Farm Field Trip

Hello once again! So on Friday November 5th we had a really really good fieldtrip! This was the first field trip that was actually kind of cool and not just a photo op.

Here is my class after we got off the bus from a 40 minutes ride. Everyone is a little fuzzy. The weather was really weird and spooky. It was foggy and chilly.

For our fieldtrip we went to a farm near the border to North Korea. The first thing we did was pick sweet potatoes! We gave all the 5 and 6 year olds sharp hoe like diggers and we let them loose to dig up sweet potatoes in the dung/dirt.

Here is Sally in her really pretty pink coat kneeling in the mud digging up potatoes. She got the most of anyone in our class!
Here is Daniel doing the famous Korean squat and trying to smile for my picture.
Here are Leo and Jack searching intently for more potatoes. Even the littlest rootish potatoes made them super duper happy!
Here is Jack with a good one!
Ha Won is good at smiling for my pictures!
After we picked sweet potatoes we drove a bit further and let our kids run around the forest gathering Chestnuts! It was so nice getting a little bit of fresh air and exercise!

After that we stopped at a small park and played in the leaves and ate a nice snack, and then we headed back to school for lunch and relaxation before afternoon classes!!!

Well that was wonderful and now I will also talk about this weekend!

Halloween

Ok post 2 tonight! Halloween!!!!

So for Halloween my school required all of the teachers to dress up. I decided to be Kim Bap which is basically Korean Sushi. KimBap does not usually have raw fish. I was standard KimBap which is cucumber, egg, carrot, fermented radish, and ham. All rolled in a roll of rice covered in seaweed.

KimBap comes in tonnnnnns of flavors. My personal favorite is Tuna Kimbap (not raw tuna, like canned tuna). There is also Kimchi Kimbap and Salad Kimbap! Plus a million more.

So anyways, Halloween isn't very big in Korea, but you can still buy some standard costumes. KimBap was not one of the standard choices so I spent wayyyyy too much time crafting my kimbap costume.

Here is Laura in my bed crafting her costume. My bed looks like a craft box exploded.

Laura was creating a Jellyfish costume out of an umbrella. Yeah pretty sweet!
This was my crafting area/desk/kitchen table/ only surface in my apartment. I made quite a mess and used a looooot of hot glue.
Here is the finished result on Halloween day at school!!!!!!! The Korean Moms and all the Korean people who saw it when I went out LOVED my costume and took pictures with me. I also had read seaweed in my hair and chopsticks in my bun! hahahah
Here is Daniel, The magician, and his Mom at the parade in front of HomePlus (kind of like target).
This is Jack with his Mom! He was a Power Ranger. His Mom is one of the nicest Moms in my class!
This is Sally bo Bally! She was a pretty pretty princess!
This is Grace and her Grandmother! She was a lovely Pumpkin Witch!
This is Shawn and his Mom. He was a magician. He was obviously more interested in his candy than the picture!
This is Jenny with our new student Ha Won! She was Princess Belle!
This is Leo and he was a freaking adorable pumpkin. He is pretty naughty and quite pervert!
The next night was the real halloween celebration. Kelly and Heidi (teachers from my school) had a fun party with Jello Shots! This is my friend Tom dressed as Sailor Venus (from the anime show Sailor Moon)
The Koreans went CRAZY for his costume. When we went out later that night he had to pose for around 100 photos!
Here is Devon as Sailor Mars and I missed taking a picture of Sailor Jupiter! They made such cool costumes!
Kelly was Andy Samberg from the digital short on SNL about a Boombox. She made her sweet boombox!
This is Ashley from my school as Marilyn Monroe of course.
Halloween turned out to be very fun and I was really happy with how my costume turned out. I now own a really time consuming Kimbap costume. I have no idea what to do with it! hahahahah

Ok well Halloween was last weekend and now I will post about this week!

October Field Trip

Hello! I am a bad blogger as usual so I am going to make up for it. This is the first of 3 posts I will be doing tonight....but you will probably read it last hahaha.

So in October we went on one of our "wonderful" field trips. We went to this park that had no grass or areas for little kids to play with. It was literally a photo op and it was not that great of a time sadly! So here are all the photos we had to take to show how much fun we had to the parents!!!!!

These are my babies, but Grace was sick so I only had 5.
Leo, Sally, Shawn, Jack and Daniel!

Sally being the little doll she always is!
Me and my babies!!!!
Jack getting manhandled by Daniel!
Trooping around the park : )
Snack time on the sidewalk. My class and Red class!
The final photo op! The red leaves were too good to resist. You can tell the kids love this!

I am not the biggest fan of my school's field trips. Korea is all about presentation and image. We have the kids pose and take lots of pictures and they don't get enough time to just run around and be kids.

October went quickly and I was very busy at work. My class is really improving and at the end of October I got a new student!!!! Ha Won is her name and she is very smart!

