Vietnam Part 2

I arrived back in Hanoi at around 4:30am after taking an overnight train back from Sapa. They picked me up and brought me to the hostel, but I had to wait until 6:00 for the desk to open. When it did, I could check my bag there until I was able to check in at 11:00. I took the morning to explore the city. In the center of Hanoi there is a small lake, which is really interesting to walk/run around in the morning. Everyone heads out there to get there exercise in. There are some groups doing tai chi, yoga, and dance aerobics. There is one spot on the lake that has different types of dancing throughout the day. One time I went by and everyone was doing some Latin partner dancing, and later when I went by they were doing ballet. There is a small island in the middle of the lake that is some sort of temple, that has this picturesque red bridge that goes out to it. I wish I would have been able to find a time with no one on the bridge to take a good picture.

On a Saturday morning when I went around the lake, there were at least a dozen couples taking their wedding photos. There several interesting statues and sculptures around the city. My favorite by far was this one of the world. I laughed out loud the first time I saw it. I guess Vietnam has big plans to take over the world!
That first day I went to the museum of ethnology. There are a ridiculous number of tribes or groups of different people throughout Vietnam. I guess it makes sense because there are so many regions and the country is so long and spread out. I guess even when I was trekking we would be in one village, and 15 minutes later when we arrived in the next village they had a different native language! The museum was interesting. Outside they had different buildings that represented the different peoples. The weirdest thing was this structure that had statues of pregnant women and people having sex all around it. I was quite shocked, especially since there were hundreds of school children running around them. I guess they represented prosperity and fertility, but it still seemed quite odd and inappropriate for the kids to be climbing on…

I spent the entire next day making a full circle around the whole city, catching museums, temples and parks along the way. The temples were laden with red and gold, all with incense burning and piles of fruits and flowers everywhere. I went to a Prison Museum, which was a functioning prison for both Vietnamese nationals who opposed communism and captured American pilots during the war. It was referred to as the “Hanoi Hilton.” Walking through it was kind of creepy, as they still had the stockades and the guillotine.
That evening I went to the “night market.” For 3-4 hours every Friday, Saturday and Sunday, one street is completely shut down and venders come in. It seemed like everyone in Hanoi came out to it. Open air markets are my favorite because they aren’t touristy at all. They didn’t have any of the normal things that all the souvenir shops have, and I didn’t see many tourists.
My final day in Hanoi I went to see Ho Chi Mihn’s mausoleum. I figured he was a pretty important person in their history, and I had never seen a preserved dead embalmed guy before, so I should probably go to see. There is a huge complex that has Ho Chi Mihn’s palace, mausoleum, a museum, temple and large park in it. It is only open in the mornings, and I went on a Saturday so it was really crowded. There was a huge line to get into the complex because you had to go through security. That took about a half hour, then you had to get in another line to get into the mausoleum, which was at least 500 meters long. You weren’t allowed to bring a camera, or any liquids in. As you started getting closer to the entrance, there were guards everywhere. You had to keep your hands down at your side, stay in two single file lines, you couldn’t talk, and they kept pushing us to keep moving faster. In the room with his body alone there were 8 armed guards. I don’t quite get the whole preserving someone’s body for eternity thing. It really kind of creeped me out. I get that he was really influential to the country, but I much prefer the monuments and buildings that we build in America
to honor our founders.
The last thing I saw in Hanoi was the Vietnamese water puppets. I had heard of them, but didn’t really know what they were. It was in a small theater that held only a few hundred people. The stage was a giant pool. All of the puppeteers were behind a bamboo curtain, and somehow they controlled all of the puppets from back there. I spent most of the time trying to figure out how the heck they worked. The whole thing was in Vietnamese, but there was an English program that told you the basics about each scene.
The next morning I caught my flight back to Korea. I wish I had had time to travel south and get down to Ho Chi Minh City, but I guess that will have to wait for another trip.

Oh, here are a couple more pictures that represent Vietnam in my mind. First is a very typical street. When you want to cross, you just step out into the middle of this mess and start walking. I got used to it after a while. At first I would just stand there waiting for some sort of a lull, but an old lady grabbed me and showed me how to do it. As long as you walk slowly, everyone adjusts to go around you. I have a crazy video that I wish I could show you that I took of walking across the street with bikes, cars and busses zooming by within a foot of me. Yikes!

