Happy Valentine's Day: Feb 14-15, 2013

Happy Valentine's Day!

This week has been very relaxed, as my students are graduating and there are no real classes. The only students I saw yesterday were my kindergarten class for a little while before their mini graduation to grade 1. Several day ago, I received a package from my Teta (aunt) in the mail. Along with a few things for myself, she send Valentine's day goodies for my students! Thanks again :) I was a little disappointed when I found out I wouldn't be teaching a full class, but after talking with the kindergarten teacher, we arranged for a time for me to come to see the little graduates. After teaching hem how to say "Happy Valentine's Day!", and other themed words, I gave them the card pillows (little packages where I put the gifts inside), filled with a toy to make bubbles and a few stickers. They were so happy, and when I demonstrated how to make the bubbles, each student was yelling at the top of their lungs with excitement. It was an awesome way to say bye to the K class. I don't teach grades 1 and 2, so I won't have this funny class starting in March (when the new semester starts).

Valentine's Day is an interesting holiday in Korea. I learnt that on February 14th, it is the girls that give the guys gifts, and it is customary to give chocolates. Then a month later, there is another holiday called White Day. This is when the guys return the favour and give a gift to the girls that gave them gifts on Valentine's Day. My co-teachers told me that guys usually give candies, even if the girl likes chocolates better, apparently the guys always give candies. Then the holidays continue on into March. Black Day is a holiday on March 14th for singles to celebrate being single and eat black noodles, a Chinese food dish. So I guess in the end, everyone has to a chance to celebrate no matter what relationship status you have over these three months.

As for us, I actually didn't even see Ian on Valentine's Day, except for the morning before school. Ian's school organized an overnight teacher's retreat, a sort of field trip for teachers to bond, on Valentine's Day. He wasn't told anything about the trip, and wasn't entirely sure where he was going even when the teachers were on the bus. I am looking forward to hearing stories from this trip when I see him after school. Maybe he will write an entry later...hint hint Ian.

For other updates, our Thailand countdown is already at 8 days! We are planning on going to Itaewon (the foreign area) in Seoul this weekend to buy a brand of sunscreen we recognize. Ian and I bought some last weekend, but after hearing stories and recommendations from friends that used Korean brands while on vacation and burned badly, I think I want to buy some Banana Boat or Coppertone.

K class with valentine's day goodies.

Lunar New Year: February 8-12, 2013

Happy Lunar New Year! This is a major holiday for Koreans. My co-teachers (all female) have told me they celebrate by getting together with their families, first their in-laws and then with their side of the family. The holiday is mostly spent cooking, eating, and spending time with family. The new year for us meant we got a long weekend!

We were a group of ten, all foreign English teachers, that decided to take this opportunity to get out of the city and go on a mini ski trip. On early Saturday morning, we took the subway to Seoul to catch a free shuttle to Bear's Town Ski Resort, located around an hour outside of Seoul. This past week temperatures dropped to around -15 C, but luckily on Saturday it was sunny and only around -5 C, which made for a great day of skiing. Bear's Town Resort isn't very big, I would say comparable to Mt. St. Louis Moonstone, but either way it was nice to be back on the hill. Niseko, Japan is obviously on another level of skiing, and we thought it isn't really fair to compare these two mountains. The way we looked at it was that Saturday was a fun day with friends where we got to get out of Incheon and explore another area of Korea.

After a day of skiing, we went to relax in the condo we rented that overlooked the hill. We went out for a Korean dinner, and then headed back to the condo to celebrate and bring in the new year. On Sunday morning, we made "bacon" and eggs for breakfast. One of our friends went out to buy the groceries for breakfast, she asked for bacon, and what she bought really did look like bacon, but sadly it wasn't. After breakfast, we took a bus back to Incheon. It was a great mini vacation!

On Monday, Ian and I didn't have school so we spent the day relaxing. After skyping with my family and a few friends, we walked to Bupyeong. We bought a few things for Thailand, and walked around the market. I love exploring what the market has to offer, because you can always find such exotic things. After passing a bike with a bunch of fish heads tied to the handle bars, a vendor selling beondegi (boiled or steamed silkworm pupae that are seasoned and eaten as a snack), and a whole assortment of seafood, Ian and I made our only purchase - strawberries. Fruit is normally very expensive in Korea, so we were very excited to see strawberries for 3,500 W (~3$ CAN).

This week at work is pretty quiet. Ian's students have already graduated and so he is deskwarming. My students are still at school, but many of my classes have been canceled, so I have a lot of deskwarming ahead of me as well. Ian has a teacher's retreat this Thursday, but he doesn't have more details than that. We are both just so excited for our trip to Thailand - 11 days!

Here are some pictures from the weekend:

Base of Bear's Town Ski Resort

Most of the group. From left to right (me, Ian, Maddy, Jen, Patrick, John, Adam)

The boys on the chairlift (John, Ian, Maddy, Adam).

Isabelle, me, Leana, and Patrick

Leana, Isabelle, and me

Ian going off a jump.

On Monday, while walking around Bupyeong Market this is what we found - several fish heads tied to the bike's handles.  I don't know who would want to ride this ride around.

We always find interesting things walking around this market.

A vendor was selling beondegi (boiled or steamed silkworm pupae that are seasoned and eaten as a snack). We passed on this option.

Fish for sale! I liked the way they tie and sell them in rows.

Seafood market

After walking around the market, we made our only purchase of the day - strawberries!

