Wednesday, December 19, 2012

Christmas in Korea

Here are some pictures of Christmas in Korea.  Right now we are both super busy in Korea, lets hope we can get some time to rest soon!







Saturday, November 17, 2012

Photo Challenge: Night time

Here are some photos of Gangnam at night and a lantern festival that went on at the Cheonggycheon.










Sunday, November 11, 2012

Photo hunt

I found a post on pintrest that is a photo challenge.  So I thought I would do it for Korea to show more about my life.  All these photos were taken in Seoul.  There are 30 categories, so I'm hoping to post more soon


Day 1: Written Words






A guy is holding a sign saying "So that the name of Jesus Christ. Every Knee should bow in Heaven and on Earth and under the Earth."

Sunday, October 14, 2012

2012 Seoul International Fireworks Festival

Last weekend, we went to Yeouido Park for the 7th annual Seoul International Fireworks Festival. This was actually a competition between four different countries: Italy, China, USA and Korea. Each country was given 20 minutes to perform their fireworks display. They each had a theme with music.  It was very neat to see and we had fairly good seats.











Italy was first with a theme called Love. The music consisted of several Opera songs. Here are some photos from their display:

















 The next performance was from China. Their theme was called "The River." Here is a song from that display:
 

Next up was the US with a selection of musicals with a title of "Music of the Night." Musicals included: Chicago, The King and I, Oklahoma, Cats, West Side Story, and The Phantom of the Opera. Here is some of that: (Sorry in advance, you can hear me singing some in the background). 

 
Finally, was the Korean team. Their theme was: The 10th WoW. The performed a lot of US songs and also a few songs from Korea. Here is one of their songs.




Great performance by all! Personally we like the US the best, but we're a bit biased. :) There were also a lot of people at this event as well and our hats go off to the security for how well the helped everyone get out and into the subways or wherever we needed to go.

Psy Concert in Seoul

     Earlier this month, Chris found a post on Facebook that Psy was having a free concert for fans at City Hall Station.....Free concert! Of course we have to go. The only catch was that it was on a Thursday at 10pm in the middle of Seoul, we live an hour away from there and had work the next day. We decided to try it anyway.  I mean, It's Psy! For free! So, I got off work at 7pm and headed home to get ready. Grabbed a bite to eat in Gangnam at Johnny Rockets and made our way to City Hall station around 8pm.

    Once we got close to the area of the concert, the traffic of people was thickening and at the concert site, there were tons of people already there. We had to hold on to each other to weave through the crowd, but made it all the way up to roughly 15 rows from the catwalk of the stage. 

    Of course, now we had to just wait in the crowd for about an hour before the show would start. There were several videos of some of Psy's concerts while we waited. He came out in his very classy style!



















The concert was so much fun! We had wall to wall people, and lots of jumping and dancing. Also, yes he did Gangnam Style, of course! Here's a video of that! ;) It's a bit shaking from the jumping/ lots of people, but enjoy!







Friday, July 27, 2012

Dr Fish

We went to Dr. Fish with some of our friends.  This was an actual cafe that offered coffee, smoothies and ice cream which you have to purchase one of them before you can experience some time with the fish.  We enjoyed some breads and coffee together before we asked to take a turn with the fish.  There are two pools of fish (one with fish the size of guppies and the other with fish roughly the size of small goldfish. We had to have our feet rinsed off before we could put them in the pool. Once our feet were clean, you put your feet in and the fish come in and bite at your feet and eat the dead skin from your feet.  It doesn't hurt but it tickles a lot!  We had a lot of fun doing it.  Here are some pictures:





Sunday, July 1, 2012

Field Trip to make Cookies!! Yum!


We went on a field trip this past Monday. It was a bit crazy for the teachers because we had to prepare several tests for our afternoon students for that same day. Nevertheless, it seemed that everyone had a good time.



The trip took place at a coffee shop.  My students got the chance to enjoy a fun double-decker play area. They had quite a bit of time to do this while the older kids from our school got to make their cookies. The ceiling to the play area was a bit low and the tiny steps leading upstairs were almost too small for me and I caught myself several times from falling.  Needless to say, I mostly stayed downstairs and watched from a distance.



We enjoyed some lunch and then it was our turn to make cookies! I'm not quite sure what all was said to the students about the cookies except for general gestures that were made that I could recognize.  I'm curious how the dough tasted that my students had the opportunity to sample because all I could smell was a very strong fragrance of butter.






Each child washed their hands and put on adorable aprons! After the demonstration, they were given three or four cookie cutters, a small ball of dough, and a little piece of wax paper.  They were to take a piece and flatten their dough with their fist.  With my students, the dough turned out pretty flat.  I kept having to reshape the dough and make it thicker so we didn't have any burnt cookies.  Once there were pieces of dough on the wax paper in different shapes, the demonstrator brought sprinkles around for each of the children to add to their cookies.  Some of the children had the teachers add the sprinkles for them.