This picture of the buildings was one of the first things that I saw when I was going from the airport into town. I was really confused as to why they had such tall skinny buildings. As I got closer to town, there were a lot more of them squished together and I understood more. When the street is full of them it looks normal. It’s just where it’s not built up as much that they look silly standing all by themselves.
Now I have 2 months left of school before I get to go home for the summer! I’m really excited about being able to be home for such a long time.

Vietnam Part 1

Over spring break I took a trip to Vietnam. Though I went by myself, I met a lot of people from the hostel that I stayed at, and from the tours I did. I got into the airport in Hanoi around midnight. The only way to get into the city that late is by taxi, so I had decided to stay
there until the morning when the shuttles started running again. I found some couches in a corner along with a group of three other people from France. We happened to be right next to a little snack bar, and had to listen to the rats rustling and squealing all night long. Most of the lights in the airport were off between 1:00 and 5:00, so it was relatively easy to sleep. I wasn’t
able to find the shuttle busses in the morning, and ended up being directed over to the city busses. I got on this bus, not really knowing where it was going or where I had to get off. It was terrifying, but that is where they had told me to go. I ended up having to get off when we were near the city and get a cab the rest of the way so I could get to the hostel in time to leave for my first tour.

I spent my first two days on a boat in Halong Bay, which is absolutely gorgeous. The bay is about 1500 square kilometers, and has about 2000 little islets. I was on a small boat with about 18 people. We got to go swimming off of the boat, and kayaking that first afternoon. The water was quite cold, but it was lots of fun. We took kayaks to one of the small islands that had a cave in it that we got to explore. The evening on the boat was not quite as pleasant. I signed up for the boat through my hostel. At the time I didn’t know that this particular tour is known as the biggest party boat on the bay. Everyone started drinking as soon as we got on the boat, but the serious drinking games started at 8:30. Everyone participated so I couldn’t even go up to the deck by myself without feeling weird. I ended up just sitting and watching everyone make fools out of themselves until I had finally had enough and went to bed around 11.
The next morning one other girl and I convinced the crew to let us go swimming before breakfast. He wouldn’t put the ladder down for us, but there was a rope that we could climb
up. It was really cold at 6:30 in the morning, but it woke us up, and it was fun telling people that we had done it. The rest of that day was cruising back to the docking area, and driving back to Hanoi.

That night I took an overnight train out to Sapa, where I spent the next two days trekking to some of the villages. On the train, there were four beds in each cabin. There were two other young girls from Germany in my cabin. A few minutes later when an older Vietnamese man walked in the door his face just fell. The poor man was visibly upset to have to share the room with three younger girls.
There were four people in my trekking group. One was a young girl from Switzerland, and the other two were a little older and from California. Our guide was a 17 year old girl from one of
the near-by villages. As we started walking, a bunch of ladies started following and talking to us. They meet and walk with all of the tour groups, hoping that after a few hours they will be able to sell you something. At one of our stops, our guide got a big stick of sugarcane. She peeled the bark off and gave us each a piece. It was kind of like eating a sweet stick.

It was a pretty foggy day, but the mountains were beautiful. They were fully covered with terraced rice paddies. There were some places where there were at least 100 separate terraces from the bottom to the top of the mountain. I can’t even imagine how much time and work
went into creating those things.

That night we stayed in the home of a woman, her two kids and one grandkid. She had basically built a loft above the rest of her house for guests to stay in. It was kind of odd because most of the house was really traditional. Their living and sleeping area was all one room, the kitchen consisted of a large cooking fire place and a table to prepare food on. There wasn’t a sink or refrigerator or anything like that. However, they had added a modern bathroom to the side, which seemed completely out of place. Her bathroom, out in the middle of nowhere, was
cleaner than the one at the hotel we stopped at in the city!
The next day we just continued trekking. We stopped briefly at a waterfall, and also went by a village school. The kids were on their lunch break and there were no teachers in sight. Most of the kids had left, but some were playing in the school yard. Though the school was locked, I was able to seek inside some of the classrooms because there were a few broken windows. It reminded me of when I was in second grade and went to visit an old one-room schoolhouse. They had a chalkboard, desks, pencil and notebooks, but not much else. I get frustrated in my classroom because we don’t have sets of leveled readers, materials for science experiments, or math manipulatives. But compared to this I have it pretty good!

When we finished trekking that day I had a few hours to explore Sapa before I had to leave for my overnight train back to Hanoi. I went for a run around the city (eliciting quite a few strange looks) and went to the local market to explore. Actually, the fog moved in and soon it was
almost impossible to see where you were, so I spent the last hour or so just at the hotel waiting.