This is in the Bupyeong Underground Shopping Mall. It is massive, always busy, and although we have been living here for over five months, we still get lost at times.

Back in Korea: January 26th - February 5th 2013

After an awesome ski trip to Japan, we are back in Korea and back to our work life here. It is weird to think we have now been here for over five months, meaning we are almost half-way through our contracts. Returning to Incheon did feel like coming home. So here is what we have been up to since being back in Korea.

This past week I led an English camp at my school for students in grade 5/6. We met for three hours in the morning Monday through Friday, and although the turn out wasn't what I was expecting (only 5/10 students showed up), we had a great week! Since the students are older, I decided to make it a Harry Potter themed camp. Not all of them had read all seven books, but they had all seen the movies. Here is a brief summary of the highlights of my week at Harry Potter Camp.

On the first day, we learnt about the main characters, had a sorting hat ceremony to sort the students into the four houses, they made profiles of themselves in the workbooks I made for them, and we made magic wands. Each day we also wrote owl post letters to each other. I collected these letters and handed them out the next morning. At the end of the day, we watched 20-30 minutes of the 4th Harry Potter movie as a reward.

After the first introductory day, each day was a different Harry Potter themed class, such as Herbology (study of plants), Potions, Care of Magical Creatures, and Defense Against the Dark Arts. Some of the activities I planned were planting our own seeds in a pot, making potions, designing our own magical plants and creatures, attempting to make origami dragons, dueling with English vocabulary, and various other games focused on English speaking, reading, writing, and vocabulary. At the end of the week, we had a mini Hogwarts graduation.

Here are some pictures from my camp :)

Harry Potter workbook and a few of the wands the students made.

Owl Post - students wrote letters to each other.

Herbology Class - the students planted lavender seeds.

All of our wands

Ingredients for potion class.

Students making the Dragon Potion, aka baking soda, vinegar and food colouring.  They really liked this one, so we made the potion twice.

This is their reaction to the Dragon Potion. There was a lot of ohhhhs and ahhhhs.

Care of Magical Creatures Class we made origami dragons and unicorns. 

Potions Class - the students made a Fire Breathing Potion, meaning dropping a fish eye into snake venom, aka dropping a mentos into a bottle of diet coke. I had actually never done this experiment before, but I was told there was suppose to be a mini explosion as the coke shoots out of the bottle. Sadly, our reaction wasn't that spectacular. When we dropped the mentos, the coke only bubbled over in a matter of seconds even if we dropped the whole packet. Oh well... the students were still very excited. They had their phones out and were even filming it. 

More from the Dragon Breathing Potion (coke + mentos)

Care of Magical Creatures Class - designing their own magical creature. 

Designing their own magical creature. It was great seeing all the students show their creativity. I was talking with the boy who designed Umbrella Monster, trying to convince him that the monster must eat something. He simply replied "But teacha, Umbrella Monster has no mouth."  

This is the work of a girl in grade 5 when we were in Herbology Class. Each student designed their own magical plant. 

Hogwarts graduation day! These are their diplomas.

On the last day, one of the girls ran up to me after we finished camp and handed me this envelope. She was smiling and proudly said "Teacha, I write in English for you!"  

This is the letter the girl wrote me. This letter really may not make much sense, but I was so happy reading it! It was her first time writing a letter like this in English, and I can tell she is really trying. It was a great way to finish the camp :)

It was great getting to know some of my students better, and when I saw them again today they all ran up to say hello. Besides camp, last week mainly consisted of desk warming in the afternoons (aka reading, drinking tea, surfing the web).

This past weekend we had a very relaxing weekend, as I am feeling a bit under the weather. Friday night we trekked into Seoul to go shopping at Costco. I never thought I would be going there this often in my life, but that is the only place where we can buy cheese at a reasonable price, buy peanut butter in bulk (we eat a lot of peanut butter here), tomato sauce that is not extremely sweet (Korean tomato sauce is very sweet), and normal bagels. The way we look at it these food items are all worth the trek to the craziness of Costco.

On Saturday afternoon, I went shopping with a few girlfriends in a new area of Seoul I had yet to explore. It was near Ewha Women's University, and it had so many cool alleyways filled with little shops. I definitely want to go back when the weather is warmer. Despite me feeling a bit under the weather, that night, Ian and I ended up going out with friends in Seoul near Sinchon station. This was also another area I hadn't seen yet. We go to Seoul quite frequently on weekends, but yet there is still so much we haven't seen! Saturday was a fun night at a Western pub called Mike's Cabin.

This week, our students are back at school for 1 week in Ian's case and 2 weeks for me, before they go on a two week spring break. In March, the students graduate to the next grade. Ian and I both don't fully understand why the students come back for such a short time...but I guess that's just the way the school year is. I saw this meme today on a blog on life for foreign English teachers in Korea called kikinitinkorea.tumblr.com. I think it pretty much sums up our situation.

When I found out that I have to teach for two random weeks in February…

I was just like…

Here are some pictures from the week I took on my phone while walking around :)

This is just to show how underground the subway system is in Seoul. We often have to take several escalators this size to reach the subway.

 

I am liking the bands in Korea! We stumbled upon this poster  while walking around Bupyeong. It's too bad we missed the concert.

I mentioned before that spam is considered a gourmet food in Korea. Giving spam as a gift is very common. A few friends of mine were giving a set of 10 spam cans for Christmas from their principal. I saw this woman while I was walking to work one morning, carrying a spam gift set.