Merry Christmas to ME!!!

Hello All!




So first off, I must say how terrible I've been at keeping this thing updated lately. For those of you who check it, you can see that my last post was from Halloween, nearly two months ago! However, I don't think you have missed much.
As you know, I've decided to come home!!!! I'll get in Christmas Day and leave early-ish on New Year's Day (not a long break or good time to travel, but I know it will be well worth it)! Because I spent so much on tickets home and back to Korea, I decided I should lay low for a while and save money. I have been doing well with that and have only gone out to String and to dinner a few times. My most recent trip to dinner was last Saturday, December 18th, for a goodbye of sorts, since so many of us are leaving for the holidays. We went to my favorite somgyp sal restaurant. It's a Korean BBQ place and it's DELICIOUS!!! Afterwards we went to a Soju Cocktail Bar which I believe is called Fish and Grill. Soju, in case I haven't mentioned it before, is a Korean alcohol similar to vodka in that it's alcohol content is quite high and you can mix it with almost anything. The difference is it comes in a "beer bottle" and it's dirt cheap. It's Awesome! I'm bringing some home for people who want to try it. A soju cocktail is essentially a fruit icee with lots of soju in it and this bar has 8 or 9 flavors. We had a lot of fun, as you can see here.

It's supposed to be a funny picture. We were imitating some Koreans. As you can see, there are some new faces in the group. From left to right, we have Louis from Reno, Nevada, Me, Connie from Toronto, Kate, Trey from Oklahoma, Rhonda from Canada, Dan from Australia, Laura from Canada, and Fritz from New Zealand. This was early in the night.

The only other interesting tidbit is that I ate live octopus about a month ago. We were at String talking about it because Louis had just recently had it for the first time. We talked about going to try it later that week when all of sudden, we were leaving to go eat it right then. I tagged along with Louis, his Korean friend, Pete, and a guy named Wes who came here a few weeks prior to this point. So we go to this restaurant and order our food and some soju, because there's no way I was going to do this sober. :)

They bring out the soju. We all take a few shots. Then we hear this pounding noise coming from the back. I was told that this was the cooks taking the octopus, cutting off the tentacles and pounding it into chunks, between 1 1/2 and 3 inches long. Then a Korean lady brings out a single plate and sat it down in the middle of our small circular table. I look at the plate and see these chunks of tentacles slithering around like worms ready to get hooked as bait. I took one look and immediately backed my chair up a few feet with a very disgusted look on my face. I watched as the others decided how to eat this. The Korean man sitting next to me, who speaks very little English, took a few pieces and put it in this red sauce next to me. We were each given our own small dish of this sauce. He told me that the sauce helps to "kill" the octopus and sure enough, it stopped moving. As everyone else was eating this, I was getting up my courage, and asking questions about it. Strangely enough, I never asked how it would taste, just how it would feel in my mouth, moving around on it's own. I was told that I had to chew profusely so the suckers would not grip the insides of my cheek, tongue, or worst of all, throat. This had me really freaked out, but since the others seemed to be eating it no problem, I decided to give it a shot.

I took one of the pieces from my dish of red sauce, looked at it barely moving, put it in my mouth and chewed and chewed and chewed... It didn't taste bad or good. It was bland, from what I remember, of course I had it in my mouth for as short a time as possible before I knew it was safe to swallow. I only had one other piece, a much bigger one, but I was amazed at how the others and especially the Korean we were with took several pieces at once by chopstick in their mouth.

Unfortunately, I have no pictures or videos of this experience, which just means I'll have to get up the courage to do this at least one more time!

Until then, I will see you all soon! I will try to be better about posting on here, although I know I won't again until I go home and come back!

Halloween in Korea

I had two Halloween celebrations in Korea. The first was at my school and the second was Yeosu at a bar, about 45 minutes from where I live. At i-Sponge, Kate and I had to give a presentation about Halloween. So I put together a PowerPoint and we presented it to the group. This is a picture of about half of out students, and their friends who came, but there weren't many friends. After the presentation, we had pictures taken and then we broke off into two teams. There was a Kate team and an Ashley team, although I'm not sure why because Kate and I ended up staying together in the gym (pictured below) to lead the game, which turned out terribly. For the game, we did bobbing for apples. The apples were quite large so Kate cut them up. However, the kids still couldn't pick up the apples and it turned into chaos... oh well haha
We also had face painting, a haunted house, which was actually quite scary, and food, lots of food.

