Shamrachaun

Happy St. Patrick's Day! Hope you all are wearing green and dancing to Irish music!

"Do they celebrate St. Patrick's Day in Korea?" Well now that you ask, yes! While I think it is mainly organized by the Irish expats here rather than the all of the Irish Koreans (...), but celebrations are put on all over the country! Little America, not one to miss out on a holiday, also participates in the festivities. To start our day (Friday) we had a field trip with the kindergarteners to an art center nearby to watch a play.

We settled our kids into their seats along with about 100 other students (younger than our group....) I was hoping this play would be entertaining enough to keep these kids attentions for a long time, because if they start to get restless we might have a problem on our hands. It began well! A silly puppet show about a rabbit and a tiger with a toothache. The students enjoyed it, laughing and participating. Then things turned weird. Vivaldi's "Four Seasons" started playing and the cute fluffy puppets were exchanged for shadow puppets and trippy colored lights. This portion followed a caterpillar being born until turning into a butterfly. While this would have been a very cute idea, the fact that Vivaldi's piece is 45 minutes long and most of the kids in the audience have the attention span of about 45 seconds, I could tell we were going to have some issues. Throughout the shadow puppet caterpillar portion, I think I counted 8 kids leaving in tears in the arms of their teachers. I was wondering if I could cry and get to go play outside of the theater as well, but I didn't test that theory. Keep in mind also that the play was obviously in Korean, so as easy as the story was to follow, some of the intricate plot points were lost on us foreign teachers.

Not really sure why

They even had cute bathroom stalls

Ready to be entertained?

Overall, the kids said they enjoyed it. My girls said the caterpillars and butterflies were "so cute! beautiful" (of course. everything is cute and beautiful).




We made our way back to Little America for lunch and our St. Patrick's Day celebration! The students were all in their green and ready to learn about the history of the holiday from Amanda Teacher. She made a power point with pictures and maps and everything! I am explaining Easter to the students later this month...Amanda set the bar high for my presentations. Maybe I should look into live bunnies or something.

How does he sit like that??

Totally focused on Amanda Teacher

She went through the slides explaining about St. Patrick's life and the different symbols of the holiday. At the end the students answered questions about what they had learned and received candy as their prize. One of my favorite answers had to be to the questions "What is the green plant called with four leaves?"-- "Shamrachaun!" So close. So very close. she got her candy prize despite the invention of an incredible new word. The brand new students to the school worked so hard to raise their hands and say the words aloud (after the answer had been whispered in their ear to remind them). It was really sweet to see how excited they got when they remembered a word though! They are so smart it blows my mind.

Of course we can't just have a power point lesson to celebrate the holiday, we need to make a craft! The students created bright green dunce-cap style hats with pictures of leprechauns and pots of gold. Soon these hats became unicorn horns or in some cases, lances.

 

 

Watch out for this guy!

I love getting to celebrate with the students and teach them about other holidays around the world. While I don't think they really get WHY we wear green and color pictures of small men with beards, they enjoy the fun and games! After a long morning and then a longer afternoon with the elementary students, it was time to do some celebrating of our own! Friday night we stayed local and enjoyed a night of jenga and apples to apples (yes we are super cool, you're jealous) then Saturday we headed to an outdoor festival in Seoul with hundreds of other people! There is a square outside a huge shopping center in Sindorim, and it's here that the various tents for food, clothing, and face painting as well as a stage in the middle was set up. The weather was really nice when the sun came out on our little patch of grass. We enjoyed people watching and listening to some good Irish music. Coming from Bucheon where there are not too many foreigners to a celebration like this with hundreds of people from around the world is fun for a day. I kind of enjoy getting back to my own little town afterwards though. Maybe I'm just a homebody. But anyways, we met some new friends and saw some old friends! 

dancing in the crowd

For dinner we traveled back to Bucheon. I was shown a bar similar to Suzie Q's with a great record collection! Now I know that I don't have to go all the way out to Hongdae when I want to hear some great music. Granted this place is teeeeeny tiny so you can't bring 100 of your closest friends, but for a more intimate group setting it is perfect. The night ended with some drinks, darts, and pool. Such a fun St. Patrick's day!

