Holiday Season!

Okay, okay, I know.  New record for being too lazy to update a blog goes to Meaghan.  I was telling Renee that I hadn't really updated because my life hasn't been that exciting.  "What am I going to write?  'Then American TV shows went on their winter hiatus so I started watching Law and Order: SVU from the beginning.  I switched to using only Google Chrome for my web browsing.'?"  But as I think about it, I have done some exciting things, I've just been too lazy to get it together and write about them.

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First, however, I'd like to air some grievances.  As previously stated, on multiple occasions, I love living here. However, there are a few (namely three) things that DRIVE ME INSANE.

1. Lack of Personal Space
Korea, as a society, doesn't really give a crap about personal space.  And coming from America, where my bubble is FIERCELY defended, this is tough to get used to.  The worst violators of personal space are the little ajummas, or Korean grandmothers.  They push.  They shove.  They stand uncomfortably close.  They bump into you with intent.  Its totally obnoxious.  Koreans are also just touchy feely people by nature.  Kids hold hands all the time.  Boys hold hands with boys.  Girls hold hand with girls.  They hug each other.  They hang on each other.  They punch each other.  Its really just a hugely tactile society, which definitely takes some getting used to.

2. Staring
When I think about my personal space being violated its not always physically.  People here stare a LOT.  Its as though I have a huge sign floating over my head that says "Oooh, she's different.  Stare at her."  The other day I met Dana, a friend who is Chinese American, and I was telling her that I was bitter than I had left my Kindle/iPod at home because that left me nothing to distract me from the stares on the train.  She seemed surprised and said "Really? People stare a lot?"  Um...yes.  20 minutes later as we still stood waiting for someone to meet us, she was like "Whoa, seriously, like everyone is staring at us!  Oh my gosh!"  I had to laugh.  Welcome, Dana, to the world of the foreigner who doesn't blend in.  And the thing is that when people are staring here and you look back at them, they KEEP staring.  Then I end up looking away because I feel uncomfortable.  Julia said she just stares them down until they look away, but no way can I do that!

3. Child "Janitors"
Our schools don't have full time janitors here.  The kids do most of the cleaning.  They empty trash cans, sweep the floors, clean up the playground, etc.  Kids will come into our office about once a day with little brushes and dust pans to collect some of the dust.  (Note: Some.  The schools are still super dusty.)  That is all well and good, but the one thing that TOTALLY GROSSES ME OUT TO NO END is the "mopping" that occurs.  Basically kids drag around dirty, nasty mops, full of god knows what diseases all around the building.  They "mop" the hallways, the bathrooms and the classrooms....I would guess without washing the mops out with any kind of chemicals or cleaners.  It is so disgusting.  I hate walking through the halls and seeing the little slug trails of kids pulling the mops.  I know they drag it through god knows what in the bathrooms and then right out into the hallways.  ACK!  I would rather they never mopped at all.

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OKAY now on to more positive things.

Last I left you was a Tuesday afternoon as Seoul turned into a winter wonderland.  That evening I had my first open class for after school.  Basically they let the parents come in and sit in the back of the classroom and see what they're paying for.  I had everything extra planned out and made all sorts of extra materials.  When I got to after school, Mrs. Hwang told me that Evan (the teacher from Aju) was sick and she was going to combine his class with mine for the last period.  So, all of a sudden, instead of teaching a group of 12 higher level kids, I have a group of 29 really mixed kids.  And I ended up with 14 parents!  Too many people in the English room.  But it all went fine, and I'm going to take it as a compliment that she decided to combine Evan's class with mine rather than someone else's.  But it could just be because I'm fun based activities and simply THAT awesome.

On Wednesday, the night after our first snowfall, we had a district wide meeting we had to attend.  Basically all of the elementary school NSETs and our co-teacher were told we had to go to a mandatory meeting from 1:30pm-9:00pm.  And this was after teaching all morning.  Needless to say, I was DREADING it.  However, I was pleasantly surprised.  The first hour and a half I thought I was going to die I was so bored.  We started late (and all of you who know me well can attest to how much I love that...not). They put us all in a room and said everything once in Korean and once in English.  It was also a verbatim, slide by slide exactly the same, presentation that we had just seen at the August orientation.  Tedious.  Before going to the meeting we each had to fill out a questionnaire.  The results were reviewed in a VERY fast PowerPoint that I actually wish we'd had more time to discuss.  One question, for instance, asked how useful we thought co-teaching was.  FOUR PERCENT of Korean teachers said they felt that co-teaching was USELESS.  Not a single NSET put useless.  Those are the kinds of things I would have liked to address.

