We're Moving!

We’re moving!

We, as in my school and everyone who is a part of it, are moving to a new building across the busy road we are near currently. This is a bummer for Kate and I, who, up until the end of this week, enjoy a one minute commute to work, walking. :)

Ivy, Big Mama, Angelina, and maybe Annie- let’s just call them “The Koreans”- along with anyone else they can recruit will be moving all of the stuff we have at our current school building to a place that is less than a five minute drive away. Although this means Kate and I will have to walk about 10 minutes to get to work now, hopefully it won’t be so bad. We haven’t seen the building yet, but we know it’s somewhere awfully close to the Korean BBQ restaurant we love so much. I guess this could be both good and bad… haha On top of that, this Thursday is a holiday and they are giving us this Friday off too using the time to switch buildings, which means we get a nice long weekend!

Let’s take a few minutes to remember the past year and a half and the times we’ve spent in this building.

The first month I taugh Amanda, here we had just done an activity demonstrating the word "furry"

I'm teaching yoga to the Kindergarten students! :) So fun! I did this for my first 5 or so months here.

Sherly kissing me on Chuseok September 2010

I'd be lying if I said I wasn't crazy about this little girl :)

Michael and Amanda cutting out there "shape animals"! This was such a fun project!

Joseph and Alan working on their "shape animals".

A group shot of the seven year olds from June 2011

A group shot of the 6 year olds; they look so young!!

The 7 year olds working in their sketchbook, writing out their vocabulary words with fun pictures to help them remember the meaning of each word.

The Kindergarten girls (now 7 year old graduates! ): ) with Kate our first Chuseok in Korea, September 2010

Our first Halloween, October 2010

Our first Halloween, October 2010

All dressed up and making songpion in the Cooking Room; September 2010- for Chuseok

The youngest kids I've taught here so far (Korean age 4 at the time, so 2 or 3 in the States); the girls are twins!

Second Halloween, October 2011, don't I make a great Snow White!? :)

Making kimchi this past November (2011)

A shot with some of the 7 year olds Summer 2011

A few of my older students (I think they are Korean 12 and 13??) Andrew and Poly; they pinched their nose and then put on their glasses. No their eyes aren't THAT squinty! haha

Michael, from this past December (2011), isn't he adorable!?!

Alan showing me his pie chart of foods, July 2011

Sarah with the butterfly I painted on her face for a Sponge Time activity; June 2011

Clearly these pictures were not placed in chronological order, but I think that's half the fun of seeing them! Of course, there will be plenty of pictures of the new place to come, both here and on Facebook.

Until then, stay happy :D

Work and Play

Hello World :)

It’s been a while since I last posted and being the weekend, I figured it was a good time to catch you all up! Since you last heard from me, I have been snowboarding with lots of good friends, had a lazy Valentine’s weekend and am now spending time on myself. This also includes a few weeks of work and I’m REALLY excited to share with you all a fun activity I played with both Kindergarten classes this past Thursday and Friday!

Let’s start at the beginning. A few weekends ago, a HUGE group of us headed to Muju yet again. This time we had the regulars along with a few new people. Kate came along, as well as a girl from the other Gwangyang (Gwangyang Eup) and we also met up with Andy and his sweet girlfriend Gyuna. Saturday morning TK, Mina and Renee drove up too but most of us didn’t even see them!
After a pretty quite Friday night, the guys headed out before the sun was up while the rest of us snoozed until about 7:30. We all got ready and headed right outside of our building to the slope (we had a suite in the same building and the trip before).

Christine, Pete and Lizzie ready to head outside!

Christine and Lizzie took off after a few minutes while Pete and I tried to teach Kate how to snowboard. We know we are not the best teacher for this, especially when we only comfortably know the basics ourselves, but we did what we could. I told Kate all of the tips I could remember Dan giving me my first time out a month earlier. She did pretty well with standing up on our own, but she had a lot less balance than I did and as soon as she’d stand up, she would start speeding down sideways instead of working on heel side and “penduluming” down. I wish she had a better time with it, because even with all of the padding, she fell and hurt a lot.

