Magggiiiiiiccc

Want to start this blog on a little more solemn note. Last week Tatnall lost one of it's greatest family members, Mrs. Crawford, to cancer. I have been thinking about her over this past week and thinking about all of the questions I want to ask her, everything I still had to learn from her. Her teaching style was strict, and she held us to extremely high expectations, but underneath her tough exterior was a loving teacher and mentor who just genuinely wanted what was best for each and every one of her students. While most of us could not spend an entire class lecturing about one three-word-phrase from Hamlet, Mrs. Crawford succeeded in making literature, such as that one phrase, an intellectual and emotional adventure. I want to ask how she succeeded in getting even the least interested student in the class to write grammatically correct and sometimes even thought provoking papers about books that they did not even want to read in the first place. How could she get an entire class to sit in complete silence with just a stare? How did she get me to walk around a full auditorium of people and sing while sitting on people's laps? I hope to personify Mrs. Crawford in my future classroom. I want my students to have half as much respect and admiration for me as we all did for her. I had the opportunity to watch her funeral service, for which I am grateful to Tatnall and the Crawford family. Everyone spoke so beautifully. It was an incredible way to bring closure for me so far away. She is watching us all, and probably reading through my blog tsktsking me for my horrible use of words-connected-with-dashes and run on sentences. Sorry Mrs. Crawford, I miss you terribly and will hold your memory dear to my heart for forever.

Still one of my favorite moments

Onto what I got up to yesterday. As usual, I am trying to do something interesting each weekend, even if it is just something simple nearby home. Shanna and I decided to make our way out into Seoul (despite the below freezing temperatures) and see the Tim Burton exhibit at the Seoul Museum of Art. I had been to a Tim Burton exhibit before with mum, though it escaped me where it was.

 For those of you who know Tim Burton movies, you know that he is a rather strange individual. Dark and slightly disturbing drawings and cartoons are is forte. The museum not only focused on his more recent movie endeavors such as Frankenweenie (I don't get it) and Alice and Wonderland. But also it gave us insight into his life before the fame and fortune. Growing up in a small town, Tim was an outcast, and his drawings did not help this image. His imagination was mind blowing. The thousands of different characters he came up with covered the walls of the museum, no two characters looking the same. One of the most interesting themes I found throughout the exhibit was Tim's depictions of strange children. He drew many cartoons where a child was born with some sort of defect or unusual characteristic. For example, Stain boy was born with the power to stain things...One boy was born with a log for a head, and another with nails in his eyes. His feelings of being an outcast were mirrored in these cartoons. While they were depressing, it was his way of coping. Look at him now, a successful movie maker and married to the hilarious and beautiful Helena Bonham Carter.

"Teem-baw-teuhn"

Sad balloon man

Entrance into the exhibit

Edward Scissorhands display shrubbery

giant tongue staircase

  After the art museum, we had a few hours to kill before the Action Drawing show later in the evening (you will find out what exactly what an Action Drawing show is later on, patience). We first stopped at a sushi restaurant nearby to grab some grub. The sashimi rolls were delicious! The soggy fried shrimp in the noodle soup that Shanna ordered...not so appetizing but you live and learn. Once we were nice and full we hopped into a taxi. Shanna took my for my first experience in Insadong which is a street lined with shops and booths selling a variety of Korean crafts and trinkets. Between the silly touristy shops with bookmarks and psy shirts we found several stores selling traditional Korean pottery. Every store had different designs on the pottery. Just when I thought I found the most beautiful pattern another store would have one even more gorgeous than the last!

 Another important stop on our stroll was the Kkultarae (꿀타래) stand. Here they begin with a block of hard honey and then they stretch and twist it until they have over 2 thousands strands of honey. they then fill small pockets of the stringy honey with a mixture of nuts and other sweet things. Shanna informed me that they aren't the tastiest treat, but it was something I needed to watch while I was here.

Starting with just one loop

Ending with thousands and thousands of strings

filling the string pocket

 We wandered around shops looking at the random gifts and trinkets. I learned that it is good luck to have a smiling pig statue in your home. I'm okay with that, they look so jolly!