After the first meeting we were split into the Korean teachers who stayed in the auditorium at the Gangdong-gu Office, and the NSETs who went to the auditorium in the elementary school next door.  I am not entirely sure what the Korean teacher talked about, but our session was run by a hilarious guy from New Zealand and it was all about "loving life in Korea."  He gave us some great tips for places to go, things to see, and places to eat in our area and outside Seoul, so that was a pretty useful hour and fifteen minutes.  Then we went off to a (very delicious) buffet dinner.

At this point, tons of people left.  It had been a really long day.  I, however, stayed and I'm very glad I did.

The next session was an "Olympics" of traditional Korean games/activities.  We were all split into teams (GO LIGHT BLUE!) with a mixture of Korean and Native teachers.  Actually, Candice from down the hall and I were the only two native speakers on our team.  So Young was on our team, and so was one of the teachers from Aju where I work after school.  We did various activities, including a Korean wrestling game where you hold one foot and jump around trying to knock the other person down (terrible), top spinning that you keep going by whipping with a stick that has a string tied to it (absurdly hard), "tuho" where you throw arrows into a pail (made more difficult by the nonstandard weight and size of said arrows), "yutnori" a game where you throw round sticks with one flat side in order to advance around a game board (I was actually pretty decent at this and it was fun), "jaegi chagi" which is a lot like hackey sack, but you play individually and have to keep this pompom in the air (I was horrid at this!), and a chopstick contest where you had to see which team could move the most uncooked beans from one plate to another in one minute (Candice and I DOMINATED and won a set of chopsticks each, hahaha).  It was a whole lot of fun.  Then we spent an hour doing super random "English Recreation" games with a crazy Korean man who I swear was a cruise director in a previous life.  Andrew's co-teacher gave us a ride home and I crashed.  While it was way better than expected, it was still a super long day.  I was a little bitter when I heard that the middle school teachers in our district actually got to go on a 2 day retreat to Seoraksan...until I remembered that in a few short months they inherit the sixth graders that have been annoying the crap out of me.  Fair trade.

Our team.  Can you spot the foreigners?

On Saturday, I met up with Laura, Julia, Erich and Dana to lay out some plans for our trip in February.  From February 12-24 I will be visiting Cambodia, Thailand and Laos.  I am going to visit the temples of Angkor, veg out on the beach in Phuket and visit the PoP schools outside Luang Prabang.  And get three new stamps in my passport!  I am beyond excited.  However, due to ticket prices, now it looks like only Erich and I will be slugging out the whole trip.  My brother is meeting us in Thailand and Dana and Laura are going to start in Beijing and try to find some cheap tickets to come meet us.  Julia is also going to try and meet up with us in Laos.  Anyways, we basically spent the afternoon researching fun stuff to do in those countries and hanging out in a coffee shop.  It was a pretty chill day.

Sunday I met up with Natasha and we headed over to Gwanghwamun to check out the Big Air World Cup snowboarding competition.  This is the first time a major snowboarding event has ever been held in Asia, let alone in Korea.  Korea is really trying to mold themselves into a winter sports haven as part of the big PyeongChang has submitted for the 2018 Winter Olympic games.  In order to host this event, they built a giant ski jump directly in the center of town.  Gwanghwamun Plaza, you may remember, used to be home to fountains and thousands of flowers.  Well the fountains were closed down and the flowers were torn out to put in an ice skating rink and a snowboard jump.  The jump was 100 meters long, and 34 meters high.  It was this crazy man made mountain right in the middle of busy streets and office buildings.  They kept pumping snow out to cover it, but it was a beautifully sunny and warm(er than it had been) day, so it was difficult for them to keep up.  Still it was a bizarre and awesome thing to watch.

Awesome new statue of King Sejong in Gwanghwamun Plaza.  He was the king who created Hangul, the written component of the Korean language.  This thing is huge!  Think Abraham Lincoln in the Lincoln Memorial.  Its really quite beautiful.

Ski jump right in the middle of the city.

Flying through the air.

Woo!

Clean landing.  Please note the blue tarp peeking through the snow.  Looks...dangerous.