Yeosu was fun. I went as a vampire like at school. Connie, Kate and I went to Suncheon to meet a few people and then travel to Yeosu together so we split a cab to the bar when we got there. It was fun. I didn't take any pictures here so I'm only tagged in a few on Facebook but below you can see Connie, Will and myself.

Here you see me, Connie, Lindsey, as Poison Ivy, and Alex and Ian as the two main guys from the movie Fight Club.

Fireworks Festival in Busan :)

We went to Busan for their annual fireworks festival. We'd heard great things about the fireworks here and specifically about this show they put on in Busan. The festival was this past weekend, October 23rd and 24th. We left early Saturday morning by bus, which was extremely crowded. It took about 3 hours to get in to Busan and then we had to take the subway for a bit to get to the place we were staying, Connie has a friend in Busan so we stayed there. Everyone else got a few rooms to share. After we all got settled, we met at this bar called Fuzzy Navel around lunchtime. They serve the BEST Mexican food I've ever had, or maybe I just think it's that good because I've been totally deprived of Mexican food since getting to Korea. Anyway, I had tacos and they were fantastic. :)

Kelly and Bert met us here so that was pretty great to be able to see them, catch up a bit and exchange oddities about Korea. After lunch, we all broke off our own ways. There were about 15 of us at lunch. Kelly, Bert, Connie, Kate and I went shopping. We had to take a taxi to get there, and then we had to walk a bit because we told the taxi the wrong place but we finally made it. This is the mall we went to. They call it the largest department store in the world but it's clearly a mall. I should have taken pictures of this place. It's massive, at least 9 stories tall and it has all kinds of stores I recognize from home as well as other foreign stores and Korean stores. As you might imagine, most of this place is pretty high-end. They had all the big big brands there, like Coach, Chanel, Louis Vitton, and so many many more.

After shopping, we went to the beach they were shooting fireworks off at. We were supposed to meet everyone there because they were saving us a seat, however, we got there at 8:04pm. The fireworks started at 8pm and let's just say, EVERYONE comes to this festival. There were tons of people packed on this beach like sardines in a can. It was truly astonishing. If I wasn't so scared about being separated from the people I came there with, I would have taken pictures of the masses, not to mention the fireworks, but I was a little preoccupied being freaked out.

Don't get me wrong. I definitely enjoyed the show. The fireworks were absolutely incredible- much better than anything I've ever seen at home. They had colors, shapes, sounds and designs in their show I've never seen in fireworks and they had some that just stayed in the air, without fizzling out, for a good couple minutes. Best of all, they lasted a solid 45 minutes. About midway through the show, I managed to see the top of Kate's head and I began to call her and shove as best I could to reach her and when I finally did, I did not let go. I think we may have gained a new appreciation for each other that night haha

This is Connie and I after the fireworks show. There are a lot less people around now. Thankfully.

Daejeon Rock Festival

So a bunch of us went to the Rock Festival in Daejeon a few weekends ago. In Korea there are lots of festivals going on all the time. Daejeon had the rock festival, an international food festival, and some other cultural ones all going on the same weekend. There was food from a bunch of Asian countries and Mexico and Spain (that somehow makes it international) which we could pick from when we got there. I got some Indian curry which was pretty good but the meat I had was really bony and hard to eat. The rock bands were mostly "screamy" Korean groups but there were some foreigners singing too. The festival was supposed to play music until 5am but the police came and shut it down around 2 due to noise- makes no sense. Obviously a rock festival will be loud, but whatever. Here is one of the Korean groups on stage (not even sure if you can see anyone on stage in this picture though).They had this hot air balloon going next to the river, across the street from the rock festival. This was part of some other festival. All those dots in the sky are paper lanterns lit up. See my next picture for a group of people I don't know setting one off.

After things got shut down, we went to a couple bars and a Japanese restaurant before heading off to bed. Sorry this post is so lame. The Internet has been only letting me on for 10 minutes at a time, unless it's Skype, so I'm trying to crank this out quickly so Andrew has something to read. Next, I'll talk about this past weekend where I went to Busan for another festival. Try to enjoy!

