4 months in..

4 months…so far so good. I can’t believe I’ve been here for 4 months. This year is going to fly by. I’m still really enjoying it here. I love the kids. And I just love teaching them – and hearing what they have to say and trying to interpret what they are trying to say. The young kinder kids are pretty funny, because when they don’t know how to say something in English (which is most of the time) they act it out – and say a few words they know. So it’s kind of like playing charades with them, which just cracks me up. They can understand a lot of what I say, it’s just hard for them to think of how to say stuff. The kinder kids are really good at repeating whatever I say too, so it’s fun to teach them new things :)

It’s gotten really cold over here, a lot different from Florida weather. I’m not a big fan of it, but I have found a new obsession: scarves. I’ve never really been able to wear scarves in Florida because it doesn’t get that cold. But I wear one every day here. They’re pretty cheap too, so it’s okay. I’m really excited about going skiing too. I haven’t been in a long time. I’m gonna try and go all the time while I’m here, and maybe even learn how to snowboard. :)

Two weekends ago my sister Jennifer was in Seoul for work. So I went up there and visited her. It was really good to see her. I stayed with her at her hotel, which was super nice. It felt great to sleep in a soft bed with real pillows and a nice down comforter. :) We had a good time. Friday we went shopping in Itawon (a big shopping area right outside the military base). Jennifer got a suit made, and also some custom made boots. And then she talked to me into getting a pair of custom made boots too. Since the only winter shoes I have are my tennis shoes. That evening we went up to the Seoul tower – and saw the whole city. On Saturday we went to a palace and saw the changing of the guard, which was really neat. We also got to dress up in Hanboks (the Korean traditional dress). After the palace we walked around Seoul a little and then went to another shopping area. That night we went to the Korea House and had dinner and a show. The show was really good. It was just like a little theater with lots of different traditional Korean dances and performances. There was one really cool act with 5 girls playing these drums with a synchronized dance along with it. Sunday we did yet again more shopping at the Namdemoon market, which is an outdoor market where you can buy things for really cheap. This is where they sell lots of name brand purses and anything else you could ever think of. After shopping I said bye and got on a bus back to Gwangju.

Korea House after the show


Hanbok wearing at the Palace

Last weekend was good, didn’t do too much. I went and saw the movie 2012 with some of the other teachers. I liked it. I thought it was really good, the plot was kind of cheesy, but the special effects were really cool. This weekend we are having a Thanksgiving dinner. We don't have ovens in our apartments, so we'll have to see how that all works out. And no turkey here, I guess chicken will have to do.

A few quotes from my kids:

Me: “Do you like tangerines?”
Student: “Teacher what is tangerine?”
Other student: “Oranges little friend!”

Student: “Can we play that one game again with the points?...it’s name is..uh..Japanese”
Me: “You mean Jeopardy?”

Boy’s journal about the movie Harry Potter: “Harry Potter’s mom is die. I cried.”

There was something written about Jello in their book.
Student: “Jello is what?”
Me: “Uhh..you know it’s a sweet dessert thing that’s squishy and gooey”
Student: “Gooey is what?”
Me: “You know it’s wiggly”
Student: “Wiggly is what?”
Me: “Nevermind, too hard to explain”

Say Kimchi!

Friday was Halloween. And even though Koreans don’t celebrate the holiday – they celebrate in the English Hogwans. We were supposed to go to a park with the Kinders and have a whole show with the kids singing and dancing and their parents were going to come, but it got canceled due to the swine flu. Yea…Korea is very paranoid of it and lately even the kids have been wearing surgical masks to school. So instead we just did the whole show upstairs in the activity room and their parents didn’t come. It was fun anyways. The kids all dressed up. The boys were superheros, wizards, vampires, etc..and the girls were either angels, fairies, or princesses. All the teachers dressed up too of course. The Kinder teachers all decided to be crayons! And Jason just wanted to be a box, but we made him be the crayon box. They were pretty much the best costumes ever! :)

So we started the day with face painting, which was interesting, since I’m not the best artist. Then we took all the kinder kids upstairs and they did their class dance. After that we had to do 2 dances with the kids. One was “You are my Sunshine”, and then the other was a Korean superman song…which was a hard dance, but so much fun - we practiced it, so we wouldn’t look like total idiots. After that we had lunch and then it was time for trick or treating! We had a huge box of candy and they just had all the kids line up – one class at a time and say trick or treat and they had little Halloween baskets for us to put the candy in. Once all the candy was passed out the kids went back upstairs to watch a movie…and all the foreign teachers came up and we took a million pictures. By the end of the day I was exhausted..plus I was getting sick, so I felt horrible. It was a fun day though.

This weekend I didn’t too much, because I’ve been sick, just layed around and such. I listened to the Yankee game this morning then I went to the Kimchi fevstival with Whitney, Erica, and Jason. I wasn’t expecting it to be that great, because well I’m not a huge fan of kimchi. It was a lot of fun though! I had a great time. The taxi ride over there was pretty fun in itself. It was a white and pink taxi, and we got in it and I felt like I was in cash cab. It was so colorful. It had pink felt on the sides and on the roof it had red cushioning. On the dash he had a lot of decorations - a few of those solar powered flowers that move and a spiderman suctioned on the windshield. We were taking pictures and he just laughed, and then gave us some coffee flavored gum.

Anyways, at the kimchi festival they had a free bicycle rental place – so we decided to rent bikes and rode around for a while. Erica didn’t know how to ride a bike, so we taught her how, and she picked it up pretty fast. After bike riding we found a tent that said “Foreigners making Kimchi” and we couldn’t pass up making our own kimchi, even though we weren’t going to eat it. So we went in and they first showed us all the ingredients and what goes into it...I couldn’t tell you what all of it was. After that they demonstrated how to do it. Then they took us to a table, gave us aprons, gloves and the materials and let us at it. Well a guy kind of helped us a little bit. All we really did was just spread all the spicy stuff on the cabbage. It was a lot of fun.

Once we made our kimchi, we went around to the different booths. They had lots of different types of kimchi..I only tasted a few of them, and was force fed some black salty thing. There were a few other exhibits we went to, including a kimchi art place and the history of kimchi. And apparently Gwangju (my city) is known for making the best kimchi in Korea. :)