Last week was bitterly cold.  And my heat broke.  So that was fun.  I woke up and it was 14*C in my apartment!  I like to sleep with it chilly, but that is downright FREEZING.  It was painful to walk out of my bathroom after my shower and have my hair feel like it would turn immediately to an icicle.  Thankfully they fixed that by Thursday night.  Its been super cold and windy.  The other day it was only 9*F!  Brrr!  Sadly no snow (unlike my friends and family on the east coast!).

This Friday Julia Facebook messaged us and said that her coworker had free passes to Lotte World and wanted to know if we wanted to go.  I was scheduled to have dinner with my co-teachers but we weren't meeting at Lotte World until 7pm so I was in.  First my coworkers and I went out to dinner at an Italian restaurant on top of Home Plus near our school.  The food was delicious, the atmosphere cozy, and the conversation hilarious.  It was a very good time.  Then I headed over to meet the girls (Julia, Dana and Laura) at Lotte World.  Julia had been under the impression that she had 6 free passes, two in each of three envelopes.  Since there were only 4 of us coming, we decided to give away the one envelope to a woman in line so she wouldn't have to pay.  Seconds after she went in, we found out that the envelopes, in fact, only had ONE free ticket in each.  We all chipped in for the fourth ticket (which was only 12,000won to begin with) and headed in.

When we walked in, it was clear that this was not just your average night at Lotte World.  The ice rink had been turned into a huge seating area and there was a stage with performers that were being projected on big screens.  There was also a super random petting zoo set up.  We spent a little time looking at/touching/getting depressed about various animals before we spotted an area where they were letting people hold something and taking Polaroids of them.  Dana and I headed over to investigate and found...

A LEMUR!

Say whaaat?  He was tiny and soft and had huge eyes and little man hands.  It took everything in me not to shove him in my hoodie pocket and run out of there.  The girls working could see how much we loved him (a major hint was probably how much we were fawning over him) and let us hold him longer than the other people.

Picture of a picture of me holding a lemur.  And CHEESING.

Giving him some TLC.

After we were done playing with the animals, Dana and Julia went on a ride and I tried to figure out what was going on downstairs.  While I was waiting, I got to see 2NE1 perform on the big screen.  They are a K-pop girl group and they are really quite good.  I especially appreciated that they didn't lip sync like some of the other groups (ahem, ahem, Brown Eyed Girls, ahem).  Soon after they were done with the ride we headed downstairs to watch more of the concert.  We saw lots of BIG K-pop people, including 2NE1, Brown Eyed Girls, 4Minute, Kara, Psy, and G Dragon.  It was just so unexpected and therefore even more fun.  There were TONS of people there.

Stage with crowds and the big screens on each side and on the ceiling.

Stage (you can see G Dragon on the side screen).

G Dragon performing a slow jam.

4Minute singing their song Music/Muzik.

After the concert started to wind down we found some chairs and just chilled, took a bunch of random self portraits, and listened to the rest of the performance.  Then we headed upstairs to snap a photo in the Christmas section and head home.

Aforementioned self portraits, showing off our free passes.

It looks like a postcard!

For real, we could be a Lotte World advertisement.  Love it.

(Dana, Me, Julia, Laura)

Saturday I slept in and cleaned a little before heading out to the USO travel agent to make the final payment on Erich and I's tickets for February.  In total it is 7 flights:  Seoul, South Korea - Siem Reap, Cambodia; Siem Reap - Bangkok, Thailand - Phuket, Thailand; Phuket - Bangkok - Luang Prabang, Laos; Luang Prabang - Bangkok - Seoul.  It cost us $1476.00, which I think is a pretty decent price.  I am so far beyond excited that I can't begin to describe it.  Look forward to hearing me gush even more about it in the future.

After hitting the travel agent, I met up with Ayzia at the Cheongnyangni train station in northern Seoul to catch a train out to Cheongpyeong (seriously, they could not make these two names harder for a foreigner to pronounce).  The ride was about an hour long and cost 3,100won, so less than $2.50.  Then we took a taxi out to the Garden of the Morning Calm to check out their Lighting Festival.  It did NOT disappoint.  There were lights EVERYWHERE!  It felt like some crazy lit up Willy Wonka funland.  It was absolutely beautiful.  And FREEZING!  We walked around the garden for about 2 hours total, enjoyed some dinner while there, and then took the 9:09pm train back to Seoul.  It was totally worth the trip.  And its there until February, so check it out if you get the chance!

Church will all kinds of things floating around it in the Heaven Garden.

Pretty pathways all lit up.