Lisa Leaves, Ivy Takes us to the Lantern Festival and the Rest..

So not too much has happened since my last post. After hiking, I stayed in Gwangyang for the rest of my break from Chuseok and I got back into working. However a few weekends ago was a happy/sad time because another person went home, Lisa. She was part of the group who went hiking in Songnisan.

To send her off, we went out to dinner and then drinking after. The picture below shows Kate and I at the Indian restaurant in Suncheon that Lisa chose. Behind us you can see the big group of people we were with. Kate, Lizzie, Pete and I got there a little late so we had our own table.

After dinner most of the group went back to their apartments (most live in Suncheon) to get ready. We were already ready so we headed to a bar to kill some time. None of us had been here before and I forgot the name of this bar but it was really trendy and had these awesome beer towers. We enjoyed this :)
The party was supposed to be James Bond themed but I am not good at dressing up... In this picture is me, Lisa :), Kate, Shari, Sheba and Meghan. This is at San Antonio's where we went after the beer tower place and then after here we headed to a noraebong. It was late night but I think Lisa had fun!
During that next week, Ivy, the Korean teacher at our school, took us to the Jinju Lantern Festival. Jinju is about 45 minutes from Gwangyang. It was incredible! Here is a picture of Kate and me with two Korean girls who came up to us asking to get a picture with us. Under that is one of the sweet floats that was on the water. There are many more pictures on Facebook of this too. While here, we looked at all the floats in the water. They all lit up and some of them moved too. We also got paper lanterns which we wrote our hopes for the future on and then sent down the river. After this we had some pork and sting ray. Not a fan of sting ray. This was on a Thursday night and Ivy told us to make sure Jasmine didn't find out we were going because she would flip if she knew we went out drinking on a work night. We got home around 11:30 and we were all a little tired the next day but it was totally worth it!

Since this, there has only been one other weekend and a bunch of us met at a girl's high school in Suncheon for a softball game. I didn't take any pictures at it but there were at least 40 of us and most everyone played. Of course I didn't :) Haha

Also, Monday night there were some very loud, unexpected fireworks that scared the crap out of Kate and I who thought we might be getting bombed.. If you want, look at the videos of the fireworks I put on Facebook. Kate and I are talking nonsense throughout them but some of them are pretty cool.

As for this weekend, I think we are going to a rock festival in Daejeon. It is going on Saturday in a park and then Ivy wants to take us to some folk village Sunday so we'll see if that happens..

Until next time :)

Hiking at 속리산 (Songnisan) National Park

Over Chuseok, Korean Thanksgiving, Kate and I went hiking with some friends at a National Park that is about 3 and a half hours from Gwangyang. We went up Tuesday night so that we could leave early to eat and start hiking. We stayed a hotel in the middle of nowhere and the rooms where 30,000 Won each, which is about $26. That's crazy cheap and the room wasn't even that bad! There were no bugs, except Pete had a spider above his bed haha, and it was clean, except for some dust and cobwebs. Overall, totally worth it. It had a/c and free Internet. The Internet was spotty but still better than some places at home.

Anyway, we left there around 8am and then headed to the village outside the mountain we were going to hike, ate, bought the awesome rain ponchos you see below, and started hiking just after 10am. It cost 3,000 Won to hike all day. We were there for about 7 hours and it was rough. This was my first ever hiking experience and when you see a sign that read "Danger District" you can't help but get nervous.. Haha

Still, it was a lot of fun and I'm really glad I went. We we did get up to the top, were we up in the cloud bank and it was really foggy so we didn't see the view we were supposed to, but it was still a great experience and I want to go again soon because everyone says fall is the best time to go and it's getting much cooler. We hiked about 16km which is almost 10 miles. Special thanks to PETE. I never would have made it if you haven't carried my backpack over half of the way... Thanks :)

This is from the Boyeopsa Temple which we went to visit after hiking. It was in the park on the way out. There was a GIANT Buddha too.

On our way home, we stopped for food at TGI Fridays. We each got a 3 course meal for about $20. Here is the dessert we all picked!

