Holy Cow. Going from a two and a half day work week to a full work week is exhausting. So much has happened over the last week and a half that writing a blog post seems daunting. I'm resorting to a list instead. Sorry if that's a cop-out. So, without further mindless drivel, here are 10 highlights (in no particular order) from the last 10 days...
- Rain, rain, rain - It's monsoon season, which equals frequent rain. And, when it rains, it doesn't mess around. It rains almost every day (which is why I'm not in Seoul this afternoon), making being outside a bit of a chore... My coffee date with YeeSeul on Sunday lasted an extra hour because neither of us wanted to go outside! I'm giving serious thought to bringing my rain boots back with me... Yikes.
- Spraining my ankle - That's right. I sprained my ankle. It was raining (go figure :) ) and I was walking down the stairs from Scott and Dionne's apartment. As I was thinking to myself that I should be careful because it would be real bad news to fall, my feet flew out from under me and I landed on my left ankle. It started to swell immediately but didn't hurt too badly, so I continued on to the market with the Husteds. I've been elevating it at night and iced it quite a bit in the beginning and while it's still a little tight, the swelling and bruising are mostly gone. Now I'm extra cautious on the stairs!
- Shopping for watermelon and various home goods with Dionne and Scott - DIonne and Scott know all of the good places to snag cool stuff so shopping with them is always an adventure. The day I sprained my ankle, we went to the traditional open air market in Gwangju. As we were walking around, Dionne spotted nicely priced watermelons. We approached the stand and a jolly man emerged from the associated grocery store. He cut huge hunks from a dark green watermelon for us to sample, proclaiming that it was an Obama melon, given its dark color. I lost it, laughing for a real long time. He was pretty proud of himself.
- Korean Folk Village adventure - Since last week was finals week, we had a lot of time off. Dionne and Scott took me to the nearby Korean Folk Village to explore. It was so cool! It had traditional Korean homes from every region and social class, performances of samul nori drumming, and tight rope walking, all kinds of traditional Korean wares and we even accidentally watched a hanbok fashion show. What a fun day with Dionne and Scott with beautiful weather too.
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| This adorable kid was enamored with Dionne, Scott and me - so much so that he and his father brought us some rice cookies. Too cute. |
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| My crew for the day - what a fun time we had! |
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| Mr. Tightrope Walker |
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| The random Miss University Pageant / Hanbok Fashion Show we stumbled upon |
- Pita Pit - Pita Pit (kind of like Subway, for for pitas) was one of my favorite fast food restaurants in Ames and a location just opened in Seoul a couple of months ago. When Diane and I first saw it in March, I was so excited to see it that I cried a little. It wasn't yet open then, so when we were back in the respective neighborhood last weekend, we stopped there for lunch. What a delightful taste of home!
- Chatting with the fam - especially the Drewster - Every Sunday night, I skype with the folks and last week, Nick and Jess were home too, so I got to talk to them and see the Drewster as well. What a little prince he is! I'm so so excited to finally meet him in two short weeks! I can't believe how much he's changed in the last three months!
- Line Dancing - For some reason, the school schedule in Korea has finals happen with three weeks of school remaining, giving us two weeks of classes after finals. Dionne and I decided to use this time to introduce some American culture to the girls, so last week, we taught them how to line dance (we taught them the Macarena, Cupid Shuffle and Electric Slide). It was so fun (and funny)! Predictably, the second and third graders were a little too cool to enjoy themselves much, but the first graders! WOW. They LOVED it! It was so fun to be able to see them let completely loose and enjoy themselves. Even the co-teachers joined us, which was really fun! Mr. Shin was such a gem, not only doing the dances, but really getting into it. He wants to incorporate line dancing into summer camp AND the English festival next year! I cannot wait to see 250 students (and hopefully teachers, too!) doing the Macarena in the auditorium! Awesome! (I wanted to take pictures and video of it, but I felt too much like a voyeur doing it and the one video Dionne took is pretty poor quality because my camera is a complete piece... Next year, I promise!)
- Tasting my tomato makgeolli with Dionne and Scott... twice - Remember the tomato flavored rice wine I made three weeks ago? Tuesday night, I brought the bucket'o'jank over to Dionne and Scott's so Scott could help me strain it and we could finally taste it. Once we added sugar to it, it was pretty tasty! Who knew that something that looks like barf could taste so delicious sans the barf-like particles?! We finished it last night as we watched a movie. The movie, some tasty popcorn, cold, tangy tomato makgeolli, some bakery fresh baby cream puffs and the company made for a pretty awesome (and rainy) Friday night.
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| After two weeks of festering, this was the product... Yikes. |
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| Luckily, Scott knew what was up. He helped me... |
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| We strained off the rice and other chunks, added some sugar, and it was AWESOME. |
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| A vast improvement. |
- Chatting with a car salesman on the way home from E-Mart - On Wednesday, Desiree and I were walking home from E-Mart when a middle aged man said hello to me as we passed each other on the street. I said hello back to him and kept walking until he asked if we had time to talk to him. He asked where I was from and told me he knew where Iowa was (I totally didn't believe him because no one in Korea has ever heard of Iowa, but whatever - he was nice enough...) He invited us into the car dealership where he works for a cup of coffee (which turned out to mean fizzy orange drink) and talked to us for quite a while. His English was pretty good and he got real deep, saying that Americans and Koreans are so different, but we are all under the same sky. When he told us we looked like angels, we made a not so graceful exit, saying we needed to put our groceries away... Oh Korea.
- Open Class - Much of the last two weeks were spent preparing for this demonstration class that other teachers could come watch to get ideas for their own classes and also to critique our teaching. It went really well and the students were delightful about the whole process. But, it's a good thing we practiced the day before because otherwise, the place would have been a total zoo. Since we've been talking about fashion and shopping for the past two months, we decided to do an activity using their shopping dialogue. We had the students bring in their own clothes and accessories to create a flee market atmosphere. Some students were shop owners while others were shoppers. When we first practiced the activity, the students were crazy and loud, but used the dialogue fairly well, though put too much of a focus on bartering. Once they received a pep talk from Ruth (their co-teacher), they were total gems when we did the activity in the actual open class. We're rewarding them with an ice cream party after school on Monday. I'm going to miss these little tykes over break!
P.S. I signed my renewal contract this week too! It's official... Korea is stuck with me for another year! If the next year goes by as quickly as this one, I may have to stay a third year... I guess I'll cross that bridge when I come to it!
P.P.S. Just
two weeks until I reunite with Iowa.
I. Can. Not. Wait. Where has the year gone?!
