Teacher Field Trip

Yesterday I had an amazing day on an island with all of my coworkers. They had organized a teacher field trip for us to just hang out with eachother and do some "bonding." We met at 7:30 at the school, and took one of our school busses. There were 29 of us, which included most of the foreign teachers, many of the korean teachers, all the bosses, many of the front desk workers, and a few staff family members. It was about a 2 hour drive to the fairy that we took to the island. The island is about a mile across, and absolutely beautiful. It was really kind of interesting because they kind of thought of themself as their own little country. When you buy the fairy ticket, the booth says "Visas", and the way down to the fairy says "Immigration." They even have their own currency that you can get to use on the island (Though they take Korean won too).

The island is thought of as a romantic island because some famous romantic movie was shot there. Along one of the path, someone had brushed all of the fallen dead pine needles into hearts. It was kind of cute.

Another interesting thing was that there was an ostrich that freely roamed the island. It was extremely tame so it let walked right up to people. On of my coworkers decided to reach out his hand like he was going to feed it, but he didn't have any food for it, so it bit his finger. Serves him right....

We had lunch at a barbeque restraunt, and the three of us vegetarians had our own little table away from all the grilling meat (You grill the meat yourself on a grill that is built into the table). It is kind of nice that our head teacher is a vegan, because I know that they will make sure there is something for us to eat when we go on these types of things.

After lunch many of us rented bikes and rode around the island. Some people got tandom bikes, and our boss and his family got a family bike with a little canopy over it. They also had motortrikes, which were basically a three wheeled segway, so a few people got those too.

All around the island they had these benches and cabinets full of books. I guess they wanted to encourage people to read, but it was just interesting that they just had the books sitting out.

There were so many wonderful things on the island that I can't tell you about everything. Overall it was a wonderfully relaxing day, in an amazing setting.

Budah's Birthday weekend

We had a three day weekend in honor of Budah's birthday this weekend. I had an amazing weekend, and it feels like it has been more like 5 days rather than just 3 days since I have been at work. On Thursday night I had a party for my coworkers on the rooftop of my appartment. It was a great time to just hang, and the weather was perfect. The next morning I got up and left for a church retreat. We went to the house out in the countryside that I have been to a few times before. There is a hostel about five minutes down the road that the 45 of us stayed at.
Of course, I decided to forget my camera at school on the weekend that I really wish I had it. One of the coolest part of the retreat was actually visiting the budist temple that was right next to the house. I went with our host to talk to the monks to let them know that we had a lot of people at the house, and make sure that we weren't making too much noise. There were a lot of people at the temple celebrating, and they all were really excited to see Ilson, who was Budist until 2 years ago, and they welcomed the two of us foreigners completely. They invited us to go into the temple, which was absolutely beautiful. They had heaps of fruits and vegetables all piled up in bowls on the alter as an offering for Budah. When we were on our way out they ran in to get huge chunks of freshly made rice cakes to give to us. They were so friendly!
The hostel that we stayed in was really interesting. We had two small buildings that had two rooms and a bathroom. There were piles of pillows, pads and blankets for us to lay out on the floor to sleep on. There weren't enough blankets and stuff for everyone, so I ended up freezing all night, curled up in a ball.
One of the last things that we did on the retreat was hike up the mountain. It is crazy steep, and most of the way they have ropes to help you get up. I had done it before, so I knew what I was getting into, but the other people had no clue what they were in for. It took me half an hour to get to the top, and I spent the next 20 minutes cheering for everyone as they trickled in. I wish I had my camera so bad, because the last time I was on the peak I had forgotten my it too. For the hike down, we took a longer, more gradual route. It was great because it was starting to rain really lightly and it fealt really good.
Overall I had an increadible weekend, and barely remember the week at school before it. Korea is really starting to feel like home for me. There are a lot of things that I miss about the states, but finally after 9 months I have found my nitche here.

Children's Day

Last week was Children's Day! It is a national holiday here, so we had Wednesday off of school. Tuesday was an all-day party for the kids. We kicked off the party with a magic show. The magician was great, and the kids loved it. One of my kids was chosen to help with one part of the show, which I'm sure she will remember for a long time. After the magic show, the kids rotated around the school to six seven different rooms. We had face painting, a movie, story time, cotton candy and popcorn, a scavenger hunt and one more room that I can't remember. My room was an amazingly fun relay race. We hung cookies from string with clothes pins, and the kids had to run up and bit the cookie off, without using their hands. It was a crumbly mess, but the kids had fun.

Lumi is one of the most outgoing kids in my class, but when she got up in front of the whole school with the magician, she kind of froze. She just shuffled around and wouldn't say anything for a while, but after a few minutes she really got into it.

Jun and Yoo-Jin enjoyed their popcorn and cotton candy. (By the way, making cotton candy in those machines is not as easy as the cotton candy guys make it look. You end up getting all sticky, and the machine even sparked at me!)

Of course, after we finished the cookie relay in my room, I made the kids do my favorite dance with our extra time. They always look quite silly by the end of the song with the actions that I make them do. (hmmm, that must mean that I look just as silly, if not more because I'm an adult doing the weird dance.

Today after church, all my friends went to Outback Steak House. Instead of going with and watching them all eat their meat, (most of you know that I am a vegetarian) I decided to take the bus home. The bus that I take home comes every 35-40 minutes. After waiting 25 minutes the bus finally came. The problem was that there were already two busses stopped at the bus stop, so the bus driver decided to just drive right by instead of waiting for a bus to go. (Not even a hint of his foot on the break) Watching that bus that I had waited so long for just fly by was the most frustrating thing in the world. I decided to take another bus that was going in my general direction (which is never a good idea here, but I didn't want to just wait for another 40 minutes). Of course, I ended up sitting on that bus for an hour, and then getting off way far away from where I wanted to be. I sat next to a guy who spoke a little English, so we spoke to eachother in broken English (him) and broken Korean (me) and a little "Konglish." He was a really nice guy, and after talking for a while he asked for my phone number and email address. (Why is it that anyone who knows any English always ends up asking me for that) I have already gotten a text from him.... Creepy

Quote of the week: There is another teacher in my school who is a vegan. The students that I had for Kindergarten until March now have her (Sue) as their teacher. At the end of class one day on the way down the stairwell one of the girls in that class saw me and said "Stacie Teacher, Sue Teacher is more of a vegetarian than you are!"

Happy Mothers Day to my Mom, Grandma Noha and Grandma Pucci, and all the other Mother's out who are reading this.

Congratulations Kim for completing your first half marathon! I am very impressed, and extremely jealous.