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!

First Korean Post!

Hello all! I have now been in Seoul, South Korea for a grand total of 9 days! I arrived last Saturday afternoon and was picked up at the airport by a man sent by the school....I then arrived at my new apartment!

Here is a picture of the bedroom portion of my apartment. You should admire my lovely purple comforter and my lovely flower covered windows. :)
I was provided with a kitchen table and while I wait for the arrival of my computer desk it is a desk, vanity, and kitchen table in one!

Here is my lovely kitchen area and this wonderful balcony. Why is that a washing machine on the balcony? hahaha yes it is! and a stove area! all in one tiny space! It is quite funny, but not that big a of a hassle surprisingly!

This is my bathroom. In true Korean style the shower is the entire room. I really like my shower. It has great pressure and it feels like I am in a salon!

These are some of the other teachers at the school! Liam is new like me and then Hannah and Laura are both from/attended minnesotan Universities!

This is Laura posing Korean style in front of our pig spine soup!

Here is Liam stirring another batch of pig spine soup!

This is the waitress making fried rice in the soup pan after we finished the soup! She was nice and let me tourist photograph her hahaha

This is this really cool statue by my house! Seoul has tons of public art everywhere.

This is my school lunch! I opted in to get lunch at school and I get this little yellow lunch box everyday with different delicious Korean meals! It costs about 2 dollars a day and tastes great (at least to me hahah)

Notice the little silver/gray things in the right corner.....those are anchovies!

This is Shane. He is the teacher whose classes I am taking over (minus morning Kindergarten where I have a brand new class). He is super nice and it sucks he is leaving while I am coming!
This is Hongdae! It is a popular area to go out and has tons of bars, clubs, and restaurants!

I went shopping at Express Bus Terminal market. It is an underground gigantic market. This booth was selling everything for a dollar and the mountain of stuff behind the display made me laugh!

So far Korea is going really well. I am at school from 10am until 7pm (sometimes I get off a bit earlier).

From 10am until two thirty I am teaching Kindergarten. This is a lot more intense than American kindergarten. They learn to read and write by the age of 5.5 usually! That is read and write AMERICAN on top of Korean!

I have been busy non stop since I got here and tonight is the first night other than last sunday, where I haven't gone out to dinner with friends or done other fun evening activities. It actually feels great to stay in and watch some true blood and recharge.

I am going to try and keep writing on this blog (as I always say) or at least put pictures on.

BYE!

Pre-Post

So it is 6:50 am on Friday August, 20th and I am up and showered and I guess ready to go? I leave for Korea today from O'hare Airport and it still doesn't feel real!!!

I was supposed to leave tomorrow, but the school wanted me earlier. So I had 2 days at home and I am leaving today at 12:35 pm. One positive note is that I was able to get a direct flight!!!!!!!

13 hours on one plane Chicago to Icheon (city next to Seoul) with the best airline, Korean Air!

The next time I write on this blog (willing that I actually write on this blog this time) I will be in Seoul, South Korea.

Over and Out.