 Once we were finished, the children were given a little more time to play while their cookies baked.  I got out my iPad and some of the children from our school gathered around to look at a coloring book application that I have on there.  They really enjoyed that! ;)  I never got a chance to see the finished cookies, they were wrapped up in little bags and when we returned to the school, my co-teacher had them all put in the children's backpack that I have no idea what they looked like.  I hope they enjoyed eating them as much as they did making them! :)

My School


I have been working at the same school for a little over a month now.  This year I am working for another private school.  In the am to early afternoon hours, I work with Kindergarten students (5 years). Currently I have five students but I can have up to 10 students in that class.  The class is called the Boston class because they are in the Boston classroom.
 At our school all of the rooms are named based on different cities around the world. There is Oxford, Cambridge, Boston, Toronto, London and New York.






In the afternoons, the classes vary each day.  I have a class from 240-4:50 with six second graders. I just switched classes this past week so I don't really know these students very well.  But from 5-7pm on MWF, I have a class of all girls from 3rd grade to 5th grade.  I absolutely love these six girls.  I look forward to the end of my day so I can just hang out with these girls! They are so interesting and seem to find me interesting as well. :)

On Tuesdays and Thursdays, I have three more kindergarten students for forty minutes. They are very sweet children but they don't seem to want to speak much English (and we're supposed to have English conversations...).  Then from 5-7pm I have five more students between 5th and sixth grade.  They are a pretty good group of students too.

This year I don't have as much lesson planning and documentation to do.  I'm still figuring out some things about my school, but I'm looking forward to a pretty good year!

Friday, June 1, 2012

My first day of School

I wrote this e-mail to my mom, but I thought that it was pretty basic information to share with everyone else.  I'm working at Shinil public school in Suji and I'm having a great time.

My day went really well.  All the students were very excited for a new teacher and they were mostly good.  It feels just like a typical class at home.  There are students who are the troublemakers and some who do not care, but for the most part everyone is good.  Everyone loves that I'm so tall and wants to know everything about me.  They are also so curious of foreigners.  The school is very nice and I'm excited for all the resourses I have and the help I"m getting from the school.  I've been giving free reigns on the curriculum.  I have to follow the book, but that only takes around 20 min or my 40 min lesson.  So I have another 20 min. to do whatever I want.  My schedule is super easy.  Mon-Friday I'm teaching 9-12pm.  and 2 days I teach kindergarten for 25 min.  the rest of the time I have prep.  For right now I love teaching public school.  I have enough to do whatever I want, and a direction with a curriculum that I can just push aside for the most part.  do pages 1-2 and then we'll go into real learning.  For the most part the students know english pretty well.  I know I will have to be patient since they do not understand what I"m saying.  In one of my classes I have a really cute down syndrom girl.  She is very loving and cute.  I think I made an instant bond with her.  She likes my hairy arms and always wants to give me hugs.  For the most part all the students are very loving and nice and I think I hear from everyone including boys "your soooo tall and your soooo handsome."  I know I won't hear that anywhere else.  I think it will be a great year.  I'm very excited to do more work here.

Wednesday, February 8, 2012

Did I mention, he proposed...

After almost six wonderful years of dating, Chris proposed to me at one of the most romantic places in Seoul.  North Seoul Tower or better known as Namsan Tower.  But, let's not stop there, he planned it all very well.  You see it was on my birthday in September, and at sunset and on the top of a mountain at the base of the tower in Seoul, South Korea.  Pretty, amazing setting, if you ask me! However, it doesn't stop there..

You see, there is a kind of tradition on Namsan that involves locks.  It's called "A promise for Endless Love."  paragraph from the tower: "From old times, there was a story that if lovers make a wish at a shrine on Nam-san, it comes true.  Since that, this place became a symbol of the place of promising an everlasting flove for couples' love with hanging a lock together. <A Lock of Love>, already famous by media, is not just expressing couples' love by hanging locks, but meaning endless love with experiencing unforgettable moment in the place you can see a view of Seoul...."

And so, we did just that.  Poor Chris had a hard time finding a lock prior to the proposal so luckily that had some in the gift shop at the tower.  We searched for a spot among the rows of locks and found a place with several older locks, thinking that ours would stand out better for a while. Later in December, we came back and had engagement pictures taken that we will cherish forever!





As for the ring...no, he didn't get it back home. The ring was purchased in Korea with the help of one of our co-teachers.  If he would like to share the rest of that information, I'll leave that up to him.  I will tell you, that the ring is absolutely beautiful!