Pete trying to help Kate; at this point I was just laughing.. :)

 Lizzie and Christine met back up with us and we all made it to the ski lift together. Kate loved that. When we got back to the top, we started out together and this time Pete and Christine were the first to leave the group. After a while, Lizzie and I left too. While waiting for the ski lift, we saw Dan and Seth in line ahead of us. They waited for us at the top and then took off in search of Kate. When they met up with her, she was ready to be done for the day so we headed in for a bit and then went to eat. After that, some of us headed out again. I went on the hard courses and I was pretty convinced Dan was trying to kill me because they were all sooo icy AND windy! I managed to stay standing for most of it, but I did fall a lot more, like when I first learned! Still, I wasn’t too discouraged and there were some parts with small slopes where I could fall down and then just slide down on my butt, keeping my legs and board off the ground a bit. That was SO MUCH FUN!! :D

Dan and I on a ski lift to the "hard" courses

 don’t know if that’s my last time going this season or not. As I write this, Dan, Seth, Rob and Yonodan are in Yeongpyong and probably having way more fun than where there’s a whole mess of us. :)

When we got back from that trip, it was Super bowl Sunday and Dan had the next day off! I think it’s hilarious that they give the guys the Monday after off but it makes sense because they wouldn’t be able to watch it live otherwise and I guess a lot of guys like to watch football… at least that’s what I’ve heard. :)

The rest of the week was like any other work week and Dan came down that Friday as always. We were planning on going out that night. I even met Dan for dinner but then we came back to my place to drop off his bag and we just never left! We got caught up on all of the shows we like to watch together and watched some movies too. It was a great way to spend the weekend. I didn’t leave once. Lazy, shmazy, that’s how I like it!

Dan and I FEASTED on these babies!! 6 each.. of yeah! :D haha

Now on to this week.

I’ve been doing a lot of self reflection recently and really looking at the person, and more specifically, the teacher I’ve become since moving overseas. I knew when I first got out here that it was going to be MUCH different from teaching in the States, but I have been trying to find ways to teach my students with the best practice methods I was taught in college. This can be challenging when I am required to use and complete students books and coursework in a set number of days, or months. Still, I do what I can to make fun, engaging lessons that also teach the kids English.

This week, I was able to do that in my Kindergarten classes on Thursday and Friday. Earlier this week, I got the kids talking about rhyming words. I asked them if they knew what that word meant and we made a chart, just like the ones we use each week with their Student Book vocabulary words, like the one featured here:

From last April. vocabulary word 3 times with a picutre representing the word.
Now they write a few sentences instead of pictures. Progress! :)

After they each had their eight boxes drawn, I had them write down an ending starting with the simple ones, like –at, -in, and –it. Then I would ask each student for a word with that ending and we would all write it down on our charts. We did this with 8 different rhyme endings, making the endings a bit more difficult, like –eed and –ead, and so forth. This got a bit frustrating for both me and the students because they had a hard time differentiating between the vowel sounds. They would say a word thinking it had the ending we were working on but then I would say, “Well, that word is spelled like this. It has a different ending,” or something to that affect.

Then Thursday morning, before I went into school, I thought of playing a rhyming game with the kids where they would look through papers on the ground with several rhyming words and try to find all the words with the same ending. To do this, I’d have the kids all pick up one word, say it, and tell me the ending that word had. Then I’d write it on the board next their name and make sure each child was looking for words with a different ending. Then I’d count to 3 and say “go!” and the kids would race around the room making sure they flipped over each piece of paper and found all of the words in their word family. Once they thought they had found all of the words, they came back to their seats. When everyone was finished, they each took turns reading the words off of the paper and I’d record it on the board. Then they’d do it again!

All of the 6 year olds, Michael, Amanda, Alan and Joseph looking for their words

The chart I made with the words they found. At the bottom they had to count
the words from each ending and then add them up, that's cross-curricular! :)

They had SOOO much fun with it and I managed to get these pictures Friday morning when I played with each class. I added new words and word endings to keep it fresh and to encourage more learning. All in all, a great end to my work week!

Sarah, Edward, and Sherly

Sherly

Sarah

Sally

Edward, Eric and Sally

7 year old word chart

 Dan has a big exercise starting next week, so he had a short, but very busy, work week. This meant he was down here on Thursday instead! I always love having him here. We spent the night cooking dinner for the Davey’s and ourselves. We ate at their place and watched the movie Moneyball. In case you aren’t familiar with the film, it’s about a baseball team that has a very small budget compared to other major league teams and after they lose their better players to said teams, they have to try and rebuild the team. It is not my typical kind of movie, and even with Brad Pitt and Jonah Hill starring in it, I wasn’t very interested in it. Although, Lizzie and I kept chatting and giggling, annoying the boys who just kept turning up the volume. It was so loud! haha

After I finished work on Friday, I came home to Daniel cooking me some VERY yummy pasta with chicken. We relaxed until Rob came by to take the boys away for the weekend. With the free time, I’ve been catching up on my shows and being lazy and productive!