Eel is Delish! :)

So this past Thursday night my boss took us out for dinner. We went to the restaurant in the picture below. While there we ate a lot of different things including kimchi, ginger, radish, rice, shrimp, a spicy soup that I didn't even realize was spicy (see bottom picture), and eel. I was very excited about trying this, ever since seeing it on TV back home. I was a little grossed out at first because when they brought it out, it was still moving. Check out my other pictures and videos of this on Facebook. However, once the shock of this wore off, I really got into it. Plus they gave us some free eel for being American, or at least foreign.

This is our group, minus me. The lady in black is our new secretary lady and we call her Big Mama. In the white is Michelle. She is our cook. She doesn't know a lot of English but she's really sweet. Across from her is our boss, Jasmine. She speaks good English. Next to her is Kate and then Ivy, our Korean co-teacher.

I added this picture just to show how they cut meat. They never use knives, always scissors and tongs or chopsticks. So here Ivy is cutting the eel while its still cooking over the grill. The other picture right before I tried eel for the first time! It was really very good!!

This is said to be the hottest chili pepper in Korea. I ate it. My mouth was on fire for at least 20 minutes! haha Still worth it. Notice the leaf with eel in my right hand ready to ball up and shove in my mouth after eating the pepper! haha After eating that I chugged some Coke, which didn't help at all, and then we served the spicy soup. I didn't even notice the spice because I just thought my mouth was still not happy about the pepper.. Good times :)

Kindergarten Classes

So, not much has happened really in the past few weeks. During the week I am in school from 9:30am until 6:15 or 7pm depending on the night. Classes are going well. For this month, I teach Kindergarten first (at 10am) for a class called Phonics Vowels which is just the name of the book that I teach them with. Then I teach again every day right after lunch. On Monday's I teach Manners. Let me just say, Korean kids do not have very good manners. So far I've taught them how to introduce themselves and how and when to say "thank you" and "I'm sorry." Alongside that, I have to fill out a Manner's Checklist every day on each student's progress. I have the same checklist for a month. Let's just say, they still haven't mastered what to do yet.
On Tuesday's and Thursday I teach a class called Show & Tell. This is not what you think of as Show & Tell at home however. It's really just meant to get the students speaking in front of each other. We've talked about colors, numbers through 10 and body parts so far. On Wednesdays, I teach Art and on Friday's I teach Blocks. The Blocks class is just about using various manipulates with the students to teach them about different concepts. The one I am teaching them now is time and they are learning to use and read an analog clock. Both of these classes are going pretty well. On Monday's and Wednesday I also teach Yoga. As most of you know, I love Yoga, but I've only done it using Wii Fit Plus. Although you make fun of me (and I love you all for it :)) I still think Wii Fit Yoga is real. Haha I teach my kids the poses I've learned from that and also some other ones I found on YouTube. It's a lot of fun and it gets some of the kids to focus better. Others.. Peter.. I'm still working on.
Tonight after work we are going out for eel with our boss. I have been looking forward to trying this ever since I saw a Food Network or Travel Channel show that Andrew saved for me (I think it was Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmerman?)! The episode I saw focused on Korean foods and at first the eel thing freaked me out but after they cooked it, it looked really delicious. I hope I'm not disappointed! I'll let you know how that goes, hopefully with pictures soon!

Rugby in Changwon

So two weekends ago I went to Changwon with some friends to watch Rugby. A lot of the guys we've met here play so a bunch of us made the trip out to see them and hang out that night. I didn't take that many pictures but you can see some of the guys below.

The trip there took about an hour and half, the farthest we'd travel since getting to Gwang yang. That was an adventure.. Pete drives like a maniac. :) I don't want to give too many pointless details, so let's just say it was a scary drive. Once we got to the field, it was ridiculously HOT! I felt soooo bad for the guys playing. We were sitting under tents in the shade but even that was hot. We were there at least a few hours and then we went to a hotel to shower and nap before dinner.

We ate at this foreigner bar where we had some Indian curry dish. It was spicy but good. We left the bar for a few hours to drink in one of the hotel rooms we got and then we went back down to the bar when it was cheaper. It was a fun night. I discovered that night that McDonald's delivers.. even at 6am, and right to the hotel room. :) Too bad we don't have one in Gwang yang.