No it is only 4 DAYS until Mum, Dad, and Edward arrive here!! I am not going to be able to focus on Monday and Tuesday...this will be difficult. My kids all know about them coming though and they use that to get me off topic in class. All they have to say is "When is your family here?" even though they know exactly when they arrive and I go off on a tangent about how excited I am and what we are going to do! I guess these kids aren't too different from mine at home after all haha smart little boogers. 

Anyways- SO excited :) Can't wait to see them! The next blog will be all of our adventures! 

Oh, before I leave off I have to tell you all the story about my Saturday morning. I went to Homeplus (similar to a Walmart with groceries/clothes/appliances/etc.) and was looking for something green to wear for the festival that afternoon. I had about an hour before I needed to meet up with Katrina, Seol, and Kaitie so I didn't have time to wander around. As I went to buy a green scarf I found, I looked in my purse and my wallet was not inside...I tried to remain calm and see if it was in my pockets or had just fallen out, but as I realized it was not anywhere around my location a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach formed. In my wallet is my Alien card, my bank cards, my insurance card, and all the other forms of ID I have. I knew I brought my wallet with me because I had opened it just before at another scarf stand. So it was in Homeplus somewhere. I retraced my steps around the store, asking some shop owners if they had seen it (in my very limited Korean, it basically looked like this- *point to my purse* *make a square with my hands* "brown color(in korean)" *make an x with hands* "don't have (also Korean). Unfortunately this had no effect. When I realized it wasn't anywhere I had walked past yet I went to ask some employees for help. None of them spoke much English. One lady realized what I was talking about and lead me to the section where they sell wallets. While I appreciated it, I was hoping to find my old one before purchasing a new one. 

Using her phone translation we came to an understanding of my situation. At this point my stoic, calm, poker face was slowly melting, realizing that this was going to change the course of the next few days...as I wrote my number down and described what the wallet looked like I was making a plan of action in my head for how to get all new ID cards and explain this to Solomon on Monday. If I was in any other country I know that there would be a possibility of my wallet being stolen, but in Korea that thought honestly wouldn't cross my mind. I know that someone must have picked it up. Just then a woman and her daughter walked up holding something small and brown! She tried to explain in Korean, something about me running and her finding it, I didn't much focus on her explanation. I broke down (sorry to admit that) but the relief of seeing my wallet in her hands was overwhelming. I gave her a huge hug, which I think surprised her, but I don't care. I said thank you about 100 times. I think I scared her young daughter- who is this crazy foreigner crying all over my mom?? But I got my wallet back and left immediately to get ready for the celebrations later that day. Such an emotional roller coaster of a day. Not the best way to spend a morning, but hey it all ended well.

 

xoxo

Korean word of the post: 분실 한 지갑 (boonsheel han jeegap) "A lost wallet"

Insert Cliché Gangnam Style Title Here

Hello! Let me start off by saying that this next week better fly by so that Mum, Dad, and Edward can be here visiting me! I am so excited, I think the rest of my coworkers are getting annoyed with how bubbly and smiley I am all day when I think about them visiting... Sorry everyone!
Instead of making this whole blog about how overly pumped I am about seeing my family I guess I'll update you on the past few days. Last week was the first week of the new year. This means new students, new classes, new schedule! My three little kindergarteners are very sweet, and very different from my Texas class. I kind of miss my boys not wanting to make everything "cute" and "beautiful". I don't think I've ever really thought about how much of a tomboy I am until teaching these girls. Oh well, I had a lot of fun decorating the room! I just hope no boys show up and join the class...

flowers and rainbows

More Brer Rabbits

Our Brer Rabbits

Maybe by the end of this year these girls will like other colors besides pink and purple (gasp), baby steps people, baby steps.