Herbs and dried foods

Once the sun set, the temperatures started falling even lower. We stopped into a traditional tea house to warm up a bit before heading to the theater. I had a mug of Jujube tea or 대추차 (dae chu cha), which is something I have sent home already for my family to enjoy as well, then we were off to the show! 

Korea has hundreds of different theatrical performances that are easy to follow for those of use who aren't exactly fluent in Korean yet. Shanna had heard about Drawing Hero from Alex teacher and has wanted to go since she arrived here! As she only has about a month left, we decided to go.

We were slightly nervous at first. The show began with some very slap-sticky skits from the four performers including stealing hats and bumping into doors. They were very similar to mimes or clowns in that there was no dialogue besides one word here and there. Lots of wild gestures and funny facial expressions. One of the words they used was "magic" so whenever they "magically made a wall move" or did a silly trick they would all go "oooOOOooo maaaagiiiccc". It was humorous. 

Once the men started completing more intricate pieces of art I realized why so many people go to see this show. These for guys are incredibly talented in all areas of drawing and painting. Using paints, pens, and charcoals they created amazing works of art while simultaneously putting on a comedy act. Each of the men had his own character and personality. It was so much fun to watch them interact on stage. They also pulled volunteers up from the audience (maybe volunteers isn't the right word...) and they had them do embarrassing games and movements which was quiet entertaining. The two men chosen to go up with them were great sports and actually put a lot of effort into it. I commented on this to Shanna that most men in the states would not have played along so willingly.

photo time with some of the art pieces in the back

my favorite little man

charcoal tiger

 One of the men painted on a chalk-board like wall with black paint. It was difficult to see what the final picture would be until he lifted the board and yellow powder covered the wet paint showing us the final portrait of (thankfully my mistake was caught by David) Bruce Lee. I'm apparently not up to date with my movie star knowledge! Of course throughout the entire time he was painting this, the other men were trying to attack him as he slow motion fought back between brush strokes.

paint and yellow powder "Jackie Chan"

 At one point they rolled out a big rectangle box full of some sort of liquid. I think it was a clear acrylic? Not sure, but anyways the men proceeded to put drops of color into the box and swirl them to create a beautiful and colorful underwater scene with fish, sea horses, crabs and more. They then placed a canvas on top of this and when they pulled the canvas up the paint swirls transferred onto it. Not that that wasn't gorgeous enough they pulled off a layer from the canvas and what was left was a mermaid shape with the gorgeous colors from the original swirly scene. I wanted all of their final pieces to take home!

 The men were talented and entertaining. I would definitely recommend everyone, when they come visit me, to go see their show! Shanna and I wondered what happens to their final pieces as they do two shows every day, 7 days a week. How could we get our hands on one?...that will be an adventure for another day.

new bff

This week at Little America, we have our Elementary speech contest on Monday where the winners from the class competitions present their speech in front of the other classes and then the winners of those will go onto a Bucheon speech contest. Some of my students worked very hard on their pronunciation and memorization and I'm sure they will all win! Thursday I have my second and final open class for this term! There are only two students, and both of their mothers speak very good English. Am I nervous? No...ok maybe a little, but there is a lot of pressure on the Korean teachers, so some of that pressure rubs off on me. I'm sure my students will do wonderfully. We are reading a book about a cupcake party so to celebrate being finished with their open class, on Friday I am bringing in cupcakes and icing so we can have out own! Also Friday is the kindergarten song contest. My class is performing "This Will Be Our Year" by OK Go. I think this is the latest I've left teaching them the dance...we still have a few more verses to go, but it will come together, it always does. That video will be up at some point!

Miss you all at home and hope you are staying warm!

Korean word of the post: 마법 (mabawm) "maaaaaagic"
xoxo

Salon Du Deliciousness

Another week to update you on! It has still been freezing here though no more snow yet which is a lovely gift from the sky. I don't know how many more times I can push my luck at not falling down on my way to work before I dramatically wipe out on a patch of 3 inch thick ice... At the moment I am still accident free!

This past week was a bit of a whirlwind. On Friday I had my open class so naturally the Korean teachers were doing what they do best and running around all flustered about things being perfect as I try to keep out of their way. They feel a lot of pressure from the parents to have a perfect lesson and presentation overall on open house day. The students would complete a lesson with me, then present their speeches about their favorite animals, and lastly they show their jazz dance that they have been working on with the yoga/dance teacher.