So beautiful.  (I especially love the light up grapes on the arch, haha.)

The Sunken Garden, my favorite area.

Such a beautiful backdrop.

Sunday I awoke looking for adventure.  Haha, not really. I awoke intent on doing some shopping for the stuff I'm making for our Christmas potluck/sleepover.  I headed out to HomePlus (the medium sized one near me) where I actually ended up buying an oven!  I really miss baking (something my mom and I always did around Christmas) so I decided to buy it as a Christmas gift to myself.  It is a little electric convection oven that only set me back 95,000won or about $76.  Not too shabby.

There she is!

Yesterday I baked all afternoon and made about 4 dozen peanut butter/chocolate cookies (using a Lotte Ghana chocolate bar instead of the much more expensive Hershey Kisses, haha) and 2 dozen small pieces of almond bark.  I took them into school today and they were a big hit!  I will probably spend most of Wednesday baking since I'm done with school.  That way the cookies will be extra fresh for our Christmas Eve sleepover.  I am pumped!

As far as I know, today was my last full day of teaching until March!  That is exciting news.  Tomorrow I have to go to work, but we don't teach and the kids go home before lunch (seems like a waste of time to me...).  Then I'm off until January 4th when I start camp.  I work camp for three weeks half day, have 4 days off, work one day, then work 2 weeks.  Now So Young told me that the special subject teachers don't usually teach during those two weeks, but you never know.  Then I have my 2 weeks off (and my trip!) and the new school year starts in March.  I cannot believe how fast it is flying by.  I am often startled to realize that I've been away so long.  It seems impossible.

I'll update again before Christmas, but in case you don't see it, I hope you have a fantastically Merry Christmas, and a wonderfully happy and peaceful New Year.  Much love.

It's Snowing!

Snowflake decorations my third graders made adorning the windows of my English room.  I love that you can see them from the playground as well

That is the title of third grade's chapter 8.  Since third graders only have English once a week (for now), I spend a month on each lesson.  For the past three weeks we've been exclaiming about various types of weather and discussing things you wear and thing you do in each season.

Today when fourth period was wrapping up, a third grade boy said "Teacher! It's snowing!"  I have become so desensitized to this phrase that I just nodded until I looked out the window where he was pointing.  Dude...it WAS snowing.  Within an half-hour it was REALLY snowing.  Like blizzard mode.  And within a full hour, it was over.  But it was great while it lasted.  The kids all went outside and lost their MINDS.

Here are some pictures I snapped out the window of their snowy adventures.

"The childen are FREAKING OUT."  - This coworker as she looks out the window.

You thought umbrellas were just for rain?  Silly! In Korea they're for rain, sun, snow, wind, you name it.

Check out the kid in the gray hoodie in the bottom left quarter of the screen.  He's holding a GIANT snowball (filled with mud, I'm sure) that he managed to scrape together from that little bit of snow.  Industrious!

Gifts On The Move!

Today I mailed 6 boxes and two padded envelopes full of gifts off to America.  I think my co-workers thought I was building a box fort as I stacked them all up on my desk to fill out a billion customs declaration forms. 

$214.83 and about an hour of my life later, they're headed your way.  Next step: finding, writing, and mailing some Christmas cards.

Holiday Spirit!

It is so odd to be away from home during the holiday season.  I can't believe that we are only 19 days until Christmas!  Usually Thanksgiving is a sign to my brain that Christmas is coming up and I need to get my butt into gear, but with the little Thanksgiving we had in Seoul (and the lack of days off surrounding it!) that didn't really happen this year.  I've done all my shopping and packed up a bunch of boxes to send to the US tomorrow (literally 7 boxes of various sizes and two large padded envelopes), but it still doesn't really feel Christmas-y.  One of my favorite parts of the Christmas season is sitting in a room only lit by Christmas tree lights (and I'm a purist, so only white lits on my tree, thank you very much) with some seasonal music playing in the background.  It just makes me feel warm and fuzzy.

In Seoul, I kind of have to improvise in order to ge in that holiday spirit.  Today I watched Love Actually (again), and went out to buy a Christmas tree.  Daiso sells little teeny trees and all the decorations.  For 6,000won (just over $5) I set up a cute little Christmas corner:

 And for a close up on the tiny litte tree:

Sadly I couldn't find any battery powered little strands of lights, so its still not quite there.  But its a start.  I've also been listening to some Christmas music as I clean and set up.  Let me just say that Katy Perry's version of White Christmas is SO TERRIBLE that I wish I could pay iTunes to take it BACK.  Ugh.  But I also got Josh Groban's Noel, which is (not surprisingly) wonderful.  I love the song Thankful that he sings, so I thought I'd share the lyrics.

