One of the random joys of being an education-world-immersed family is that we all get school photos.  This, along with eating school lunch and riding the school bus, is one of the perks that makes it all worthwhile (wink, wink).

Our school hires an American school photographer who flies over and sets up the whole American school photo “experience”.  This guy travels to various international schools doing the school photo gig and then goes back home to the US.

I’ve always found that interesting because there are tons of capable photographers right here in China, but I guess the lure of the Lifetouch envelope with 1 8×10, 2 5×7, and 12 wallets all perfectly packaged up with a “reorder” slip inside is too much to resist.  It is a little detail of American life I didn’t expect to experience in such an identical way here.

Thankfully, though, our school provides a package of photos for free so we do get to avoid the price-gouging $57 packages.

International Day 2009.  We had a great day today celebrating the various cultures of our friends and coworkers and classmates.  We all wore hanboks today- the national dress of Korea.  The girls had hand-me-downs from friends and Keith and I had ours made by a local tailor.  Ours are not the most authentic but they worked!  My Korean friends saw me and came over with scissors,  glancing at my hanbok and trying to Koreanize it more… they settled on clipping off some Chinese knots and various things and then said it was “So much better”.   Apparently the Chinese-tailor-made version is not 100% authentic.  And yes, it was a terribly windy day, hence our dresses flying to the side!

I’m still not 100% perfect at this hanbok-bow-tying stuff and getting all the layers put on properly (yes, that was my kid with her hanbok skirt inside out at the 2008 International Day).  Sadly, I didn’t even NOTICE until I saw pictures!  I have some training left to become the ultimate Korean mom!

More pics, as always, are on Facebook.