Kindergarten and My Birthday

I know it's been a while since my last post, so I'm going to try my best to update everyone on what I've done in the last couple of weeks. As you know, my birthday was on the 18th. It was a Wednesday this year so I worked a full day, 9-7 and taught all of my classes, including Kindergarten. I don't think I've said much about Kindergarten yet so I'll do that now.

For the month of August, our we had 3 students the first week and then 4 the second. So not like home- I know. Anyway, the first week we had two girls, Sarah and Sally, and a boy, Peter. Peter is an asshole. That's all that needs to be said. He's gotten better the more I see and work with him, but... I'll keep you updated. The second week, this past week, we had one other student, May, the bosses daughter.

During August, Ivy, the Korean teacher, would teach Language Arts first thing each day, starting at 10am (for 35 minutes and then a 5 minute break). Then Kate taught Math. I taught Art everyday after that.. why you need art everyday, I don't know. Then it was time for lunch. After lunch, Kate "taught" a class called Board Games. Wonder what that means? Well it means exactly what you think. She literally just played a board game with them for 35 minutes everyday. This next class alternated between the three of us. Monday I taught Manners during this time, Tuesday Kate had P.E., Wednesday I had International Day, And Thursday and Friday were Ivy's classes. After that there was snack time and then I taught Yoga.

I know I know.. "Ashley, you teach yoga?" I've been getting that a lot.. haha I do, or did, everyday and it's AWESOME!! It's my favorite part of each day, aside from lunch when Kate and I eat quickly so we can go in the Teacher's Room for piece and quiet. Yoga even calms down Peter. And where did I learn the moves? Wii Fit Plus, which I played almost every day in the summer before I moved out here and.. YouTube. :D But that's enough about teaching for now..

This post is really about my birthday. Before we sent the Kindergartners home, Ivy called me into the Cook Room... totally oblivious, I sighed and followed her. I step in and the kids are sitting around the table with a lit up cake! It was the cutest thing! The school took pictures and I'll see if I can get a hold of them. My work is pretty great. That night after work Kate and I went back to our apartments and I made dinner and took a nap. Then we went out to String.

We went early, you know with it being a Wednesday and all but there were already quiet a few people there. It was Kerry and Nikki's last night :( So everyone came out to support them and send them off. I'm not really sure what to say about my birthday except that it was pretty great. I knew at that point that I had already met some wonderful people, but I had no idea how sweet everyone was- and I do mean everyone. I drank more than I should have, and was surprised with a yummy birthday cake. Everyone sang to me. It was really fun, but I was responsible, as always, and left my own party first! Haha I worry too much and I wanted to make sure I got back early enough to shower and go to bed at a decent time.

So this is going to sound really corny, but this day made me appreciate everything I have over here and at home much more. I Skyped a lot with friends and family that whole day and was treated very well at work. Then with String and everyone I've met here, I just felt so special. It was an awesome way to spend a birthday. Thank you to everyone who was a part of it!

Norebong and Bars

A few nights ago, Kate and I went out to String, just like every other Friday night here. We got there around 11:30 and stayed until at least 2:30. From there, we went with a bunch of our friends to a norebong. What is norebong, might you ask? Well it's very much like karaoke back in the states, but instead of singing in front of a bunch of strangers in a bar, you rent a room with your friends and sing with them. There are tons of songs to choose from and it plays a video of Koreans singing it with the English lyrics below. They serve you snacks and drinks and there is a bathroom and fun party lights all in your room. It's a blast. I even sang a few songs!! We went home and slept then went out to Suncheon Saturday night. They have a foreigner bar there too called San Antonio's. They have a huge drink selection and I did not try it but I've heard that the food there is delicious and the closest to real Mexican food you'll get in Korea. I put a lot more picture up on Facebook and some video's from the night, so check those out if you want to!

String Bar

Norebong

Kate and I at San Antonio's in Suncheon

My Students

So I've been teaching for a few weeks and I keep forgetting to take the kids picture! I remembered before a couple of my "classes" which I say because they are so small!
In the after school program, the classes start at Basic Stater, then Basic 1, Basic 2, Basic 4, Intermediate 1, Spark 2 and Highest 1. They are placed in a class based on ability, not age and that's why there are so many levels.

