family. It was pretty tasty but I wouldn't recommend it because it has so many tiny pieces of cartilage that it is incredibly difficult to eat the actual meat. A lot of restaurants have tanks of fish, crab octopus, squid, and rays outside their doors, the way Western restaurants have lobster tanks up front. In fact, even the chain grocery stores have tanks like that and will boil the seafood for you on the spot.