Well I'm quite sick of typing, and I'm sure that anyone who made it this far is quite sick of reading. I'll tell you more about my trip next week.

I only have about 9 weeks until I come home for the summer. Plus, I just found out that I get an extra week home in August! I am so excited!

I hope everyone has/had a great Easter. My volunteer group took the kids from the orphanage to Olympic park for an egg hunt/picnic/games, and we had a great time.

Love you all!

Marathon #2

This morning I ran my second marathon. The first one that I ran was really small, with maybe only a few thousand runners. This one was the Seoul International Marathon, and there were around 25,000 runners. It was quite a different experience, because I was actually running with people the whole time, and there were spectators cheering and groups playing instruments.

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The marathon started on the North East side of Seoul near some of their palaces and old history stuff. After winding around, (and even passing my apartment) it ended in Olympic Stadium on the South East side of the city. (First and Second pictures, respectively)

I took this picture at the start just beacause I thought it was so funny. The people are standing in line to use the bathroom. Notice how the mens line is super long, and the womens line only has a few people in it. It's just the exact opposite of what usually happens.

The marathon culture here is absolutely crazy. I talked to a man at the beginning of the race who had run 235 marathons. This was his 100th marathon with the same pair of shoes! When I asked how many marathons he runs in a year, he said he did 56 last year. He also has a friend that did 108 last year! They rarely have marathons in the middle of the week, so he must have run every single Saturday and Sunday. (No, I never want to get anywhere near matching this.)

I am also baffled about the refreshments that they provide. Yeah, they have water and sports drinks, but there are a few things that just don't seem to fit. They always have coffee mix (coffee, cream and sugar, we call it "candy in a cup") before the race. The worst thing though is the chocopies that they have during the race. I consider chocopies to be the Korean equivelant to a ding-dong. It is two soft cookies with a marshmallow in between, coated in chocolate. I get a little sick just looking at the things as I run by. Plus, someone said they were really dry, so you would need lots of water afterwards.

This marathon went much better than my last. On my first one, I absolutely died at the end. I had to stop and walk multiple times in the last 6-7 kilometers. This time, my last 5k was actually a faster pace than my average for the whole thing! I finished in 3 hours, 31 minutes and 9 seconds. This was 8 minutes faster than before! Multiple times I found myself behind a man who had "Impossible is Nothing" written on the back of his shirt. I smiled everytime I saw it. I don't have any pictures of me because I didn't have anyone else with me. Plus, when you finished they rushed you out of the stadium, and I wasn't able to go back in after getting my bag. Hopefully there will be some pictures on the website within a few days.

Next up for me is my vacation to Vietnam. I leave next Saturday and will be there for a week. I'm super excited, but haven't had much time to think about it. Now that my marathon is out of the way I can finally focus all my attention on my trip!

Leeann: I love you so much, and hope everthing goes well when you get deployed. I'll be countin the days until you are back safely.

Love you all,

Stacie

I'm Back

Okay, so I do realize that it has been about 5 months since I have last posted anything here. For a long time I just plain didn't have anything interesting to post. Then it got to be such a long time that even though I did have something to write, I was too embarassed about waiting so long that I didn't do it. So here goes....

Since I last posted in October I have done a lot of things. I ran my first marathon, visited home, became an official member at my church, and started volunteering at a local orphanage.

I can't believe that there are only three months left in the school year. I know that time will go really fast because we have so many things left to do at school (2 assemblies, read-a-thon, book fair, international day, sports day, field trip and Spring concert, just to name a few). Recently we had our first ever Science Fair for the whole elementary school. I sure had a hard time figuring out what my first graders would be interesting and they would actually understand. We ended up doing projects about food decay. Each group did a different type of food. We put one set of each type of food in the classroom, and one in the refrigerator in the staff room. Pretty simple, right? I figured that it would at least be relevant and something that they could apply to their lives. I thought the whole thing was going pretty well until one child, after four weeks of working on this project asked me what a refrigerator is. Wow, I really failed on that one.

About 6 weeks ago I decided that I really needed to find something to do with people outside of work. I found a group on the website Meetup that was visiting an orphanage. I thought that would be a great thing to do, so I signed up and went. I didn't know that they had just started doing this, and there wasn't really any organization yet. On my first visit, the kids ran around the room for 3 hours, fighting over treats that volunteers had brought, screaming, climbing on tables, walking on the piano keyboard, etc... It was one of the craziest experience that I had with kids. There wasn't any staff from the orphanage in the room with us, and the volunteer organizer didn't really seem to care. Many of the volunteers were there for the first time and didn't feel like we had the authority to discipline these kids. Once I realized that this was just a start-up operation, things didn't seem so bad. We have things so much more organized now, with games, arts, music, and sports activities planned for each visit. The look on the kids' faces when we come is priceless, and when you see just how much love they need your heart can't help but melt.