 Thankful

 Somedays we forget

To look around us

Somedays we can't see

The joy that surrounds us

So caught up inside ourselves

We take when we should give.

So for tonight we pray for

What we know can be.

And on this day we hope for

What we still can't see.

It's up to us to be the change

And even though we all can still do more

There's so much to be thankful for.

Look beyond ourselves

There's so much sorrow

It's way too late to say

I'll cry tomorrow

Each of us must find our truth

It's so long overdue

So for tonight we pray for

What we know can be

And every day we hope for

What we still can't see

It's up to us to be the change

And even though we all can still do more

There's so much to be thankful for.

Even with our differences

There is a place we're all connected

Each of us can find each other's light

So for tonight we pray for

What we know can be

And on this day we hope for

What we still can't see

It's up to us to be the change

And even though this world needs so much more,

There's so much to be thankful for.

Time Flies!

Ok, I realize that it has been an unreasonably long time since I've updated. I'm sorry! I have no valid excuse!


Last week was nothing exciting at school or after school. My main co-teacher, Eun Kyung/Sienna, was out the entire week (and this whole week) due to her baby issues. She can't be more than 1.5 months pregnant, so I'm hoping that this is not indicative of how the rest of her pregnancy is going to roll. From what I've heard, she and the baby are both fine. She just must have been put on bed rest or something. This wouldn't be a problem, except for the fact that she is the one technically in charge of me. The strict, rule following principal and vice principal won't let So Young negotiate any of my leave or really discuss my needs/thoughts/feelings with them at all. I have to draft some document to make my leave days official for winter/February break and I can't do that until Eun Kyung comes back. And we're not really sure when that will be. It is just frustrating to have all these loose ends hanging out and not be able to do anything about them. I feel like I need some sort of...foster mom at school. Especially if the rest of her pregnancy is going to be anything like this! I guess I have to put it on my list of stuff to discuss when she comes back. Monday through Wednesday So Young was also out because her son had swine flu. My co-teachers are dropping like FLIES I tell you.

Thursday was Thanksgiving and right after my afterschool program I hopped on the train for the hour ride up to Itaewon (the foreigner district in Seoul). Sadly I forgot my camera at afterschool (where I had been taking the hilarious pictures of kids playing Pin The Beak On The Turkey and Pin The Fork On The Pilgrim that are posted below. The pictures from dinner shown below are from Dana. I had made reservations at an Austrian restaurant that we thought had a Thanksgiving buffet. Turns out it wasn't a buffet, it was a set menu, but we had plenty of food, so that was fine. Chef Meili, the restaurant, is a lovely, homey little place. We were lead up to the second floor and the four of us (Laura, Dana, and Dana's friend Christopher) were seated by the window where we ordered a bottle of wine to get the holiday started right. The food was DELICIOUS. We had beet soup, turkey, cranberry sauce, cooked veggies, stuffing (that was actually cooked in the turkey!), and mashed potatoes. And we ended with pumpkin cheesecake. The place was packed with foreigners searching for a taste of home and it was just a really nice evening. The company was good, the food tasty and the atmosphere cozy. Perfect. The chef came out and took a picture with us, and after dinner we went down to the deli where he cut up basically an entire turkey for Laura to take to her students the next day. Very nice. We also encountered a CRAZY lady who was trying to (and sadly succeeding) in engaging Dana in conversation before we pulled her away. I headed home, happy and full of Turkey.

Pretty darn close....

Seriously far away.

Again, no where close!

This is why I love Korea.  Spinning kids around with a bag on their head and playing Pin the Beak on the Turkey took up almost an entire 40 minute Fun Based Activities lesson.  Awesome.

They were surprised at how close their fork was.

The homey interior of the restaurant.  The tops of the walls were all decorated with pictures of the Austrian chef and his Korean wife.

Posing with the girls as we sipped our red wine.

Beet soup.  It was actually incredibly delicious.  And hot pink.

Thanksgiving dinner from above.

Side view! Haha.

Pumpkin cheesecake.  It wasn't pie...but it did the trick.

