Vacation

I'm sitting on the last day of winter vacation right now. We had talked many months ago about all the opportunities this 10-solid-days-of-no-work would give us. We could go to Cambodia! Thailand! Bali!

...But when I started really counting down the days until Christmas, it wasn't because I wanted travel and excitement. It was because I wanted rest. Lots of it. Sleeping, taking my time with every task, eating a lot, and talking to family.

I'm really glad I've been doing those things.

We had a good, laid back little Christmas. Christmas Eve was our last day of work, and Stephen and I had a little fried chicken party with our fifth grade class (a class we co-teach). It was really silly and fun. Poly wouldn't let us take them out, so we had to order chicken to the school and hang out in one of the classrooms. So we played Korean music and played games and ate junk food with four of our favorite students after-hours at school.

By the way, I recommend this game: It's a variation on hide-and-seek, where the person who is "it" has to keep his eyes closed the whole time. If you're not "it," you find a place to stand in the room where you think whoever is "it" won't run into you. After he counts to twenty, he has to sort of zombie-like wander around the room trying to "find" someone. And he's the only one who is allowed to move his feet. The people who are "hiding" can sort of bend their bodies, but they're not allowed to move their feet. Also, they sort of help each other out. At one point, Soomin was "it" and she was getting really super close to finding me, and then Dong-gul, who was at the other end of the room shouted "SUPERMAN!" to distract her.

Also, if you're in the fifth grade, this is how you play drinking games: You mix milk, Pepsi, mountain dew, and mustard, and everyone eggs you on to drink it, clapping and yelling, "ONE SHOT! ONE SHOT!" (much like the older Koreans do when they mix beer and soju) I vaguely remember doing this sort of thing when I was in elementary school, so it made me pretty nostalgic.

November and December were easily the worst months ever working at Poly. Walking home after this little party was surreal and cathartic. All of the chaos and stress of the last two months are over? And we don't have to go to work for a week? I didn't want to go out, I didn't want to drink, I just wanted to sit at home and revel in it. So that's what we did. (Well, I think I had a glass of wine.) And then I fell asleep.

We took a few little day trips into Seoul. Here's the boys searching the map in the middle of a crowded street, all lost-tourist style:

We weren't really helping. Just giggling and taking pictures :)

We found this little magical Santa land! I think Derek fits right in!

And this is the best Christmas decoration I've ever seen in my life:

Pretty cool, yeah? Check out what it's made of:

Yes!! Sustainable Christmas. Thanks, Lotte Mart! :-D

New Years was as low-key as Christmas. We had dinner, watched a movie, and went to sleep. This was nice. I said before that we really just wanted to have a restful vacation. Still, I couldn't decide if it was an overall satisfying holiday-time. As nice as it has been, there was a relative lack of excitement...No family get-togethers, no dance parties, no turkey. Was there a void? I don't know.

I was sort of thinking about this on New Years Day. It was early afternoon, and we were trying to clean the place and start preparing for a dinner party with the Jenkinses and my co-teacher. At 2:30 in the afternoon, Rob called us on Skype to let us join his New Years Party. He took us around the loud, music-filled house, where we got to say hello to lots of familiar smiling faces. 3pm our time was midnight their time, so we poured some soju, did the count-down, and brought in the New Year with folks halfway across the world, Korean-style. This was excitement enough, I think.

Happy New Year! We love and miss you all.

digital love

Thank you Derek for making us this great video!! And thank you Tim, for taking the pictures. We have really wonderful, talented friends.

And another wedding-related tidbit: My Christmas present to myself...

It's way too cold to wear this now, which is another reason for me to be really, really excited for spring.

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas! ^^

Another day at the office

Halloween!

We decorated the classroom for Halloween.

Here's a little ghostie up-close. Jason had the best scary face.

A Synopsis: July-September

This is a little rough and unorganized. I sort of created the narrative around the pictures we have, which is not always indicative of the most important things that have happened in the last few months, but I gave it my best shot.

1. Columbia.

It was so good to go home and see this pretty girl get married. I wish I had more pictures from the wedding. It was gorgeous.

After six months of cheap, crappy Korean beer, Stephen couldn't wait to wrap his mouth around a bottle of a cheap, crappy American Stag.

2. Kansas City.

We love Rob's work uniform. And Rob.

3. Chicago.

A two hour layover turned into a twelve hour layover. I'm bitter towards American Airlines, but we still had an amazing time basking in the sun, feeling the perfect Chicago summer breeze, listening to some jazz band play at Millennium Park...

The big bean mirror thing is sweet.

Do I already look frazzled? I still have a good 24 hours of travel ahead of me including more unexpected delays. American Airlines. Ugh.

4. Incheon (FINALLY).

It was really good to get back to Korea. Not just because American Airlines sucked, and because we were stuck in Beijing for a night, and because they almost lost our luggage. But it just felt like home, in a really great, surprising way. A second home, I guess.