This picture is from the Basic 2 class. From left to right it goes, Jacob, Starlyn, Patrick. Jacob says he's 7 years old, but since Korea starts counting at 1 instead of 0, and then adds another year after the first New Year, he is really 5. I'm not sure how old Starlyn is, but I'm guessing 6 or 7. She is adorable :) Then there is Patrick who says he's 11, so 9. I have a lot of fun with them.

For those of you who know about Alex, one of my Kindergartner's from Student Teaching, I have a feeling Jacob will be his replacement. Back home, Alex always got in trouble for being rough with other kids and saying "no" a lot but he was really smart and I loved that kid! Jacob is just like that, so I hope he starts behaving better for me.. He did say "Teacher Ashley pretty" the other day, so I think we might be on the right track! haha

In this picture, you will notice there is only one child. Well, that is because he is the only student I have in my Spark 2/My Writing class. His name is Mike and he is really smart. I think he is Korean 11, so 9. He is still pretty shy with me, which is understandable since it's just us, but he's getting a lot better!

When I'm with him, basically just tutoring, I have him read out loud and write a lot. I even made him stand in front of the class to introduce me to the empty room! :)

We start teaching Kindergarten on Monday. There aren't many kids then either, so we split up the subjects. I'll let you know how that goes!

Namhae Beach

So Kate and I went to Namhae Beach this past weekend. We were communicating with people through a Facebook message, since we still don't have a cell phone. Many of the people in the message thread were people we had not met yet, including Rob, who was sort of facilitating directions, Ian, our driver, and Lizzie, his girlfriend. Rob told us to meet at String Bar at noon on Saturday and Ian ad Lizzie would take us to Home Plus and then to the beach. We got there right around 12:00, at least a few minutes early and we sat on the curb and waited and waited....

Finally, after a light rain shower and thinking we got stood up, we recognize some people from their Facebook pictures. Relieved, we meet them and after about another 20 minutes, we head to Home Plus to buy food and alcohol.

The ride to the beach was an adventure in itself because Lizzie and Ian had their rescue dog, Walter (read it with an English accent, Walta). Plus, we experienced our first non Korean driver in Korea. Ian is from Australia but he's been all over and he, I assume, has his licence here and a car. Their traffic rules still confound me with stopping at red lights being optional and having no real stop signs. However, we arrived to our destination safely, read: in one piece, and in a very timely manner- at least twenty minutes earlier than we should have.

Once In Namhae, we had to park before actually walking to the beach. There were Korean men charging people to park and Ian just blew past the guy like he didn't know what he was supposed to do. Ian has been here 2 years, speaks decent Korean and parking was less than $5, so he definitely knew what was going on. He ended up having to drop us off, leave the parking area, go back around, pay and then park.

When we finally walked onto the beach, into the gorgeous sand, I was immediately taken aback by the beauty of the land. You can see for yourself. We met up with the rest of our group, about 25 other people, and began to relax. Someone in our group brought a giant 8 person circular raft that stuck out like a sore thumb and people were on it drinking and goofing off. They went out too far and came back with jellyfish stings all over them. I wish I would have taken a picture of the jellyfish because they were so tiny and completely clear- very easy to miss. There were easily hundreds washed up on the beach.

There was a lot of drinking that night including a cooler full of what Ian called Jungle Juice, but not the American college version. This Jungle Juice consisted of a lot of wine, Sangria and fresh fruit, not a random mix of vodka and juices. They also had a lot of Soju which they called Korean beer, but it tastes like Vodka and Soju translates to "burned liquor" so I'm not really sure what it is.

We stayed in something called a Mimbok, or something like that.. I tried to find it on Google and it took me to some Russian thing.. Anyway it's just a small room where you lay on a blanket and small pillow. It was really uncomfortable but luckily ours had A/C so it wasn't completely unbearable, and it was ridiculously cheap.

Well I think that's all for now. I'm sitting here at work on Tuesday morning and this is all I have to show for it :)

I'll try to start taking more pictures, with myself and people I've met!! Some people are leaving really soon!!

Finally Started to Teach!!