Fridays this month are going to be very exciting! This past Friday we had a cooking class where the students made strawberry banana smoothies.  Next Friday, we have a field trip to a musical performance and then a St. Patrick's Day party. The Friday after that one my PARENTS AND EDWARD WILL BE HERE *cough* sorry.... and then that last Friday is an Easter party! So many things to look forward to!

For the cooking class, my girls were paired with the brand new class of English students. They are so sweet and some of them just smile and nod when you talk to them! I feel like I am at their level with my Korean. We have a connection. One girl came up to me when I walked into her classroom and began telling me about something that had happened...or that she hurt something...or that her favorite color is blue...not really sure exactly, but when she finished I asked if she was ok and she said yes so she sat back down. I think she just needed to get it out, whatever it was! Glad I could do that much for her. Hopefully one day I will be able to actually fully understand what she is saying!

My girls ready to cook

Cut Cut Cut

Cute face Judy

Chef Jean

Good job lady bugs!

Jenna enjoying the final result!

For those of you who are not interested in the education/teacher talk then please skip to the next portion of the blog. For the rest of you, most likely you are teachers as well, or just being really polite and reading this part anyways. Overall, these three girls are at a lower ability level than my Texas class. Although each of them is at a different individual ability level. One can easily read and write, but has difficulty spelling (normal for the level). Another can read slowly and write by copying letters from the board. The third struggles with reading and spelling. She has very low phonics knowledge. When I have her read our story book she uses a lot of semantic and visual cues instead of using the letters to sound out words. Granted none of these students are below the level of American students their age. They are only 7 years old Korean age (so 5 or 6 western age). I hope to get these girls up to Texas class' level by the end of my time with them. Challenge accepted


***If your eyes glazed over when I mentioned education/teacher talk please rejoin us at this time ****

I'll ease you back into the conversation with these cute pictures of my students!

 

 

Time for the weekend! Saturday was absolutely gorgeous outside, sunny and 60 degrees! Today (Sunday) it is back down to 30...goodness gracious Korea. But we took advantage of the beautiful weather by heading to Gangnam (haha song is in your head now, welcome to my life) to wander around the swanky shopping area. Kaitie, Sara, and I soaked in the sun and made our way around Rodeo Street (Rodeo drive spin-off).

Tim Burton-esque

Mmm...sounds appetizing...

 

 

The streets were lined with restaurants, clothing boutiques and all sorts of other little shops. It was nice to do a little window shopping and see funny store names here and there. This area is the more wealthy area of Korea. 4 out of 5 cars I saw were either BMWs or Porsches. People watching is one of my favorite sports, and this area is a fantastic place to participate in that particular past time (oooh alliteration). We decided that Korean women are gorgeous and stylish until they reach a certain age when suddenly they wake up and decide they can wear absolutely anything they want. For example, White lace tights, floral dress, cheetah print scarf, fur jacket, and high heeled army boots. Why not? I'm wearing that tomorrow to work.

Yes please...

 tease books store wall

One place we found is called Popabubble. Here they make their own sugar candies where you can customize them to have pictures or words on the inside! They are all getting ready for White Day (valentines day, but instead of the girls getting the boys chocolate, the boys get the girls candy). I don't get it either, but I've stopped asking questions here.

lime candies

kiwis!!

As we continued our stroll we came upon this little guy...

Why was there a stuffed bulldog outside a store? Just wait...

 We stumbled upon a stuffed animal paradise. And what was the store's theme animal??...

That's right!

 

Okay the puppies were cute too.

Standard...

This 4 story building is full of every kind of animal you can think of in multiple sizes. The biggest giraffe was only about $1,200...anyone?...Christmas?...Ok thanks. We took pictures with llamas, giraffes, owls, camels and a variety of other animals before we headed up to the last floor labeled "Playground". What else could it be...

Yep, a giant, nearly life-sized giraffe on the roof of this building. If we hadn't walked into this store I never would have looked up to see this guy looking over the streets of Gangnam. Only in Korea would there be a store like this! I died a little bit with all the giraffes everywhere. I will definitely be back...

