Anticipation

I can't believe Sunday is August already!

My friend from childhood, Caroline arrived in Korea last Friday, July 23. She was joined by one of my college roommates, Amanda, and her boyfriend, Joe on Sunday. They had never met, but became well-acquainted while I worked at school all week and they hung around in Seoul.

They toured a palace and a temple. They visited some traditional markets and the Seoul fish market on the Han. They went on a riverboat cruise through downtown Seoul. They ate some raw fish. They visited the DMZ.

It was so interesting to meet back up with them after I worked all day and they toured. Their perceptions of Korea, their descriptions of the food they ate and what excited them about their days was refreshing.

I also struggled to be excited for them because, well, I LIVE here and I'm too busy being excited for our trip to Malaysia and Indonesia tomorrow!

Amanda and Joe left Thursday to fly to Singapore. They will meet Caroline and me in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia tomorrow night. We will tour and eat our way through Kuala Lumpur and its surrounding area, and then on Tuesday night, fly to Bali, Indonesia for some sand and sun.
On Saturday, Amanda and Joe will fly back to the USA and Caroline and I will fly back to Korea.
Caroline will leave Monday for the USA. Then I will have a mere 2.5 weeks left until I leave for Spain to meet Laura!

I'm really excited for this break and trip! I'll keep you posted as I can along the way, but will probably wait until I return so that I can supply pictures, too!

Alice, Please come back. We're not learning anything anymore.

Alice and her family traveled to another city in Korea to visit their grandparents for summer vacation. She's been gone for a week, and will be gone for one and a half more. It's been to nice to catch Joshua and Sunny up, but hard not having my translator around.

We've had a lot of photo shoots:


Gone to the park and gotten ice cream a few times:



And played this silly game involving a plastic "Tower of Pisa" and these mini red tourists.

First, you count out (in English) and divide up all of our tourists.

Then, blow on the dice for good luck.

Then, roll the dice.

See what color you land on.

Then, put a tourist on that color teir of the tower.

If it will tip in it's location, try a different side.


Then, sit back and hope like heck it doesn't tip over.

Make this face, it helps.

If they it tips, it's okay. Just watch out for flying tourists.

Try not to let them shock you too much.

Wait for the tower to finish swaying, and repeat.

It's been a good little game for number and color review. We count how many men are on the tower after each turn and they have to say the color before they put their man on.

It's fun, but we miss Alice!

Plus side: all the extra attention has been good for both Joshua and Sunny. They're both reading! I have successfully taught three babies not only how to read English, but the concept of reading. They didn't know how to read Korean, yet, so the process of link sounds together to form words wasn't clicking.

They can't read everything, in fact they only know short vowel sounds and the basic consonant sounds. We've also memorized a few sight words so we can link whole thoughts together. It is so much fun! For each word the say each sound for each letter, then say it faster, and finally, they say the word all together. It takes a century to get through a sentence, but I don't care. I can leave Korea a happy teacher!

Alice has been gone for a week and we miss her...

but we still have plenty of fun! Stay tuned...

Tiger's Last Day. Edit: My Favorite Class as I Know It's Last Day

On Wednesday, June 30, Tiger, a student in my FAVORITE elementary class came in and said that today would be his last day. I was in shock because this class had followed out supervisor, Irene, from school to school that she was supervisor for from the time that they started school at Korean age 5 (3-4). They were more like siblings to each other with all of the time they've had to spend together.

After we finished up our tests, we all took lots of pictures with Tiger and said our good-byes.


Fortunately, the next day (Thursday), I had planned a pizza/snack party with the kids. I asked Irene if it was okay if Tiger came back for one day for the party (students pay monthly fees and the next day would be July 1). She said it was fine, so I wrote Tiger's mom a note hoping she would let him. This would give me at least 24 hours to write him a letter and gear up for the first of my many good-byes.

Both Tiger and Tiger's sister, Gina, came to the party! Elvis's little brother, Evan (also a kindergartener) came, too. We had a blast!