Once again I am caught doing the PG peace sign when I should be throwing the Asian peace sign.  Did my picture from Victoria's Peak in Hong Kong teach me NOTHING?!

Dana, Me, Christopher, Laura, and the chef.  He was adorable.  And super friendly.

Carving up that sweet bird for Laura.

On the way home we spotted this rack of cornish game hens at various levels of doneness.  Dana made sure to tag each of us as an individual bird on Facebook, haha.

On Friday I only taught one class because the kids all got their swine flu shots (apparently not soon enough because one of my classes today was cancelled because they'd been sent home due to swine flu.) Friday after school I ran over to Aju Elementary to pick up my camera which they had found on Friday morning. Thank God. I am so used to American schools...I was seriously worried I would never get it back! Friday night we were supposed to go to a free concert that was being thrown to celebrate the one-year anniversary of the first English speaking radio station in Seoul. However there were some ticket issues and I was really tired, so I ended up not going. I was sad later when I heard how cool it was, but it was probably smart that I went sloth mode.

Saturday morning I got up and did a video chat with my whole family as they celebrated Thanksgiving a day late. I was great to talk to my Mom, Grandparents, Aunts and Uncles, cousins, and my brother and his new girlfriend. Then what did I do? I spent all day sitting/laying in bed and watching the K-Drama "You're Beautiful." And it was GLORIOUS. Dana and Julia had told me that if I liked Boys Before Flowers (which we all know I did), I'd probably like You're Beautiful which was actually current on TV. I started watching it during the week, and I was finished the 16 episode series on Sunday night. It was sooooo good. Basically there is a girl (Go Mi Nyu) who is studying to be a nun until she's visited by an agent who says she needs to pretend to be her male twin brother (Go Mi Nam) and join a boy band in his stead for a month because he's had a plastic surgery mishap and needs to recover in the US. Um...perfect. She agrees and, of course, laughter, tears and love ensue. It was uniquely hilarious and touching, and thoroughly entertaining. I liked it even MORE than BBF. I know...stunning. The story was better, there was still lots of good music, and the eye candy was...awesome. Thanks to back up dancers there were more muscular, shirtless men in one episode of You're Beautiful than the entire series of BBF. And all three of the other boys in the band (Tae Kyung, Jeremy <3, and Shin Woo) are adorable. Especially after Tae Kyung's terrible MySpace hair is dealt with a few episodes in. I can't imagine another K-Drama living up to the level of You're Beautiful, but I have heard good things about Coffee Prince, so I'll check that out next. This one also involves cross dressing and a rich guy paying the girl-dressed-as-a-guy to pretend to be his gay lover. How could it not be entertaining? (Esp. in a country where homosexuality is still ULTRA taboo.)

You're Beautiful main cast. 

Tae Kyung (before MySpace hair make over), Go Mi Nam/Nyu, Jeremy, Shin Woo.

Adorable.  It was impossible to watch this drama and not want to put Lee Hong Ki (the guy who plays Jeremy) in your pocket forEVER.

Sunday I lounged around for a while before cleaning my apartment for a bit and heading out to meet Julia in Gangnam to see....NINJA ASSASSIN. It’s an American movie, but it stars Rain, a total LEGEND in Korean pop music. The movie was INSANELY gory (I cannot count the number of faced I saw cut in half or limbs that were chopped clean off) and therefore awesome. There were some really funny parts that Julia and I were the only ones laughing at. I can't tell if it is a cultural thing not to laugh at movies, or if the subtitles just don't do it justice. At one point a Europol agent comments that he doesn't look dangerous, "He looks, like he belongs in a boy band." I mean come on....that HAD to translate. Plus that joke was probably lost on just about ALL the American audience. Yet Julia and I were the only ones giggling. After the movie we walked around in the rain for a while in search of food before giving up and deciding to take a rain check (extra meaningful because it was actually raining).

Rain, all cut up in prep for his role in Ninja Assassin  And by cut up I mean muscled and scarred.  Obvi.