After all the walking it was time to find some dinner. We headed back towards the city center to find a barbeque place. Sara has some dietary restrictions so we had to find a place with beef. When we chose a restaurant Sara and I (she is in her second year) began trying to translate the dishes to find out if they were beef or pork. After way too long to still be acceptable, Kaitie was kind enough to point out that at the top of the menu pages it said in plain English "Beef" and "Pork"... I think we have just given up trying to find English some places that we did not even notice the English! Kaitie's eyes, only being here a week, are searching for English still. There is a psychology research project in this story somewhere for whoever wants to tackle that. I'll stick to teaching ABC's and how to correctly pronounce "Laura Teacher".

Once we finished our dinner we had a few hours to kill before it was time to meet up with some of Sara's friends nearby so we found a cafe called Sweet House. This is one of those moments when I ask myself "Where am I?"...You walk into this cafe, take off your shoes and order a drink. Then you are brought into the back which is a maze of small rooms with mattress padded floors and pillows each with its own TV. You have the option of bringing a game in with you too! they had a wide selection of heavily used board games which consisted of Life (two of them), Monopoly (three of those), and an old jenga set. Endless possibilities. We settled into our room and introduced Kaitie to the wonders of Korean dramas. As we walked by other rooms I tried to sneak a look to see what everyone else did here. It was pretty much all couples or groups of friends, but they were either sleeping or watching the same show. The TVs gave an echo of the same channel as we walked towards our nook.

Cozy Cozy

Their coffees (waaah) my tea, and their desserts (double waaah)

We sat and relaxed getting ready to go out later that evening. It was fun to just sit and talk while simultaneously being entertained by the over-excited, outrageously terrible acting of Korean dramas. After leaving the cozy, pink, squishy room we made our way to Pandora, an all-you-can-drink bar with music, darts, and pool. I met a lot of Sara's friends and we made new friends there as well. That is something I really enjoy about living here. The foreigners here are for the most part very open and friendly to meeting new people. Why have a closed of clique of friends if people are coming and leaving so often? Granted I wont see most of these people ever again after this experience, but for now I have a lot of new friends!

Today I am meeting up with my neighbor from home, Mrs. Kim, who is here visiting her family in Seoul! I am really excited to see someone from back home. Hopefully I can impress her with the tad more Korean I've learned since I arrived!

Until next time xoxo

Korean Phrase of the Post:
나는 기린은 사랑 (na-neun geereen-eun sa-rang) "I love giraffes" <3

Three Little Maids

Chicka Chicka Boom Boom, Look Who's in Idaho Room! Welcome to Idaho class! We sadly are leaving behind my 10 wonderfully crazy students in Texas and heading west into the Potato State room (I actually just looked up the slogan of the state of Idaho and found out that it's; Idaho- "Great Potatoes, Tasty Destinations", fun fact of the day). This year I will be teaching three girls, Jenna, Judy, and Jean. Talk about a tongue twister, but I'll get it down. I am so looking forward to having a smaller class and with all girls I obviously decorated my room with flowers and pretty girly things. God forbid any little boys join my class at some point through the year, and knowing Little America, there will be. When that happens I will change the decor a bit to make the boys not feel so overwhelmed with pink.

These girls are coming from another glass that was split in two to accommodate higher level students and "lower level" students. I put that in quotes because 1. I like doing the air finger quotes, and 2. because none of these students are low level English learners by any stretch of the imagination. The fact that they can have conversations and read at their age (7 Korean..so 5 Western age?) is incredible. This weekend I've been spending a lot of time thinking about how I want this class to go. I have found several adorable kids songs for different parts of the day aka morning, weather time, and saying goodbye that I hope to create into a sort of classroom routine every day. The girls like to sing apparently, so that's a huge plus! My classroom CD is mainly Disney songs of course, but I also have my other CD's from home with classic Broadway tunes such from plays such as Sound of Music and Oliver. I loved hearing my Texas class singing "Whistle" from The King and I. 