Not only did we practice my lesson 4 times that week before Friday so the kids would be like robots on the actual day of open class, they also recited their speech 5 too many times on that Friday morning before their parents arrived! Talk about a bit of over kill but that is just the way they do things here. I decided to take on the roll of stress reliever throughout the week. Instead of lessons, sometimes I would just have the kids do silly dances or sing songs to have them act their age. Several of my students broke down in tears when they forgot their speech for a split second while reciting it to me. Needless to say I became a giver-of-hugs-and-love for those in need, and even those not in need.

The stage for open class dances

On the day I was feeling a little more nervous, but only because I would have my 10 students, their parents and siblings, my co-teacher, and both of my bosses watching and video taping the lesson. After being a little shaky writing the date on the board I controlled myself and completed a great lesson on past tense verbs. My students were wonderful and completed their speeches as well as their dances perfectly! Side note- their costumes for the jazz dance must have been made by a blind relative of Richard Simmons after drinking 10 cups of coffee...

Yikes...

Overall the dance was entertaining. It was to "Moves Like Jagger" which is one of those songs that have the annoying quality of getting stuck in your head even after just thinking of the title (sorry...)

After open class was finally over it was time for some fun and games. Kids have to be kids afterall.

super cute Jane

My version of apples to apples

After we packed the kindergarteners home, it was time to prepare for Market day with the Elementary students. Over the past 6 months the students have been collecting points from various contests and teachers to use on this day. Each class was transformed into a different themed area for students to use their points. This included a game room, snack bar, stationary store, sweets store, toy store, and olympics game room.

Alex setting up the Toy Store

Head of the Stationary Store

I was in charge of the game room!

This CD has brought me through my childhood. Time to spread the love!

Snack bar- popcorn/hot dogs/dukbokki/paninis

Two of my favorites, Mable and Jenny, enjoying their snack

The whole Market Day was a blur of students coming in and out each room spending points and filling their bags with trinkets and snacks. By the time all of the students left I wanted to lay on the floor and sleep. No time for that of course- Katrina, Shanna, Amanda, Tina and I were off to Alex's for a night of yummy food and good company!

We made our way to Alex's apartment where one of the first things I noticed was the fact that she has two fridges...One is a kimchi fridge! I had heard about them but have never seen one. As I opened each drawer, they were stocked to the brim with Tupperware filled with kimchi. One drawer was cabbage kimchi from last year, another was cabbage kimchi from this year, and the last was raddish kimchi. Now...there was enough kimchi in there to feed a small country for a year. Alex informed me that her mother-in-law kept them well stocked. The understatement of the century.

Dinner time! Alex went all out and prepared an amazing spread of fillings for our rice paper wraps. As she set each new plate on the table the pools of drool collected on our plates (not really, that's actually kind of gross). When we finally tucked in, the table wasn't visible under all of the plates of veggies, egg, noodles, duck, chicken, shrimp and several sauces to combine together into our own wrap creations. This dinner just proves the theory that a colorful dinner is a healthy dinner. I think every color was represented!

duck, pineapple, sprouts, egg

all wrapped and ready to eat!

Tina enjoying the noodles!

After we were all sufficiently stuffed full of food and wine, what better way to work it all off than Fruit Ninja Kinect competitions? If you aren't familiar with fruit ninja, the goal is to slice up as much fruit as you can as it is tossed up in front of you. Some good clean fun! An excellent arm workout as well!

Shanna and Tina battling it out

The night was so much fun! We played kinect as well as a horrible card game called Take-6 which I am officially the most terrible player on the planet. We decided it was the chair I was sitting in...thanks for trying to make me feel better guys! I am going to miss Shanna, Tina, and Alex as they are ALL leaving in March leaving Katrina and I to fend for ourselves! Hopefully we will have another one of these nights before that happens!