Well, that’s all for now! Until next time, have happy days! :)

I LOVE my Job!!

When I’m not out with friends or with Dan, I’m doing one of two things, 1) sitting at home on the computer (aka Facebook, Pinterest or Youtube), watching shows and movies I downloaded, or 2) working. Since the first would totally bore you, I’d like to talk more about my job.

As I’ve said in past posts, I work at a private school here, in South Korea. I can truly say that I love my job. I have great coworkers and the kids I teach are so sweet, fun, and smart. I get paid to play with kids, and I like kids, so it’s really quite easy for me!

Today, I started the day on a lesson about the word “melting” with a group of Korean age 6 year olds (Kindergarteners). It was a simple lesson. First they looked at a page in their book that featured the work in a fun font with three pictures that showed things that were melting. There was a picture of ice melting, butter melting in water in a frying pan and one of something else I can’t recall at the moment. Anyway, after I asked them to read the word the way they thought it was pronounced, I said it a few times, and had each child repeat it back to me. Then we discussed each picture.

Amanda and Michael, the left page is the one about "melting"

In all of my classes each day, there are pictures to look at, especially with the younger kids. We always try to talk about them. It usually goes something like this: I point to a picture and say in my excited teacher voice, “Ok boys and girls. Look at this picture. What do you see? Who is in the picture? Where are they? Tell me anything you can in English.” I encourage my kids to speak in sentences but sometimes this actually discourages them, so then we just focus on saying any vocabulary words they know about that picture, even things like, “ball, pencil, daddy” or “2 girl and one boy” although they are getting much better at knowing when to add an s to the end of a word.

I used this same technique today with my Kindergarteners and they were able to give me pretty good descriptions of each picture. They said, “fry pan,” and “butter in water” for the first picture and for the second they said, “ice is melting.” After this, I got out the 5 small paper cups and ice cube chunks I grabbed from the cooking room earlier. I took the smallest piece of ice I saw in the cup and asked the kids what would happen if I put the ice in my steaming hot coffee cup. They told me, like the geniuses they are, that the ice would melt. This was our first little melting demonstration.

I then distributed the cups, one for each child and one for me, with an ice cube. Each cup had a different sized ice cube. We then decided who had the biggest ice cube, down to the smallest and I wrote their names on the board in this order. I had them guess whose ice cube would melt first and then we “tested” out their hypothesis. I told each child to hold the cup in their hands and slowly roll it to make the warmth from the hands move towards the ice cube in their cup. To avoid a mess, I told them they were not allowed to touch the ice cube, but they could touch anywhere on the cup.

Joseph showing me his ice and water

Even without touching the ice cube, they had a lot of fun with this, touching the bottom, which seemed to absorb the most water, checking their cube and that of the kids around them. They guessed correctly, again! Man, they are smart!

Here you can see some pictures of the kids hard at work trying to melt their ice cube. Just LOOK at Michael's face! Hahaha He always makes the BEST faces!

From L to R: Joseph, Michael, Alan and Amanda, holding the cups you see below

 After that we practice the presentation they will recite at the end of February for parents of perspective new students. Aren’t they adorable?!  My job is incredible :)

Michael :)

Amanda, too adorable for her own good

Joseph, so smart!

Alan :D

Well, what else can I say? This is how I spent the first 80 minutes of my work day! Does it get any better?! I think not! Hope your week is going this well! :)

Snow, Snowboarding, and Soju

This weekend was a blast. Dan and I went up to Muju with a bunch of friends to hang out, drink, and enjoy the Lunar New Year, or Seollal (설날). We met up at Club Davey around 11pm Friday night. From there we took two cars full of people, food, drinks, and clothes to ski and snowboard in. The group consisted of Rob, Renee, Yonodan, Pete and Gio in one car and Lizzie, Seth, Amanda and Dan and I in another car.

We headed north and stopped by a ski shop Rob had been to.  Here we got our rental gear and ski lift tickets for the following day. Then we went to our room in one of the many buildings at Muju’s resort. By the time we got into our room for the night, it was after 3 am. Crystal, a friend of Seth and Gio’s, was already there waiting for us. The rooms are pretty expensive but they didn’t seem to care that we were all staying together in one suite, so it ended up being just 45,000 Won per person for 2 nights!!

