Teaching and Trips

I have a lot of photos that have to do with life at school! Yippee! This may be the greatest picture I have ever seen in a text book- it was a lesson about being sick and following advice:

Is she or is she not CLEARLY giving the finger? What else could that possibly be? It's not like she's trying to get the waitress's attention at a restaurant. She's got to be saying something like, "you want me to go to work?! Fuck you, can't you see I'm sick?!" The kids would never notice, not the eight year olds the book is for anyway. Bless them.

At the end of every elementary class we do about 20 minutes of writing. Here is an example of the end of a lesson and a writing exercise I make on what we learned (the lesson was about how to use comparative adjectives with er or est):

Close up shot

Irene, complete with mouse ears, writing it out. 

Today we went on a field trip to a farm of sorts. The kids used a little scythe to gather some stalks of rice then put it through one of these which separates the rice from the stalks. Then they pounded some rice to separate the little skin that's on it. After that we went up a mountain to dig up some sweet potatoes. Last but not least we pounded some rice goo that makes a dessert I don't know how to pronounce, but they're gooey rice cakes with little to no taste. 

Here comes the rice!

Step on the pounder dealy!

Up the mountain to the sweet potatoes. 

Diggin em up!

Flora found a keeper!

Hammering out gooey rice.

Ever wondered what Korean moms pack for their kid's lunches? At school the kids get rice, kimchi, some kind of soup, a vegetable side that is usually seasoned with sesame oil and red pepper flakes, and the main which can be curry, eggy pancake, fish cakes, or some other weird thing. For their packed lunches, the vast majority of kids have kimbap. I guess kimbap is the Korean sandwich but it's much prettier and looks a lot harder to make to me. Most of them get a container of kimbap, a container of fruit and some packaged snack like cheetos. 

Carter had kimbap, some weird meat nuggets (the brown things) and some banana.

Agato enjoying his kimbap and using his kiddie chopsticks. 

Theses were a little different from kimbap but I don't know what it was. I thought this was better than kimbap but less pretty.  I've never seen the kids at school use a fork- that's new.

You get the idea. 

So that about covers typical school life, plus an extra special field trip. It was a beautiful day and nice to be outside but I was absolutely exhausted afterwards. G'night!

So I Missed a Month- Sue Me

Less than 2 months left and counting! It was been an interesting 10 months with lots of laughs but I am getting very homesick right about now. Also I've really been working my butt off with these kids and it's fun but can get exhausting. I will recap my past few weeks with pictures since they say a thousand words and I'm too lazy to actually say them. 

Seriously?

We had Chuseok which is some kind f Korean Thanksgiving. A 5 day weekend was nice and the kids came to school in hanbok (traditional Korean garb). We played a confusing game that involved throwing sticks and moving pieces on a board. I had no clue what the heck this game was and I don't think either team won. 

Go Luci- throw those sticks!

My youngest class. I know- they're adorable.

Russell and I took a holiday to Busan for one last weekend at the beach before the fall weather really kicked in. Since then it definitely has. The water was nice and warm and we had a hotel room with a nice view for 2 nights. It was really nice.

Our school also went on a trip to the fire station where Korean firemen spoke some Korean fire stuff to the students. I listened to my ipod. 

Pretty sure these kids are almost as bored as I am. Almost. 

Went to our friends house down south for an Iron Chef competition between our friends Ross and Justin. They were given a secret ingredient (cream cheese) and then had an hour to shop followed by an hour of cooking. We all even had score cards and gave the chefs our comments. Three categories: taste, originality and presentation. It was nerdy and awesome!

Russell judging the creamy pesto pasta as I still munch in the background.

Next weekend I am going up against the Iron Chef! I'm excited cause I can sorta cook. I think the fact that I can cook some veggies will be a nice change cause all we got last time was basically chicken and pasta. Cross your fingers for me!

This past saturday I went to Seoul for a bachelorette party for one of my best girlfriends here. She and her fiance met in Korea and have been dating for about a year and a half and just got engaged a few weeks ago. Russell and I are invited to the wedding but it's at the end of February in England so it looks like we might not be able to go. With any luck we'll have jobs... who knows what'll happen. Anyway there were about 8 girls and we all wore little black dresses and garter and the bride had a cute veil to wear all night. We played a game that involved getting the most points. Getting a guy to buy the bride a shot was 5 points, things like that. We got a suite that fit 5 of us in a bed to split room costs and stayed out till 4:30am. Very fun but I was beat after that. I honestly turned to one of my friends and said, "dude, I HATE partying. I want to be home in bed reading!" I'm not good at staying out late, I'm always the lame one who goes home early (early being about 2am when everyone else usually says out till about 5).

That's all for now. On thursday it's champagne night with the fun girls which I always look forward to. Then of course Saturday it's Iron Chef. 

TTFN- Ta Ta For Now!