Saturday it was the day of the Chocolate festival in Seoul! Shanna and I made our way to the COEX Mall which is a few stops past Gangnam (obviously we had to stop in the Gangnam subway station to get a picture with the sign). This mall is about 5 times the size of the biggest mall you can think of...the Chocolate festival was on the 4th floor in a giant convention all filled with booths and displays of endless chocolate. The show "Salon Du Chocolat" tours the world sharing new chocolate companies and other art forms to whoever wants to explore the festival. We not only tasted all sorts of chocolate, we saw a few demos of French chefs making some chocolate creations, heard a few bands play some great renditions of "Dancing Queen" and "You Raise Me Up". The best chocolate I tried all day had to be the camel-milk chocolate from a company in Dubai. We struck up a conversation with one of the creators who invited us for a tasting with a Korean blogger and her translator. Honestly, I think he was just excited to explain his chocolate to English speakers who seemed genuinely interested in the camel-milking process. The chocolate was much lighter than others as the camel milk is more watery than cow milk. While the company couldn't sell their chocolate due to immigration laws, they could hand it out with donations...a W2,000 donation would get you a small bar and a W10,000 donation gets you a large bar. Gotta love loop holes! Especially now that I have a bar of orange macadamia nut camel-milk chocolate in my fridge right now...it's calling me.

 

 

Teasing

 

What we were really waiting for was the chocolate fashion show at the end of the festival. I think in our heads we had this vision of girls wearing entire outfits made out of chocolate. While chocolate was involved in the outfits, some just looked like they were given a bag of dove heart chocolate and a hot glue gun.

Still an entertaining show. The random performances during the show included a 3 second magic show with a girl pulling flowers out of the air, a rapper...and two hippies with headbands and a guitar. After several raised eyebrows, Shanna and I left the festival with several chocolate bars and our sweet teeth satisfied for about a month.

Shanna and her shoes

 As for new news here, I splurged a bit on myself and bought Rosetta Stone level 1 to really focus on my Korean language acquisition. While I love my lessons with Tina, learning a little bit of Korean once a week wasn't going to get me where I want to go. I really want to be able to hold a conversation with my co-teachers as well as other Koreans I meet throughout my time here. Going through the first few units, the things I have learned before have really helped me understanding new concepts and grammar. I will keep you all posted on my progress!

Korean phrase of the post (one of my first Korean sentences from Rosetta Stone)
여자아이가 물을 마서다요
(yawja-a-ee-ga mool-eul ma-shee-da-yo)
 "The girl drinks water"

xoxoxo Anyeonhikaysayo!

Brrrrrrrrr- from Bucheon!

As temperatures here continue to drop to ungodly low numbers, the residents of Bucheon bunker down inside with their floor heating and fuzzy sweaters. Some brave (or insane) souls, aka Shanna and I, venture out to do some standard touristy adventures around Seoul! We made our way to the 63 Building located right next to the Han River. My faithful followers (all thousands of you...*echo echo*) may remember me calling this building the "Golden Nugget" from one of my very first blog posts. Well now it was my chance to see what the golden nugget had in store for us on the inside! 

After messing around with the ticket kiosks conveniently all in Korean, we ended up with a ticket that would get us into all 4 main attractions of the building; The Imax theater, the Aquarium, the Art Museum, and the Wax Museum. Our first stop was the Imax show about the Grand Canyon. It really turned out to be a documentary about a guy writing a book about the Colorado River. Good, yet slightly random topic to be showing at a Korean Imax show in Seoul...As the show was all in Korean, Shanna and I got to use translating headphones (Shannas had remnants from the previous user...). I wonder if it is safe to drown the headphones in hand sanitizer before putting them on my ears? Too late now I suppose.

After feeling a bit motion sick from the 3D-on-boat camera view of white water rafting down the Colorado River, we headed to the Sky Art museum located on the top floor of the building. The whole outside of the theater allows you to see the incredible view of the entire city. Or well...it would if the clouds didn't decide to come down and say hello this particular day. The blocks of ice in the Han River were also rather depressing...

This is looking over the same park from the Rock concert in a very early blog post!

Wait...am I in Antarctica?

The Sky Art museum's exhibit was called "Europe geuhrimeuhro dawnaneun yawhey" which means "Europe picture leaving our trip"...but probably in a more logical order. Either way it involved paintings and drawings from all over different countries of Europe. I sneaked some pictures before a nice Korean security guard in a pink button down and purple sweater vest told me that pictures were not allowed.