So little did I know, though, that our new school, ICS, pulled the plug on a math class that Lina, Sophia, Elvis and Jackson were planning on taking starting Monday. They cut their English class from 4 days/week to 3 to make time for this math class, and then it didn't happen. This was the last straw for Lina's and Jackson's moms who were fed up with the new owner.

Come Monday Lina and Jackson were also finished and not returning. I was down to Elvis and Sophia in that class and the reality of going home was starting to sink in. I am going to have to say good-bye to a lot of little boogers. :-(

Field Trip!

On Wednesday, June 23, we boarded busses with our kinder kids for our June field trip! This field trip took us to Lotte Cinema in Yongin. It was about a 20 minute drive. The kids get so excited about field trips, and the teachers get even more excited. It's such a nice break from cramming English down their throats.

Here's my Joshua all ready to go:

I weasled my way into sitting by him on the bus, too. I only have so much time to snuggle the booger, you know? So, we pretended to be monkeys.

At the cinema, we were given a "behind the scenes (literally)" tour of how films are shown on screen in theatres. I guess it never really occurred to me that, in 2010, films are still shown in theatres using, well, film. Each kid got to go up and peak through the window into the theatre below so that they could make the connection.

The large moving disc to the right was winding the film through the projector. Actually, I might be making this up. The whole tour was given in Korean. The children were enthralled. We were lost. But, that's what it looked like was happening!

They hung on every word. I couldn't understand so I tried to get artistic cool pictures through what I called the film reel. Epic fail.

After the tour, each child was handed a movie ticket to see "How to Train a Dragon." At the door, they presented Spiderman with their ticket and then proceeded to the theatre. In the theatre, they had booster seats on all of the chairs our kids would be sitting on. It was precious.

The movie was dubbed in Korean, so I tried my best to follow but really just took a nap.

After the show we got a group picture:

Then, we got all the kids back on the bus. At this point, we were 1.5 hours past normal lunch time and we were cranky! It was the longest 20 minutes of my life, but when we got back to school we immediately opened all of their packed lunches and chowed and kimbap, fruit, and juice.

On Wednesdays, the new merged school, ICS (International Christian School), offers ballet classes to the kindergarten students after school. This particular Wednesday was rainy, so the girls all had rainboots on.

Watching them walk to the new school in their tutus and rainboots was absolutely hilarious! Here's Alice in her gettup:

P... R... E... C... I... O... U... S...!

World Cup in Korea! (Dae Han Min Guk!)

Now that it's over, posting on the World Cup is probably pretty dated (Go Spain!). Deal with it.

When Korea played, no matter what time of day here, random TVs and viewing audiences would pop up all over the place. Like here, at this "Buy the Way" convenient store near a bus stop on my way home:
On June 25, Korea played Uruguay at 11 pm Korea time. We went to a hotel near CoEx Mall for a happy hour wine buffet for Liz's birthday, then proceeded to stall and try to decide where we were going to watch the game. When we walked outside the hotel, we realized we were right where we should be!

There were huge screens all over the place and thousands of Koreans sitting, squatting and standing to watch the game. The road was blocked off, and it seemed the whole city shut down.

There was a commercial that played in Korea during the games that we called the "Korea Shouting" commercial. It had players from another team lined up to block a goal kick. You know how they usually cover their package with their hands? In this commercial, Korean fans were so loud (all the way from Korea), that the opposing team removed their hands from their normal location to cover their ears. There were also flashes of fierce African animals that were rendered helpless at the sound of all of the shouting.

I'd like to say that it was an exaggeration, but it's really not. When S. Korea scored a goal in any game, the entire country - every last man, woman and child - screamed with excitement. It's amazing how fierce and competitive this country is. Having been here for both the Olympics and the World Cup, it became very clear that S. Korea has a lot of pride in it's underdog of a country and it's participation on the world stage.

