April Fool's Day in Korea

Surprisingly one of the holiday's Korea and the USA share is April Fool's Day. The third grade English textbook even includes a chapter devoted to April Fool's Day Tricks... yes I think its a strange topic for learning English too. Korean's know April Fool's Day as "lie day" or "liar day." Unlike in the USA the pranks people play on each other here are harmless, meant to be silly and funny rather than to dupe or shock. Since April Fool's Day was on Friday we were warned that the students would try to play tricks on the teachers. People said since students study all the time this was one fun day they could have to relax a little. I wanted to recount a few of the "pranks" I saw.

In addition to the holiday Friday was a beautiful spring day so spirits were especially high. I entered my second period classroom to find the students had turned around all 30 desks and were facing the back wall instead of the front of the classroom. They thought it was hilarious, it was pretty cute. Instead of making them turn the desks around we just had them turn around in their seats to work so they could "prank" the next teacher as well. During my fourth period when it hit 12noon all the students slapped their hands on the desk four times and shouted something. During lunch three girls would corner any teacher they could, do a silly dance and sing at the top of their lungs. It was hilariously cute! They would literally circle the teacher, even if they weren't paying them the time of day at first, until the teacher was forced to stop and laugh at them. One of my coteachers also told me that when he arrived to his third period class, the room was empty. He looked outside and all the students were laying on the grass like they were dead. I also saw a large group of girls from the high school holding hands and running around in a huge circle on the playing fields before running into class, hand in hand. Jason said one girl took her desk and set it in the middle of the playing field and just sat there. Haha!

A fun, cute day for the students to let go and for the teachers to give them some slack in the classroom.