So yesterday Kate and I finally began teaching. We each had three classes of kids in an after school program. As I think I mentioned, this school is brand new, so for the after school program there is a total of about 18 kids. These kids range from about a 1st grade English level to 4th grade. Kate has the lowest level with one student. Then I have the next two levels (Basic 1 and 2). Kate teaches Basic 4 and I teach Spark 2, which is more of a writing intensive class.

My Basic 1 class is supposed to have 3 students, but one wasn't there. So I had two students. When they learn English, they are given or get to pick an English name. Neither of these students had an English name yet so I got to name them both. I named the boy Jacob and the boy Amy. They were both pretty shy but they did understand at least a lot of the vocabulary I was throwing at them and they were able to repeat it all with pretty good pronunciation.

In my Basic 2 class there were three students, all at about a 3rd of 4th grade level. All three of them had English names already- Jacob, Patrick, and Starlyn. The Jacob in this class was very different from the first Jacob I had. He was a trouble maker.. broke the pencil he had so he couldn't do his work, spoke in Korean when he knew he was supposed to speak only English, etc. The thing is, he is really smart and I think he thinks this stuff is too easy for him. Every time I asked a question, he answered in a full, detailed sentence, so we'll see how that goes. He reminds me of one of the Kindergartners I taught this year and he ended up being my favorite.. not that I have those.. Haha

Today (Tuesday), is a "planning" day so Kate and I do not teach again until tomorrow. Hopefully Jacob and I do better tomorrow.

We finally get to teach today!!! I'll let you all know how it goes when I get home later tonight! Kate and I are very excited.. but a little nervous.. Wish us luck! :D

String Bar

So I've completely failed on taking anymore pictures so far... but I figured I should say something about the weekend. Friday night, Kate and I had plans with teachers from the town over to go to a bar for foreigners called String Bar. We were supposed to get there around 1o:30, but being the first week of work, and still not on a normal sleep schedule, we both fell asleep until about 11:30. Oops! :)
We ended up going to the bar a little after midnight. That was an adventure in itself. You see, Kate is night blind, so she can't see much except for brighter lights when it's dark out, so we walked arm in arm down the street, looking for a cab. Once we got to a busier road, we hopped in a cab and gave the driver a scrap of paper that said in Korean where we wanted to go (courtesy of our boss, Jasmine). He laughed at us and drove us there. He even gave us a discount, probably for being foreign and naive haha
Once we got to the bar, Kate, the girl we were meeting, bought us each a beer and the fun began... we ended up staying until about 4am and getting a cab ride with another scrap of paper to get us home. While at String, we met a lot of really cool people, some teachers, like Kate, Will, Kerry, Nikki, Pete and John (from Canada, England, Canada, Canada, England, and Canada respectively), and others like Mario, who's from Germany working at the steel factory here. Everyone was very friendly and nice. They were all amazed that it was our first week. Apparently most of them hadn't met other people foreign teachers for their first 3 months or so.
All in all, a good night.

On Saturday, we were invited by Kerry, Nikki, and Pete to go to a soccer game at the stadium on the island. Both teams were Posco teams, Posco being the big steel company, and at the end of the game, they gave away a Sonata, so there were 13.5K people in attendance, almost double what they are used to seeing. It was fun listening to the announcers and doing their little cheers- very high energy. However, the most entertaining thing to me was the 5 boys who would not leave Kerry alone. They were just being friendly but it was hilarious to see them talk to him in English and Korean. I just hadn't seen kids do that yet. It's getting me excited for Monday, where I'll teach 3 after school classes from about 1st-4th grade. I'll let you know how that goes. :)

i-Sponge English School

So I work at a school called i-Sponge. It's not like i-pod. In Korean, "i" is another word for child so i-sponge means the child "sponges" or soaks up English. Yesterday at work (Tuesday) Kate and I took some pictures and a video of the school. You can see some of the pictures below. Side note: In Korea, image is an even bigger deal to people so they are all about competing for the best brands and names of everything. You will notice some of the names posted above classrooms are the same as big name schools and artists. That's just how it is over here. Things have to look nice. I hope you enjoy these pictures!

Cooking Room

Gym
Teacher's Room/Lounge

Kindergarten class~Disney, Picasso and Andersen are the other two

Pretty flowers

Tiny toilet made just for kids!

Kids tiny sink!

My classroom, Harvard :)

Kate's classroom, MIT