What's Been Goin on in Korea These Days?

Well not much has been going on in the land of the Morning Calm. The weather is pretty cold, but no snow in Gumi yet (knock on wood) I've been keeping myself busy with the end of school and travel plans to China. I am going to visit my friend Nan for Christmas. Here is Daegu Station lit up for Christmas. My friends Ali, Rita, and I did some Christmas shopping last week. 

Here is another random picture. I was just sitting in the kimbab restaurant getting some dinner before getting on the train. I went and hung out with some friends in Gyeongju last weekend while Erik went to Japan for his French test (p.s. he didn't take the camera so no pictures of his trip =P  ) I was planning on playing Frisbee Sunday, but it was too cold, so I was just a cheerleader/score keeper. I am not a die-hard Frisbee player haha. 

Here is the field they played on. It is a pretty spot on the river. Luckily no disks went in the water, although there was an awesome black lab there who would have been more than willing to jump in and get it back! 

I was too cold to take many pictures, but I did manage to get one of the sun going down. 

Back at school on Monday! Here are my Kindergarten students practicing their ABCs. I was trying to get them to spell out Merry Christmas, but it failed haha. 

Later in the day I have after school classes upstairs on the 4th floor. OMG it is so cold! This guys wants to be a car designer when he grows up. 

December is the best month for ESL teachers. I have just been doing Christmas themes all month. We learn (well tried to learn) some Christmas songs and have been doing crafts with things that I find around the school.  

My best friend, the hot glue gun. Keeps kids occupied for hours! 

Too bad no one has Christmas trees for these awesome ornaments. 

On Tuesday we had our English Christmas party. We made cakes, instead of cookies. We bought some pre-made yellow cake and made our own whipped cream. Wow what a mess! It was lots of fun though. 

Here is Ally showing the kids how to use the hand mixer to mix the cream. 

Each group got to mix their own cream. Even though half of it ended up on me or all over the table, they managed to keep enough in the bowl to frost their cakes. They all got a kick out of frosting their own cake because the Koreans rarely bake, as most families don't use an oven that often. 

As you can tell by her face....

These two seem to be doing a bit better. 

" Now it's your turn...NO! don't press that button." Too bad they can't understand me and now it is raining white sticky stuff....

We ordered little carry out boxes for the kids to take their cakes home in. My job ended up being transferring cakes onto plates. I didn't even drop one though. 

Chopsticks work well as cake decorating utensils. 

After making cakes the kids got to make Christmas candles. Haha you can see my fingers getting covered in frosting in the background. 

I don't think this guy was too happy about the way his candle turned out haha. 

Yeah my hat is awesome! 

After a long day of making cakes and cleaning the English classroom, I went to my favorite place in Gumi...Balli Spa. For only $6  I can have a hot shower, sit in various hot tubs, sweat in the sauna wile wathcing the news.... for as long as I want.  This sauna also has free hair dryers! Wow life is good. haha.

I can't believe it is already the end of the year and Christmas is almost here. My sense of time has stopped since I left. It was really strange watching the TV the other night night because the death of Kim Jong Il was is all over the news. It is hard to tell how the South Koreans are taking it. It is on the TV non stop, but I have don't really know what they are saying about it. I think it was more unexpected than anything. I guess we will see in the coming days what will happen. As of now things are pretty normal.  

Today we had a school trip to the skating rink. Grades 1 though 6 went so it was pretty crazy. One of the girls had these really cute gloves. 

First they all had to line up and listen to the guy explain the mechanics of ice skating. It was funny because our third graders had a chapter on asking  "Can you skate?" so every third grader came up and asked me this question. 

The rink was pretty big, and most of the kids clung to the wall so there was a lot of room for those who knew how to skate well.  The sign in the back says 금오 (Geumo)  랜드 (Land) 아이스 (Ice) 린크 (Rink). I am getting better at reading! Maybe if I stayed another year I would be able to know what I read actually means more often. Too bad it took me like 5 mins to type in Hangul haha. 

This guy looks pretty hard core....but he is pretty sweet. 

I was standing on the side lines for a while and all the kids would come over and say hi. This girl pretty much slammed into the wall cause she was skating too fast. I had to back up as I was taking the picture. 

And even I tried to skate. Haha my helmet is too small. I always wear my hat at school cause it is so freaking COLD! I didn't want to take it off cause my hair was too frizzy so I just wore it under an already too small of a helmet. Now that I think about it I am an adult and probably didn't even need a helmet haha. Guess it is better to set a good example and look ridiculous. 

I only fell once, but I fell  backward and landed on my tail bone!! After that my students were really worried about my safety and were holding my hand trying to help me haha.  Good thing I had that helmet on. 

I asked a 6th grade girl to take my picture, but she is as bad as me on skates so it is not the best quality haha.  But that blurry figure is me trying not to run over any small children. It was a nice morning and I had a lot of fun. Now I am just sitting on the computer at school watching the clock work its way toward 4:30....man it is going to be a long January...... No school and only a week of winter camp. I need Facebook.....

Thanksgiving Party

Thanks everyone for all your Thanksgiving wishes! I wish I could have been there to celebrate with you this year! Erik and I didn't so much for Thanksgiving. We went out for Korean barbeque, but honestly I didn't even realize that it was Thanksgiving haha. We celebrated Tuesday at school with a party for the kids who try hard in class. Ally ordered some chicken leg snack things (??? I don't any other way to describe them) You can see them all piled on the couch. 

And even more! She had the great idea to wrap them all up in tin foil to make a life size turkey!

Here is the sculptor at work.

And here we are admiring her work! It was a pretty awesome turkey!

Doesn't it look delicious?

First I did a power point about Thanksgiving then, we made turkey Frisbees!

CUTE!

Here we are playing in the back of the classroom.

After playing I brought out the turkey. I think I was more excited than the kids hehe. They were trying to smell it because they thought it was real at first. Then they were disappointed when they realized there was no turkey.

Say Kimchi!

After I carved the turkey everyone got to enjoy the chicken leg snacks inside.

This girl took a whole leg for herself.

Winter is Coming!

 

It's the end of November and it has decided to finally stay cold. No snow though so I am happy about that. Saturday Erik and I took a trip to Seoul to go to the big Kyobo book store. Erik wanted to find some French books, and I just wanted to get out of Gumi. This is the line up the escalator as we were getting off the train at Seoul station.

Didn't see much in Seoul that I wanted to take a picture of this time. I had to be a tourist for a minute though,  and made Erik take my picture in Front of King Sejeong the Great. We kinda have a joke about him, so I was really excited to see this huge statue of him in the plaza outside the metro.

But I made him take another one because he didn't get Gyeongbokgung (the royal palace) in the background. He is not a very good tourist....hehe