We unpacked a bit and got ready for bed. Some of the group- Dan, Seth, Rob, and Yonodan- were all planning on walking up at 5:45 to go snowboarding and skiing for the dawn and morning sessions. They ended up waking up on time (although Dan just stayed awake). I learned this night that I am a very light sleeper because their talking woke me up and kept me up until after they left. Rob and I had an ongoing joke over the weekend that I was in his head because I could quote things he said that weekend when he had no idea I was around to hear them. 

After the guys left, I made it back to sleep for a few more hours, until the phone in our hotel room rang. After about 3 rings I ran to get it, realizing nobody else was awake enough to really hear it. On the other end was a man from the rental shop telling me, in broken English and Korean that he was here with all of the rental gear for everyone still in the room along with our ski lift tickets. While on the phone, Pete and Crystal woke up so I recruited the two of them to go downstairs with me and bring up ours and everyone else’s stuff. It took about another hour and half for us to get everyone else awake and ready before leaving to take the shuttle to the mountain base closest to us.

We arrived right at 10am, with five and a half hours left to use on our ski lift tickets. Pete, Lizzie, Renee, Amanda and I took the lift up to the top of the closest mountain and then we strapped ourselves into our boards to get ready. Lizzie was the only one skiing in our group and she was a bit nervous because it had been a few years since she’d last gone.

Once we started heading down the mountain, we stopped every few minutes or so because someone had fallen behind or was tired. I liked going at this slow pace because it meant I wasn’t getting sore. It took us a while to get down and when we did make it down, Lizzie was pretty discouraged. She, Pete and Amanda headed inside to get lunch while Renee and I met up with Rob, Dan and Yonodan. The guys were just about to grab some food and head back to our room to nap but Renee and I convinced them to do one more run.

They told us about a run four miles up that had spectacular views and amazing snow so we headed up two lifts to get to the top of it. It was a lot of fun to board down. The snow for the first 2/3 was absolutely beautiful and great to be on. It was fresh and powdery. It had been snowing since very early that morning and was continuing to snow as we were heading down. Dan had his video camera out during this too. I think he was impressed by how I was doing; except for the way I still had to stop every so often, although a lot less than when I was with the other group. He was pretty tired from already being out there so long and not sleeping at all the night before.

 As we were out there, Rob talked to someone from the hotel and was told that we would have to change to a different room. Originally, we were going to head up to Muju on Saturday morning so we didn’t book a room for Friday night until Friday day, so due to the separate reservations, we had different rooms. That lead to Rob, Dan and Yonodan heading down the mountain much faster than Renee or I could and they took a shuttle bus back to the room so they could quickly pack everything up and take it conveniently to a room in a different building. :) What troopers! 

While they were busy taking care of that, Renee and I made it down the mountain and rode back up to come down again. Then we tried to meet up with the others we knew were still around somewhere. That proved to be a bit difficult and when we did actually meet up with Lizzie and Pete, they wanted to go snowboarding again. I was plenty tired from not sleeping well that night and from the snowboarding I’d already done, plus I was starving. So I offered to wait in Lotteria while they went down for another few runs. I knew I was tired but I didn’t realize just how tired I was until I sat down and waited for my friends after what seemed like an eternity. I actually almost fell asleep in the busy and noisy fast food shop. :o

When I met up with the others about an hour later, we headed towards the shuttle buses and made it to our new room. This place was a bit smaller than our last room, and double the price because it was on the weekend (and a holiday). It still had two bedrooms, one of which had a bed but the other was very small. Still, it worked out well for those who were not finished playing in the snow because this building was practically connected to one of the slopes. You literally had to walk out back five steps and you were ready to go down the mountain!

When we got back to the room and took all of our cold weather clothes off, we ate and lounged around the TV for a while. Then we started drinking. Some had beer, some had soju, and some had wine. I had Kahlua and Pepsi.  We played all of our regular drinking games with cards and when we ran out, some people made a run and brought back small cups to play flip cup on the edge of the coffee table.

Dan and Seth went out for skiing from 10:30 till 12:30. By the time they got back, EVERYONE was in bed asleep or about to be sleeping. It was pretty surprising and funny at the same time! However, they figured they should get in bed too since they and a few others were planning on waking up around 6am again for the dawn and morning ski sessions.