I was in Italy during the last World Cup, and it was intense for sure, but for some reason the World Cup in Korea was on a whole different level. It might have something to do with the population density, or it might be the super competitive attitude that this country has. I don't know. Either way, it has been an experience to watch.

We watched the game outside in the rain, so we had to buy ugly ponchos!

Then, it cleared up just in time for Uruguay to score their second goal. I told you how loud it was when Korea scored... the silence when Uruguay scored that second goal was more deafening than "Korea Shouting!"

It was kind of awkward. So we waited the moment of piercing silence out, then took a photo.

Here we are after the rain cleared, with pretty rain hair.

I wish I liked soccer more.

Alice's Birthday!

Alice's Birthday fell on a Friday (June 25) and almost every Friday, Dustin and I take our classes to the playground that is about 2 blocks from school. We started this when what used to be our computer room turned into part of my new classroom when our 5 room school house was transformed into a 7 room school house.

You'll get an update on the merger soon, once I feel like enough as settled that I can offer an un-grumpy opinion about it.

Back to the park... The kids love to go, and we love to sit and watch them play instead of teaching. We make them speak English, which is hilarious to see what kinds of things they say to each other.

"Evan, you go to the slide!" = (Go down the slide!)

"I go... I go.... I go... HERE!" = (I'm coming across the monkey bars)

It's pretty cute.

On the way back, we stopped at the creek to look for toads. Dustin's class is Korean aged 7 (5 turning 6 in America). They are SO much BIGGER than my babies!


After lunch, it was time for Alice's birthday party! Her mom brought lots of goodies, and even though we don't speak the same language, I think we are becoming pretty good friends. Over that last year, I've taught at least one of her daughters (Jasmine first, and then Alice) and she hasn't made a complaint, that I know of.

Normally, other classes aren't supposed to come to birthday parties, but since Jasmine and Alice are sisters, there was an exception for John Teacher's class. Plus, he was missing half of his students that day, so he didn't mind the break either. There would be less to catch the other students up on!

Jasmine, Jessie and Grace from John's class joined us with gifts for Alice:
(Jasmine and Grace are getting soooooooooooo big!)
The birthday girl, so excited to be the center of attention:

Getting ready to receive all of her cards and gifts:
How delicious does that watermelon look? It was.


Jasmine/Alice's Mom, Alice and Jasmine! Koreans are so pretty.


My babies and I (Sunny, Alice, Joshua):

The birthday party kind of extended into our last class because, really, who can teach 3-4 year olds anything after they've played at the park, eaten lunch, and consumed a ton of birthday food. Heck, I was in a food coma.

So instead we danced around, cleaned up the party and had a photo shoot.

My three little darlings (Alice in her new headband from Grace, Miss Korea, of course):

Playing Tummy Ha Ha:

I can't write about this anymore because I'm going to start sobbing. I'm going to miss them so much!

My friend Amanda, her boyfriend, Joe, and my other friend Caroline will arrive in Korea in 3 weeks. I leave in 27 days for Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia with them for 3 days, then we head to Bali, Indonesia for 4 days.

Then, I'll come back to Korea for two and a half weeks to snuggle the breath out of my kiddos. My final departure date is set for August 26. I will fly to Sevilla, Spain to meet my former roommate, Laura, who will have just finished up her summer nannying job. We will tour Spain for about 9 days, and then fly to Dublin on Saturday, Sept 4. Her mom, sister and aunt will arrive in Dublin on Sept 7, for a tour of Ireland that they booked together, and I will head home!

I'm set for arrival in the Fort on Tuesday, Sept 7, 5:10 pm and will DRIVE a car straight to Taco Bell for a HUGE Diet Pepsi and a bean burrito fresco style.

Needless to say, I can't decide which of the above activities to set a countdown clock for, so I'm just not going to do one (But, if I really had to pick, it'd probably be Taco Bell). It breaks my heart to think about leaving, but I'm excited for a lot of things to come, too!

I have a few plans in the works for future foreign adventures. Stay tuned...