Coming up, I've definately got some stuff to look forward to. The last week in March I will be on vacation in Vietnam!! Then it will be back to work, nose to the grindstone until the beginning of June, when I leave for a summer at home!

I love and miss everyone so much!

The Nice Bungeu Bang Man

I had an interesting experience today that I thought was worth sharing.



This is a type of street food here in Korea that is called 붕어빵 (bungeo bang), which litterally translates into carp bread. It is basically a pancake type batter with red bean paste in the middle that is grilled in a fish shaped mold. It is one of my favorite snack foods. You buy them on the street for 3 for 1000 won (about a dollar). Since you get three, this will usually end up being my lunch or something. Early this afternoon I was coming home from church and went looking for a 붕어빵 vender. It was 2:00 and I hadn't eaten breakfast or lunch, so I was pretty hungry. I found a guy who was selling these things for 6 for 1000 won! I was pretty excited. He only had one made, so he gave that one to me for free while I was waiting for him to make more. There was a little stool that he made me sit on, and he offered me some coffee. While the water was heating, he finished my 붕어빵, put it in a bag, and gave me another one to eat while I was waiting for the coffee! The whole time he was talking away. I couldn't understand much of what he was saying. He asked if I went to the nearby university. I told him no, and that I was a teacher at 한국 Kent 위국안 학교. He again said something about the university..... So much for my Korean. After I finished the coffee, he asked me if I smoked and if I wanted a cigarette. In the end, I got 8 붕어빵 (many of them saved for dinner) and coffee and a ciegarette if I had wanted one, all for the price of 3 붕어빵.

The coolest thing about this experience is that it happened right after I tried my 5th church here in Seoul. I haven't really felt very welcome at any of them, and was feeling pretty frustrated. It was sad to me that I haven't felt welcomed at any of these churches, but some random ajashi (older man) who didn't even speak my language could make me feel so at home.



School has been keeping me pretty busy. My students seem to find new ways to challenge me every day. I don't get the kind of support at my school that first year teachers would get back at home, so I'm learning from my mistakes.



Good luck Mom on your first 5K!!! I know you'll do great, but I really wish I could be there to run it with you.

Okay, I'm Back

So I finally feel like I have settled in to my new home job. Time to let others know what's going on.

I am teaching a class of ten first graders. It is nice to have a small number, but it feels bigger because there is so much diversity. The difference between my oldest and youngest student is more than 2 years. At least one never went to kindergarten, so has never had to learn how to do things like sit in a chair or respect a teacher before. Some don't know the sounds of the letters, while some can read at a second grade level. Most students know how to add, but I even have one who is asking to learn how to multiply now. The students have all different backrounds. Taking into account the student's country of citizenship and the countries that they have lived in, my 10 students represent at least 11 countries (India, Bangladesh, Japan, Malaysia, New Zeeland, Russia, USA, England, Oman, Saudi Arabia, and Korea). So while the numbers are small, the range of teaching that I have to do feels like it is HUGE.

The year started off really hard. There was no type of orientation to the school, and no one really telling us all of the things that had to be turned in (syllabus, breakdown of the yearly plan, grading polocy etc..) Basically I would find out about these things when I heard other teachers talking about them. The first grade teacher before me basically didn't use any teaching materials (posters, manipulatives, games and stuff like that), so I am spending a lot of my time making these things as I go along. Now I am sort of in a good routine, but making all of the materials is really time consuming.

My housing here is kind of a bummer. All of the other teachers are in a real apartment building, but I am in a building that has 6 units above a bar. Mine is maybe 2/3 the size of the others. The mini-refridgerator that came in the apartment is useless. There is a problem with the seal or something, so the back half of the fridge is frozen while the front half is warm, and the freezer builds up a nice thick layer of ice (about an inch in a week) around the edges. I ended up having to get a fridge of my own, and still have this worthless mini-fridge taking up space in the tiny apartment. It took me six weeks to get internet hooked up. This is completely rediculous considering that Korea is the "most wired nation in the world." There were other teachers who had their internet in 4 days. Mostly the delay was due to a guy at my school who was too busy to make the phone call. I ended up having to get help from another friend, but even then there were more rediculous delays. (Oh yeah, and then the guy who didn't help me at my school had the nerve to tell me that "you should have called a different company") I'm not quite sure how I got stuck with this place, but there is a chance that I will be able to move to the other building in March.