Sure enough, they woke up, a bit sleepier than the morning before, along with Rob, Yonodan, and Renee. They made it out a bit later but they still got in lots of great runs. It wasn’t snowing anymore, and the skies were crystal clear making for exceptional fun. All weekend they were recording with Dan’s video camera and Seth’s Go Pro camera. I spent a good majority of my Monday night and Tuesday morning (ok.. afternoon) pulling snapshots out of those videos and I compiled a 200 photo album of the excitement onto Facebook.

While that half of our group was off on the slopes, the rest of us were slowly waking up, cleaning up and then checking out. Last time we were in Muju, Pete’s car needed to be jumped twice and what’s a trip without car trouble? Surprisingly, it was not Pete’s car that had trouble, but Lizzie’s. When she put the key in the ignition, it would not turn at all, so after we tried several things, we had the receptionists help call her insurance company. Shortly after, a man came out in a bright pink truck to assist us. After fiddling with the car for a few minutes, he turned to Lizzie and said, “No.” We had no idea what he meant. At first Lizzie thought he was saying he couldn’t help us and was just going to leave, but it turns out he was saying that he’d have to call another, bigger truck out to tow her small car to the nearby shop. Pete and Lizzie drove off with the mechanics while Gio, Amanda and I waited in the downstairs lobby, with a great view of the slope.

Less than fifteen minutes later, Pete returned and informed us of the situation. Yes, we had all looked like huge incompetent idiots, but that’s nothing new in a country where we can hardly communicate with the locals, but more importantly, Lizzie’s car was fine. Apparently, when driven into the shop, the man there took the keys and started it right up with no problems, so we are not really sure what was wrong. We just know we didn’t have any more trouble with it afterwards. 

Once we got back to Gwangyang, Dan and I took our stuff home and laid around for a while until we met up with the others for pizza at Mr. Pizza. We were all hoping to eat hajeongook, but it was closed, which I had expected, seeing how all of the Korean restaurants were closed as Dan and I walked back. Plus I remembered how they usually are off during their national holidays, like Chuseok.

Dan had Monday off, so we spent that together and when he left that evening, I began working on this blog entry as well as pulling pictures from the videos. You can see some below:

L to R Gio, Crystal, Yonodan, Rob, Lizzie

Seth, Dan, Rob, Yonodan, Renee

I love when Dan takes video's where you can see us both like this, such a cool effect!

Rob looks AWESOME!!

Dan and Yonodan on a ski lift

Dan making it look easy!

Taken from Dan's video camera, no one we know but a gorgeous view!

In short, it was a very entertaining way to celebrate this important Korean holiday. I haven’t spent a lot of quality time with the people who were on this trip so it was great to see their faces and meet a few others. It was a fun group of people and I’m definitely glad I was a part of it!

Until next time, stay warm and happy!

The End of the Holiday Season

Getting back to school was great. I missed the kids and I was ready to see them again. Of course, the two weeks off were also great, even though I didn’t leave the country and I spent most of my time off in Gwangyang, where I live. It's just that I was really itching to get back in the classroom with my students. I was in such a hyper, happy mood especially those first few days back!

Monday night, a huge group of us went out for hajeongook, the delicious pig spine soup. It was a great way to welcome everyone back who was gone on vacation. The rest of the week, Dan and I mostly stayed in because I had to work and I get really cranky when I don’t sleep enough. :) Friday night was a fun night out.  We met at the Korean BBQ place we all love so much and then went to String afterwards. It was Rock’s birthday so there was a good crowd there. All of the regulars and a few out-of-towners were there too. 

On Saturday, Dan and I woke up around 11am, got ready and then took a bus to Daegu. He had to sign back in on post, as it was his last day on vacation. We raced around the city, going to the base he needed to sign in on and to the one he lives on. We also went to the PX where we randomly ran into a girl I went to high school with! I knew she was in the Army and she got in touch with me on Facebook when she got to Korea and realized I live here too. Such a small world! We were at the PX to buy a few things friends wanted as well as a few things for me. One of the things Dan picked up was a Go Pro camera for Seth. There will be more on that later. There wasn’t time to get fish and chips, which was a huge bummer, but as long as I get them a time or two more before he leaves, I’ll be more than happy. :) Plus, the PX has a Taco Bell and a Subway, so I ordered both to go. Yay for cheap, delicious fast food!!