This week sailed by. Tuesday I got a killer care package from my mom.  It contained three new shirts, two new gum flavors, two boxes of macaroni and cheese (once again labeled "beads" on the cutsoms form), cough drops, books for my kids, A BOX OF THIN MINTS, and ASSORTED CANDY CORN. Seriously....she's the best mom in history.  I didn't have kids for the first two classes on Wednesday since the sixth graders were having midterms (? finals?) so that day went quickly. Wednesday night Angie and I spent an hour and a half running around to different glasses stores trying to find something we liked. Glasses here are insanely cheap (ranging from $25-50 a pair- including lenses and frames) so I want to get some fun ones. The other day on the metro I couldn't stop staring at this guy's glasses...they were black on the front and the arms were black and white checkerboard. I must make them mine. Unfortunately we didn't find any. While e were in HomePlus we decided to browse the books in the all Korean bookstore.  I picked up an English phrase book to flip through, and opened it directly to this disturbing page:

What a great chronology.  What's crazy is that there was no apparent structure to the book.  This page fell between symptoms of illnesses and asking directions.  So random.

On the way home I picked up some take-out and ended up with some pretty terrible food poisoning. I was up puking all night. It was pleasant...PSYCH. Thursday I didn't go in to school, but I was feeling well enough to go to after school. (Amazing how a much better a difference of $120 on your next paycheck can make you feel...) On the way between after school and the train station I got some laughter therapy as Sinead and I discussed English names the kids choose. There is a kid in one of our after school classes named Lion and it pisses Sinead off to no end. For the first like month she called him Leon until he was finally like "Sinead teacher, its LION. Like the animal." As she said to me "Like hell it is." She refuses to call him Lion. I told her that's how I could tell she wasn't American. I was like "Lion? Ok. Want me to call you some random noun as your name? I'm in." Silly Irish girl. You can choose whatever you want to be your name! You can even choose a string of letters that don't make a word and have that be your name. It’s the American way.

Today I came in early to set up my laptop so the kids could video chat with people in the US. My fifth graders are doing a lesson on talking to people on the phone, so I had the great idea to have them video chat with people at home. It is always great for them to hear more native speakers, so I e-mailed a bunch of people and in the end 11 agreed to participate, which was AWESOME. But then disaster struck. After more than an hour and a half, including much technical support from Carl, I was still unable to get my laptop to work on the school internet network using the LAN cord, OR to pick up any of the unsecured wireless networks in range. We ended up having to do a one-sided video chat, where the kids asked questions and I typed them for the person to answer out loud. It worked surprisingly well, except for a few small hiccups. We chatted with my Dad (who put a dummy up in front of the camera first and definitely made the kids laugh), my Mom (who showed the kids a Christmas ornament with my picture on it that I'd made when I was four), my Grandma (who was great and asked the kids questions back which kept them on their toes), my cousins Michae and Ty (who were the first black people most of my kids have ever talked to, and especially awesome because they were the closest to my kids' ages), my Uncle Todd (who dutifully held up all the various pets in their house in the background of the camera), Debbie (who answered like a true Sped teacher with short and succinct responses), Christina (who just HAPPENED to have a Snape figurine from Harry Potter within arms reach), my brother Mike and his girlfriend Loran (whose camera kept freezing as they LIED about their jobs- since when does being a forensic accountant translate to being a professional singer, Loran?!- and tried to come up with easier answers to kids' questions), and my cousin Rachel (whose camera sadly didn't work but she patiently answered questions- such as "do you like insects?"- anyway). Overall it was a wonderful experience for the kids, and (as always) I am thankful to have such a strong support system at home. We'll have to do it again sometime with a working camera so you can see/hear the kids as well.

This weekend I don't really have any plans. On evenings throughout this week I wrapped all my Christmas gifts and got them all packed and ready to send to the states. I'll probably send them out next Monday. I found out that the Daiso right by us sells tiny little fake Christmas trees for a couple bucks so I'll probably get one of those and some tiny ornaments and decorate my room.

Next week we're meeting to talk about our trip in February. Mike booked his plane tickets, but they're kind of general so we're planning out what's happening on the days we're in Cambodia, Thailand and Laos. The one thing I know for certain is that we'll be going out to a Pencils of Promise school in Laos, which I am absolutely psyched for. For those of you who need a little background, Pencils of Promise is a non-profit that was started by Adam Braun, a guy I knew from SAS. Its aim is to build sustainable schools in impoverished areas that would otherwise have no access to early education. They have already completed one school in Laos, and are 75% finished with schools two and three. They require that locals provide materials, labor, and a part of the cost. Pencils of Promise donations often come from many individuals donating only a small amount of money. They help small efforts yield big results, and directly benefit hundreds of children. I talked to Adam a few days ago on Facebook and he said he's not sure where the construction on the second school will be when we are in Laos, but that if I drop him a line like 2 weeks before we go he'll set it up with one of his partners in Laos so that they'll take us out to the village and let us see the school, meet the kids, etc. I am beyond excited. This is an organization that is run by passionate, caring people who are seeing real, tangible change. My bags are going to be stuffed with supplies for us to take to the school, and I am going to talk to my co-teacher and see if we could do some sort of drive at the school to collect supplies or funds. If each student I teach brought in a single notebook or package of pencils or crayons, I would be able to take over 500 things with me. That would be awesome. Anyways, I have plenty of time to plan, but I can already tell that visiting that PoP school is going to be one of the highlights of my trip.  While reading Adam's travel journal I kept getting choked up at the kind of tangible change he's making.  What an awesome thing to be a part of!  If you're looking for an organization to give some money to, keep PoP in mind.