Chuseok!

Hi! So the last week I was lucky enough to get a break from school. Tuesday ,Wednesday, and Thursday were the Korean Thanksgiving. On the Friday before the holiday week we had a big celebration in honor of the thanksgiving. All of the teachers (Korean and Foreign) had to wear Hanbok. Hanbok are the traditional Korean Dresses and Outfits worn by women and Men for holidays such as Chuseok (Thanksgiving) and the lunar new year. I thought the hanbok looked comfortable and airy. Boy was a I wrong! The material (some form of silkish fabric) did not breath at all. It was like we were in hot tents. We had to wear them all day while we did different activities. The kids did too!!!!!

Here is me with 2 of my coteachers, Katie and Jenny. Here is Jenny with our class. Here is me with our class.

The kids did arts and crafts in their fancy hanboks and then we made Songpyeon in their fancy clothes. Songpyeon are rice flour balls that have beans in the middle and are a traditional food of this holiday. So we made these for a while and then the school thought it would be a great idea for all of the kindergarteners to go to the park down the street to play traditional Chuseok games in their best clothes.

Hahaha ridiculous. They played tug a war and a game kind of like hackysack in the sand around the park while wearing extremely expensive silk outfits! We were also in our Hanbok in the hot hot hot sun and on the dirty playground. Ridiculous.

Sally immediately stripped off the sleeves/ties of her hanbok as did all of the kids in our class. It was soooo hot and I cranked up the air and turned down the temperature as far as I could so the kids would stay dressed.
Jenny and Yellow Class
My Munchkins
Us being silly. You can admire how beautiful I look in my baggy fancy hanbok.

Anyways during the actual festival I had time off from school. The First day (Tuesday) I stayed home allllll dya because it was torrential rainfall from 5am until 10pm. It made tons of apartments flood along with restaurants.

The next day our street was on the news because it was some of the worst flooding in all of Seoul. Two of the foreigner teachers had basement apartments that flooded (not ruined but pretty bad). Never been happier to be on the 3^rd floor. 3 days later and they were still draining the basement of the big apartment building nearby.

The Second day of Chuseok I went and visited some of the touristy areas. Seoul was pretty dead but the touristy areas had some traffic.

These aren't actually my kids, but instead some of the kids that I saw the day I wandered around the touristy areas. hahah

Thursday, the weather was amazing and I went to this park not too far from my house (by subway). I LOVED IT. It was the best day of break. I walked through the park admiring the awesome fountains and public art. Later two friends met up with me and we biked all along the han river. This park went all along the han river for kilometers and kilometers. It was amazing. We returned the bikes an watched the little kids play in the fountains (they were made for this) and we watched this two year old boy for a while who was soooo cute. Afterwards when they walked by his mom told him to give us kisses and he came and kissed my cheek. It was so precious.

Here is the park on the river looking over the city!!!

Super cool water stairs.
Devon and Thom posing by the Fisherman statue!
Me posing on my bike! Yes, that is right, I biked for 2 hours!

Well anyways the break was nice and tomorrow I have the last free day until school starts up again! One last picture. I feel like I never left Milwaukee! Miller time!

Happy Chuseok !

My Class

Hello and Happy Sunday! I thought I would update my blog today with a bunch of pictures of my class! Then maybe another post with other stuff.

So my schedule is as follows

10am Kindergarten

12:20 lunch break

1:20 More Kindergarten

2:40 First Grade

4:00 Second grade

5:30 Third or Above

7 HOME

So here are my kindergartners! I have 6!

This is Daniel! He is very cute and cuddly and sometimes very very naughty.

Here is Jack. The one winking! He is super smart and spikes his hair daily. He likes to be a little smart alec because he knows he can get away with it!
This is Grace. She is so sweet and quiet, but a very good student
This is Shawn. You can tell he is my student : )
Leo doesn't like pictures unless he can act like a monkey. He is a real cutie, but he can be really naughty as well!

Shawn doing another face for me.

My last student is Sally. She is sitting next to Peter (he is in a different class). Sally is my darling little monkey who loves to hold my hand and kiss my cheek!
This is Yerial. She is in a different class that I watched for the fist week. She is such a doll!
June is in the same class. He is such a handsome little boy. He is going to be such a heartbreaker!
So this is my class (getting ready for lunch) Starting with the back left: Jack, Shawn, Leo, Daniel, Grace, and Sally.

Teaching them is quite hard right now because they have only been in school for 2 weeks. They don't know how things work yet and my job involves lots of cuddling and yelling. They are all 4 or 5 and this school is a lot of work. They are learning from a book that teaches them how to read and speak English. Most of them can write decent Korean already. Crazy I know!

They require a lot of energy, but I think in another 2 weeks or so they will understand how school works and hopefully take less energy from me! After teaching them I still have 3 more looooong classes!