'MURICA

This week's potluck was a picnic in the park for the Fourth of July.  What a delightfully patriotic, Ameri-centric occasion!  What we lacked in fireworks, we made up for in Popeyes fried chicken, hot dogs, condiments and beer.

We also saw a few mascots for this time-honored American holiday, though I'm guessing they weren't knowingly participating in our festivities...

What a fabulous evening with some of my faves of the Gwangju crew.

A Few School Stories

1 - One of my old students was back from her university in Malaysia, so we got together for dinner with two other students who landed jobs in banks in Gwangju (something our school has become sought after to attain such jobs...).  We had a great time eating bingsu (traditional Korean dessert with shave ice, ice cream, cereal, and sweet beans) and catching up.  I miss those girls and our lunch time meetings!

   

2 - With one of our first grade classes, we played a word relay game in which we tell them a theme and they have to write a list of words that go with that theme (school, nouns, boys, five-letter words, etc.).  The catch is that the next word in the list must start with the last letter of the previous word.  When we asked them to justify their answers, we got some pretty creative responses to our lists about love and boys including, but certainly not limited to:

t-panty: (I knew what this was (thong, or g-string), but I wanted to hear how they would tell us...)  We had some pictures drawn and Dionne taught them the proper English terms.  Unfortunately, I was a little slow on capturing the anatomically included illustration of a women's t-panty...  Better luck next time. 

tree: (quite passionately) "Teacher, I LOVE nature." 

tears: "Teacher!  Love is PAIN!" 

dark: "Teacher, I LOVE the dark."  Shrieks and giggling come from the innocent mouths of the rest of the class...

Love, love, love.

3 - Line Dancing.  This never gets old.  Sure, some students and classes are wayyyy more enthusiastic than others, and Dionne and I sweat through our clothes (ask me how I feel about only having the air-con (Konglish for air conditioner :) ) on for fourth and sixth periods...), but it's such a fun time to see the girls in this kind of situation.  It's even better when the co-teachers dance along.  I think we've earned a permanent place in the curriculum for line dancing - we're even doing it during our camp this summer.

(I filmed two full classes, and after reviewing a few minutes of each of them, I grabbed a few snapshots... Pretty priceless video, let me just tell you.)

Gosh, I love this job!

Beach Bums

Last weekend, Desiree, Steph and I took the train to Busan to spend the weekend on the beach.  We weren't going to let the promise of rain and looming, dark clouds stop us...

After arriving at our hostel (Mr. Egg - if you go to Busan and want to go to the beach, do yourself a favor and stay there!) via a fantastically animated cab driver who was super excited to transport such beautiful foreign girls across the city, we awoke on Saturday morning to less than perfect beach weather.  But, we were there for the beach and only the beach, so we marched ourselves straight to the water.  We remained there on and off for the rest of the day, leaving only to eat fantastically western sandwiches at the Wolfhound Irish pub and buy awesomely flowery old lady pants at the local dollar store.  That night, we played some cards at the hostel before a great fresh seafood dinner and drinks at a bar near our hostel.  A delightful evening (and early morning) ensued complete with plentiful giggling and conquered bucket list items.

The next day, we opened the curtains to perfect beach weather.  Whatever, Mother Nature.  We were going to enjoy that, too, before our train took off at 2:00.  And, enjoy it, we did.  Just ask my lobster colored legs - they'll tell you ALL about it :)