Anyway, we had gotten to be pretty close with Jesse and Emily, so we tried to spend as much time with them as we could once we got back from vacation. Here's Emily on one of our scenic little bike rides:

Unfortunately this is the only picture I have from the night we got a "love motel" (you can guess why they call them that) in Hongdae (trendy college-y part of Seoul) I liked all the plants outside our love motel!

We had a little triple date at Garten Bier with our Academic Coordinator and her boyfriend. This is a bar where every table has a little switch, and when you turn it on the little spot for your beer turns into a little refrigerator. Soo your beer stays ice cold down to the last drop. Pretty neat, but...efficient use of energy? Probably not.

The girls: Emily, me, Hana.

And the boys: J.H, Stephen, Jesse

Do you see the glass beer mugs? You can get a single, double, or a triple. I got the triple on Stephen's birthday and it felt like it was bigger than I was. It took forever to drink, but gee whiz, it stayed freezing cold the whole darn time.

And here's what our lives pretty much revolve around:

Show and tell. This was so freaking cute:

These little girls are, like, BFFs.

Stephen and some of his kiddos (I love this picture):

We just enjoyed three days off to celebrate Chuseok, which is kind of like Korean Thanksgiving. It's a very big holiday, and there are a lot of great traditions to go with it. Leading up to the holiday we did some projects at school to celebrate.

We made songpyeon, a traditional kind of rice cake dumpling thing (those dark spots are red beans):

And the kids wore their Hanbok, traditional Korean clothes.

My little Helen looked like a Korean princess (But notice her tacky, bright orange indoor shoes. hehe).

We celebrated our one-year anniversary at a fancy restaurant. We clean up nice, right?

And that brings us up to now. We're so glad Derek and Ashley are here!! They live in the same apartment complex as us, and our fancy robot screen lets us call them directly, so none of us really need to get phones.

Life is really, really good. More to come on adventures with the cousins :)

dae han min guk!

The Korea v. Greece match was super fun!

This is one of our coworkers, Ryan. Huge soccer fan.

And this is Jesse and Emily, being very Korean.

We spend a lot of time with this couple. They've been in Korea for a few years, and have graciously helped us figure out how to teach and live in Korea. Excellent people.

Anyway, 2-0 victory! Yayyy!

After the game we ran around in the street high-fiving everyone we met, clapping and chanting, "dae han min guk" which means "Republic of Korea." We were kind of a spectacle, and the fact that I brought my beer glass into the street with me didn't make us look any more respectable. However, I'll add, this was a completely legal act. No open container law in Korea.

I love this country.

First grade reflections on Stars and Talking Toys

I have the great privilege of teaching the first grade genius class in our afternoon program. I want to share a couple of their recent writing assignments.

The first one is written by a little girl named Sunny, who is extremely bright, and more dramatic than anyone I met in my time at junior high and high school. Even though English is her second language, she knows exactly what syllables to emphasize when she's angry. She's also very affectionate. I have to pry her off of my arm almost daily.

Anyway, the topic: "What if your toys could talk?"

If my toyes could talk, my toyes will ask me "Why do you want to be very smart? We are lonely while you are studying." So, I answered them "Because all of my classmates are good at studying!" The next day my toyes said "How old are you? We forget what age are you." So I said "You silly toyes! I am eight you know! Now no more question to me!" And they stoped.

Martin often comes to school in his Taekwondo uniform, and he smiles a lot, exposing one of his half-grown front teeth. (I love how children are unfazed, proud, even, of their missing or incomplete teeth) He also knows the answer to every question. I'm pretty sure in a few years his intelligence is going to surpass mine--I feel ill-equipped to be his teacher. On Teacher's Day he gave me a card that said "Thank you for teaching us about verb and adjectives, and for giving us journals." He really loves writing his weekly journal. On one of our writing assignments he was supposed to complete the sentence that began "I love..." and he wrote. "writing journals." In all areas--brightness, enthusiasm, cuteness--he is a teacher's dream student.

The topic: "Where do the stars go during the day?"

Stars go to Seoul Grand park during the daytime, because there is a zoo, shows, parks and more fun things. Stars may have fun at the parks. They could play hide-and-seek. They could each draw three drawings of pictures. They would eat lunch almost filled of carrots and made of potatoes at the restaurant called Mcdonard. They would eat hamburgers. They may have stomachache because they ate too much so they rested a long while. They rode the bus to Incheon Grand Park and met monkeys, and sharks that want to eat them. They were having so much fun that they forgot to share their names. One star said first, I'm the north star. Except one star every star shared their name. But the last star didn't say anything. Finally the last star said I......am......the...sun. I know the names of all the planets. Every single star laughed the sun. The sun said Murcury, Vinus, Earth, Mars, Jupitar, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and finally, Pluto. Everyone stopped laughing and then became surprised. they wondered. How can that sun know all of the planets name? After that moment, the stars didn't laugh at the sun. They tried to become friends with the sun, and played with sun. The sun got happier and then gave light and heat. they went to the beach for a short moment. They were happy and joyful. After that time, they did not forget that moment until they die.

-Andrea