Speaking of songs, I have come up with my list of monthly songs! I am wondering whether to post them now or keep them a surprise for you so that you keep coming back to read my blog posts...hmm we'll see.

Here are my three little maids from school (hope some of you started singing that song in your head)!

Judy

Jenna

Jean

My schedule this year has changed a lot from what it was these first 6 months. I will have later mornings, which I don't mind of course, but it means I do not get a significant break between my Kindergarten students leaving and my elementary students arriving. Also, instead of five elementary classes, I will have seven this year which also means no real breaks from 2:50 until 6:35 or 7:15 each evening. Now this is not me complaining (don't look at me like that, I can see you). I am really looking forward to having new classes and getting to mean new students! It will just be a lot more planning in the mornings for a WHOLE day instead of having breaks throughout the day to plan and arrange things. This past week has been a bit stressful getting classes ready with new books, spelling words, and working out how the previous teacher administered homework assignments, etc. I was getting a bit overwhelmed, but then I realized that I learned it all for five classes last time, I can do it again!

Also, this past Thursday we said goodbye to three teachers who were leaving Little America. Shanna, a foreign teacher, had been here for 2 years and was heading home to Michigan before taking a big adventure to Russia to teach there! I have gotten really close to her over these first 6 months so it was sad to see her go. We were definitely travel buddies; going to different places around Seoul together. She taught me how to use the subway *sniff*. I hope to see her again some day. We have plans to meet in Italy in the future, so obviously this will not be the last time we will spend time together!

 Another teacher leaving was Tina. She was the one who met with me several times to work on my Korean! She is not going far (not Russia or anything), but just leaving to teach in a public school instead. We will still meet every couple weeks to catch up and continue practicing my Korean. I'll miss having her around school! She is so loving and just such a fun person to be around. I could always count on her to make me smile!

 The last teacher leaving was Alex. Again, she is not going far either (not yet at least) so we will still be able to meet up for several dinner dates we have planned. It is just going to be so different at school without all of these ladies. Sometime I have to get used to here I suppose, people leaving, new people coming. I'm good with change, I mean I moved to Korea didn't I? I just get very attached to people easily, so it is hard to see them go. Throughout the week I would tell them they couldn't leave. They weren't allowed. None of them listened to me though, I don't know why.

Speaking of the new teacher- shout out to Kaitie who read my posts before coming here (and is probably reading this one too!) I hope I prepared her for what Little America will be like for her. She is so sweet and I can tell she is excited to get started with her brand new little babies coming in this year! She will be teaching the students who have no prior English education under their teeny tiny belts. I can't wait to get to know her students and watch them as they grow.

It is hard to focus on work at the moment because MY PARENTS AND EDWARD ARE COMING IN TWO WEEKS! *cough* sorry...can't control my caps lock sometimes. I am SO excited to see them and show them around!! They will be here for a week and while I work most days they are here I will be going into Seoul to spend the weekend with them as well as show them a little around Bucheon on their last few days. I am coming up with some of my favorite places I want to take them as well as looking at some touristy things I haven't done yet either. It will just be so nice to hug them not through my laptop! I wish Beth and Alex could come too, but that just means they will have to come later...hintity hint hint...

Until then these next few weeks will just be getting into a routine with my students and the new teachers coming in. There are three new Korean teachers who came in this week as well. One has offered to give me Korean lessons as well! I'll be fluent in no time!

Also, I have recently applied to the California University of Pennsylvania's online masters program in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) Education which is all about using your hands and manipulatives when teaching. I haven't heard back from them, but I hope to start that program next fall! Does anyone have any thoughts about that school? I also got information from VTech's similar program...but the price was MUCH higher there as you can imagine. Any thoughts about it would be appreciated! 

p.s. sorry this blog was not as fun and adventurous as previous ones, however those kinds of posts will be arriving soon with the family as well as warmer weather!

Korean Phrase of the post:  
나는 신나해요 (na-neun sheen-na-hay-yo) I am excited!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

xoxo