My favorite line: "We are part of a global generation of optimists."

Contemplation

This is the second post today, so make sure you scroll down and check out last week's adventures to the Dog Cafe and Aquarium.

This week was short so it was not very exciting.  On Thursday morning So Young told me that Sienna was pregnant and was having some issues so she wouldn't be in Thursday or Friday.  She had accidentally taken home both English Room keys and So Young was freaking out because she had an observation that day.  Thankfully I had previously seen that some fifth graders had broken in through the "locked" back door of the room and I figured out how they opened it.  Crisis averted!  On Friday I taught my fifth graders alone, and thanks to planning lots of activities and we went through back to back, everything went smoothly.  It is all about just not giving them enough time to be asses, hahah.  The classes flew by.

Thanks to conversations with one of my co-workers and with my mom, I've been doing a lot of thinking about how long I'll be here, etc.  When I left, I told everyone I would be here for at least one year (and my mom kept correcting me and saying "ONE YEAR ONLY.").  I had no idea what I was getting myself into, what living here would be like, how much it would cost, etc.  Seeing how I've settled into my life here, my mom said during one of our conversations "You're not coming home after a year, are you?" 

Honestly?  Probably not.  I want to stay at LEAST 18 months.  While I miss my family and friends terribly and sincerely wish I were closer, I can't help but ask myself, "Aside from them...what are you going home for?" 

I was really unhappy last year.  Many nights I would return home from work, exhausted and knotted with stress, just to close my bedroom door and cry.  I was constantly overcome with stress which didn't help my terrible eating habits or the fact that I never had energy to do anything.  I lived paycheck to paycheck (often overdrawing my account) and racked up a fair amount of credit card debt (for the first time in my life, and I've had a credit card since I was like 16).  I never had money to travel or do things that rekindled by passion for being in new places.  I felt stuck and suffocated.  THAT is what I am rushing home to?

Working regular and after school here, I make more than I made in states per month.  And I am not paying rent.  I have already paid off one credit card, not charged a single thing to my credit cards in three months, and have a bunch of money in the bank (and I don't even get paid my November paycheck until next Tuesday).  I am NEVER stressed about work (the closest is getting stressed over miscommunications at work) and honestly. I do very little.  I never ever have to work on anything at home, and I spend much of my free time at school messing around on the internet.  Rather than planning for 6 or 7 classes a day at home, I plan two lessons a WEEK here.  Yes, sometimes it gets repetitive, but I am able to change things up enough in each class that I don't go crazy.  I have adventures every weekend and I am planning a great trip to Thailand/Cambodia/Laos in February that I know I can afford without a shadow of a doubt.  There have been times of stress and homesickness, but never once have I questioned my decision to come here.

So will I stay longer than my one year contract?  Almost definitely yes.  And what will I do when I come home?  I have no idea.  I find it difficult to picture myself going back into that situation.  Would it be better if I was not in a Title I school? Not working special ed?  Not teaching in a testing grade?  Had a sane principal?  Maybe.  But it scares me to think about going back to that negative place.

As my dad warned me, "You can't just daisy chain these things together or you'll get to our age and not have any retirement."  I don't plan on doing this forever.  But what is stopping me from doing it now?  I am young and able, unencumbered by a family and a mortgage.  This is the time in my life when I need to have these adventures.  Do I want to raise a child in a foreign country?  Not especially.  I have said before, and will say again, that I definitely want to raise my children in the DC area.  But now, when I am free and have the chance, what is the problem with hoarding all the experiences that I can? 

Who knows.  A lot can happen in the next 9 months.  We'll see.  Either way I'll come home to at least visit next summer.  I'm not gone for good.  But I thnk it is good that I'm gone.