Lunar holidays are usually a period for teachers to travel around Korea after traveling abroad during their winter break. However, for some teachers, the lunar break ended up becoming an extension of their winter break. 

“I did plan to come back before the end of winter break,” Jared Rock, 9th grade English teacher, said. “But I ended up testing positive right before I came back to Korea and had to stay in Spain for two extra weeks. After coming back to Korea, I had to stay in quarantine over the Lunar break.” 

While Mr. Rock was in quarantine, he also got a chance to read a Spanish novel. 

“I also read Huasipungo, an Ecuadorian novel that is written in the Ecuadorian dialect of Spanish. It is a combination of Magical realism and brutal realism” Mr. Rock said. “The way the author depicts our society was very interesting.”

Meanwhile, other teachers spent the break a little more active or even studying. 

“I did take the chance to study for my Ph.D. degree,” Steve Nave, 9th Grade history teacher, said. “But I also rode my bike around the different regions of Seoul and took many trips to the Han River biking all the way to areas like Apgujeong and Coex.”

Mr. Nave also used this chance to travel to the new sections of the city that he did not get a chance to travel to for a while. 

Mr. Nave could also directly see how much COVID-19 is impacting Korean society. “As I was exploring Seoul, I got the chance to travel to Jongno and Myeongdong,” Mr. Nave said. “When you are only surrounded by teachers at SIS, it is really hard to see how much the pandemic is affecting this country because everything around the SIS community seems like it is fully functioning. But looking at the closed stores of Myeongdong, I could see that Korea was also strongly impacted by the pandemic as well.”