We took a bus back to Gwangyang that night and went straight to the same Korean BBQ we were at the night before because Dan was hungry- he did not order delicious fast food as I did. It was pretty funny when we walked in because we saw Lizzie and Fritz sitting there. They were finished eating, but we sat with them anyway and ordered more food. Then we took our bags back to my room and met up with them and others at Fish and Grill. Fish and Grill, I think I’ve mentioned before, is a bar/restaurant with soju cocktails. They bring out pitchers of a fruity, slushy, juice drink that already has a bit of soju in it and we order an extra bottle of it to add in each pitcher. They come in lots of fruit flavors and they are quite delicious. 

Sunday was supposed to be a lazy day, and was until about 5pm. At that time, Seth came to tell us that a group of people were going out to play screen golf. Dan had never been and wanted to try it out. I’ve gone before and was rubbish, but I went to hang out. We were there from about 7 till 10 and then we went to Club Davey to make plans for this weekend; more on that later too. 

Monday was a regular school day. Dan was STILL here, which was great, but it made teaching a bit more annoying because I would have rather been at back home with him, still, it made going home great. Plus, my kids make teaching so worth it. For instance, Monday morning, I taught the 6 year old Kindergarteners two classes in a row, so we used that time to type up their presentation speeches which they will recite in front of parents, as a sort of recruitment tool to get more students at the end of February. This presentation, of course, is in English and my little 6 year olds were busy typing away for over an hour IN ENGLISH!! Mind you, they weren’t doing it very well, because they still haven’t learned how to type in Korean, and they really have no idea where the keys are. Still, this is only their second time, and they are already doing pretty well!

Tuesday was an exceptionally great day at school. Ivy told Kate and me the day before that we would be going to Gwnagyang Eup- the city next to ours- the following morning to go ice skating with our 9 kindergarten students. Since Dan was still here, I asked her if it was okay if he came with us. She said it was fine and Kate had the same idea so Tuesday morning, Kate and I walked to school with Dan and Seth. Dan was excited because he had never gone before and there was a “trip” to go near Christmas that fell through.

We got to school and the kids went crazy over my wolf hat/scarf/mittens combo as well as over the new people we brought. Some of the kids had seen Dan before, but it was still exciting for them to see another waygook (foreigner) so closely. Kate and I rode with Ivy and the kids while the boys rode with Big Mama, our boss (no we did not give her that name) and Brian. When we got to the ice rink, the guys were already there in light pink skates and Dan even wore a matching helmet. It was quite a site, but it got better. 

Seth brought along the Go Pro camera Dan picked up for him and he took lots of fun footage of our Kindergartners trying to learn how to skate. Both Seth and Dan were very helpful with the kids, taking them around the rink and being great sports about everything. Because of this, the school paid for their rental tickets and Big Mama left her car for us and Brian to take back to i-Sponge when we were ready! We went to leave a few minutes after the kids left, but then Seth decided to ask if we could use the go karts they had set up just in front of the skating rink. After we paid, we hopped in go karts, which of course, was also filmed. It was pretty fun. While Seth filmed, we took turns shouting “GO PRO!” into the camera and Dan had fun pretending to be The Stig (Top Gear reference). 

That night, Dan took a bus back to Daegu. He has three days of easing back into Army life before coming back down to Gwangyang Friday night!

This weekend is Lunar New Year, and since most Koreans spend this time with their families, much like Chuseok, we were told the slopes would be pretty empty. With that in mind, we decided to take a trip up to Seoul and head to Yongpyong, where the 2018 Winter Olympics are set to be held. Because of the holiday, we get Monday and Tuesday off, so we figured it was well worth the trip north. Unfortunately, we received misinformation. Maybe that’s true for the actual holiday days of Monday and Tuesday, but EVERYWHERE was booked up. We thought we were safe trying to make reservations just a week in advance but we were sadly mistaken. We even tried having some Korean friends ask for us. :( 

The new plan is to drive up to Muju EARLY Saturday morning and hit the slopes there all day Saturday till Sunday afternoon then come back to Gwangyang. We will have two or three cars full of people so it should make for an interesting trip! Plus, Dan will have my new camera by then so I’ll get to play with that! As for Yongpyong, it was a huge bummer to us all, but maybe we will be able to squeeze it in one weekend. Since we’re getting back on Sunday, there should be time to unwind and relax before going back to work on Wednesday. 

Of course, I’ll let you all know how that trip goes! I'll also have my new camera so prepare yourself for far too many pictures!! :D Until then, stay warm!