 

Koreans like their super touristy photo opportunities. They also like their "selfies" but that is a whole nother topic...for those who are not versed in the world of "selfies" it is when you take a picture...of yourself...with your phone or camera doing generic things like buying yogurt at the grocery store or tying your shoe in the elevator. But I digress--back to the touristy photo ops

In the art museum we saw a sign for this mysterious room...

What could it be???

Oh.. a bit of floor covered in mirrors so it sort-of-kind-of-if-you-squint-your-eyes-and-stand-on-your-head looks like you are standing over the street below...

Still, a fun opportunity to take a picture despite the not-so-thrilling "Thrill Deck".

After wandering through the art museum we headed down to the wax museum a few floors below. Now, after seeing Madame Tussaud's in New York I may have had high expectations for this one...I should have known better. This wax museum had all the normal components including Michael Jackson and Gandhi (not in the same area of course though I wouldn't have been surprised). Obama was there...missing a finger, as well as a recreation of the last supper complete with scary looking wigs from a variety of time periods

Jesus isn't doing the "big arms thing"...

You could definitely tell that this was a Korean wax museum because a majority of the figures were of musical, artistic, and scholarly backgrounds. Even outside of school the kids are pressured to become the next Mozart or Einstein! As we passed children posing on piano benches with Bach and Beethoven we came upon the worst depictions of celebrities including Marilyn Monroe and Elvis.  Not sure where the wax statue creators got the pictures they used to recreate these celebrities but it might have been a blurry photo from a look alike contest in Vegas.

Tiger is that you?

There was then a haunted house section. As Shanna walked into the pitch black hallway I warned her that I was not following her in there and would be waiting patiently on the other side. Even terrible wax statues are creepy in the dark.

After seeing the last section of teddy bear..wax...statues...(oh Korea), We wandered to the last area of the building which was the Aquarium! Many of my students had been to the aquarium and rave about all the things to do and see inside. 

beautiful

Dancing for me :)

A very talented seal

The aquarium had all the usual fish and marine mammals, however it also had some unusual additions...

guinea pigs and other small rodents

otters- ok not too strange I suppose...

poor pelicans INSIDE!?

And an empty tank with a rubics cube...

 I'm not surprised anymore by the things I see here. As we were leaving the Aquarium we saw that the synchronized swimming show was going to start soon...why not stay and see what it was about right? As we were pumped up with songs like "dancing queen" and some ricky martin crowd favorites we were expecting some Olympic level underwater dance routine. Turns out it is a girl in a diving suit with a muffin to make the fish swarm around her as she bobs around the water for the crowd to take pictures of...for 30 minutes...After a knowing look to Shanna we left to meet with Katrina and Seol for some dinner in Itaewan!

you can see her flipper feet at the bottom as the fish attack the muffin in her hand

On the way to dinner we stopped into "What The Book" which is an English bookstore that delivers books for free and you can trade books with them too! I think I've found my new favorite place here...

complete with Beauty and the Beast ladders too!

 We ended up going to an arabic restaurant called "Dubai" to get our falafel and hummus fix! As we left the restaurant I shocked the owner with my one phrase of Arabic "Assalamu alaikum". I think his brain stopped working for a few seconds until he realized what he said and returned the blessing. He asked if I knew any more Arabic but nope, that's the extent of my knowledge unfortunately!

hookas in the restaurant

The night ended up having fun with a group of friends around Itaewon and Hongdae. Finally making our way to Suzie Q's to dance the night away to great music. 

just trying to pick up a truck

 
















This was a fun way to spend a Saturday in the cold weather! Looking forward to doing more touristy things in the future. Maybe once the weather turns a liiiiiittttllleee bit more forgiving. This next week at Little America I have my open class with my Texas kindergarteners. All of their parents come in and watch me give a lesson. I am not too nervous about the parents, as half of them probably have no clue what I'm saying, but just hope my students have fun after practicing the lesson multiple times throughout the week. Maybe I will throw in something new to surprise them...or maybe that is a terrible idea.

Next weekend a group of us will be headed to a chocolate festival in Seoul! So keep your eye out for the next post that should be deliciously chocolatey...I'll end with yet another incredible Korean invention...

yes those are rainboots.

Korean word of the post: 사진을 찍을 (sajeeneul jikeuhl)- take a picture

xoxoxo