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:

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!

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.

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!

Charlie Brown Cafe

This past fall while out for my birthday, a friend of mine mentioned that there was a Charlie Brown Cafe in Hongdae or the Honguk University Station on the green line (line 2). Anyway,  we went to try and find this again during our Christmas break and retrace our steps in the daylight.....quite a difficult task, but we eventually stumbled upon it!  It's a cute little cafe at the top of a hill in somewhat of a back alley. But, you can't miss Charlie Brown standing outside.

There is a lot of Peanuts memorabilia all over the cafe including some that you can purchase.  It is a very comfortable little cafe with both couch seats adorned with snoopy plush pillows and tables and chairs with Peanut silhouettes. At the counter are many delicatessens shaped like Peanuts characters.  You can purchase whole cheesecakes shape like Snoopy's and Woodstock's heads, or simple cake slices with silhouettes of characters in colored sugar on the plate.  As for the drinks, there is a large variety of drinks to select and many of the hot drinks can have Snoopy or Charlie Brown pictured in your foam.....we found out that if you get whipped cream, you can't see Snoopy in the foam. :(  Oh, well.  Also, on the mugs are official Charlie Brown Cafe seals.

This was a cozy atmosphere for Chris and I to sit, enjoy some cocoa and play on our electronic gadgets. (This one is dedicated to my mom.  Her favorite character is Snoopy and if it hadn't been for her, we probably wouldn't have seen this.)

Kitty Cat Cafe

       This summer, we went to a Kitty Cat Cafe in Seohyeon station in Bundang, Seoul, South Korea.  It hadn't been open for very long when we went.  When they first opened, there was a person standing outside in a kitty costume trying to usher people to the new cafe.

       When we arrived, we had to remove our shoes and wash our hands with sanitizer.  The cost was 8,000won per person.  This included a drink.  They were so sweet there and tried their best to speak as much English as possible.  They ask us if we spoke any Korean and we said " No, not really."  It seemed as if they had a certain list of information that they were supposed to say to us.  However, as much as she tried she soon gave up on trying to explain everything to us.  In our opinion, she did alright speaking English to us, but as we have learned most Koreans are very nervous about their how good their English is.  So then she tried to show us the list of beverages available, but it was all in Korean and we were trying to mention all the teas that we have seen in Korea but they didn't have the ones that we knew.  When we mentioned lemon tea she said no but we have lemonade.  We both agreed to just go with lemonade.  There are tables and chairs for you to put your tray, coats and belongings while you play with the cats. When they brought our glasses of lemonade, we also received a small basket of chocolate chip cookies.

        There are a variety of cats in the cafe.  We counted roughly twenty cats.  There are Himalayan  cats, Siamese cats, a hairless cat, a tortoise-shell, a few tabby cats and many others.  They wer e definitely timid, but we started to realize why after watching some of the Koreans with the cats.  They don't seem to know how to handle cats.  They held them in the strangest way and the cats seemed a bit distant at times. However, they love to play!  The cafe provides feather toys and toy balls with jingle bells inside them.  There are also several climbing tower areas for them to explore/sleep on. There were a couple cats that seemed a bit ill tempered, especially with the other cats.  One cat was put in "time-out" while we were there because he couldn't behave well.  There are rugs on the floor and the cats loved it when we would put the feather underneath and slide it around.  All the cats also seem to have their front claws removed.

For those who want directions:
Seohyeon station is located on The Bundang Line (yellow) on the subway.  Take any exit from the station and you should end up in AK plaza.  Once on the first floor, look for Louis Vuitton.  Exit AK plaza from the Louis Vuitton side of the building.  The first building on your right is where you will find the cafe.  It is located on the third floor and we haven't found an elevator, only a stairwell.