I am coaching the high school cross country team, which has been quite an experience. I didn't know anything about cross country when I started. Basically the athletic director knew that I am a runner, so when they were looking for a coach he asked me. There is another coach that I am working with (who is equally clueless about cross country) which makes things a little easier. We are both first year teachers at the school, so neither of us felt like we could commit to coaching 100% of the time. This is the first year that the school is offering cross country. We have 7 boys on the team. At the first practice there were 2 girls, but they didn't come back. So far we have had 3 meets. We certainly don't have the best team (There are other teams with 45 boys and 45 girls) but I'm proud of how they are doing.

I'll try to start updating my blog on a regular basis again. I already miss everyone so much. I've bought my tickets home for Christmas, so I'll be there for sure.

Jin Joo Cow Farm

This week we took our kids on a field trip to a cow farm (I guess the proper name for it in English, as my mom pointed out is a "dairy farm") This was one of the coolest field trips that we have done, and the kids really enjoyed the experience.

The first thing that we did was go on a tractor ride. This started out exactly how I expected it, slow and bumpy. When we turned onto a narrowly paved road, it turned into more of a rollar coaster. We were going pretty fast, the driver was weaving back and forth like crazy. Then he would slam on the breaks and start going backwards! The kids were falling out of their seat and bumping agains the safety bars (which someone very wisely had put padding on).

Next we walked through a pear orchard (they grew all of the food that they fed the cows on the farm) up to the calf nursery.
At the nursery, each child got to bottle feed the calf. There were six calfs, so each child was given a bottle with just a little bit of milk in it. You can't really see, but the girl that I am with in the bottom picture was terrified. She was squirming and trying to run away, but I had her between my arms pretty tightly. For her, the cows were nice to look at from afar, but not something to go anywhere near.

The next thing we did was probably the best part. Each child got the chance to milk cow. The "farmer" kept the cow from kicking them, and helped all of the kids actually get milk out. I did feel pretty bad for the poor cows, who would get tugged on by so many children, but there were a lot of them, and most of the time they were milked by machines. I hope that they rotated the cow every time a new group of 25 children came.
On the way to the last stop, we walked by the grass bales, so they let the kids feed the cows again.

Our last stop was making icecream. It was surprisingly easy. Each group of 3-4 kids got a big bowl of ice, which had a smaller bowl in it. We poured about a cup of milk in, and they took turns mixing it. After about 10 minutes most had turned to icecream (a few were more like milk-shakes) and they added strawberry or chocolate syrup. Yum!

Yesterday I met some friends and went to Children's Grand Park, which is really similar to Como Park. It has a zoo, botanical gardens, a water play area, and a small amusement park. We just went to the zoo and gardens area, but everything we saw made me think of Como. (maybe because everything reminds me of home when I know that I'll be there so soon) We had a great time. The best part about it though was that this park is right next to my new school that I will start at in September. My friends wanted to see my school, so I took them. I thought it would be kind of dumb ("here, look at the building that I will work in"), but there was a security guard there who let us in. My friend told him that I will be a new teacher there in the fall. He asked what grade I would be teaching, and wanted to show me the classroom that I would be teaching in. I had never seen my room before, so it was really exciting. My actual room was filled with extra furniture because they were cleaning, but I got the idea. He showed us another elementary classroom so I could see what they really look like. I am going to have a Smartboard, which I am thrilled about.

Nine days of work left! Eleven days until I leave!

Happy Father's Day to all the dads out there, but of course, especially to my dad!!!!

Summer Heat

Really nothing special has happened in the last few weeks. I am up to my ears in prep work for the month after I leave. All of the lesson plans have to be made, homework and quizes written and copied, classroom decorations (song lyrics, letter sound signs etc...) and flashcards have to be made. This all has to be done at the same time that I do my regular prep work that already fills my time. Plus, the week before I leave we have open classes, so parents come in and watch a class. This is basically like putting on a play, and requires hours of practice and work in making special teaching materials so that the parents think that everything is really fancy. I got kicked out of school at night every day this week by the front desk guy who wanted to go home. In addition, I'm trying to get all my ducks in a row for my next job, my next apartment, and my 5 week vacation. I am exhausted.

It has been really hot here, which usually I would love. The only time I don't want the heat is when I go for my long runs. I have done a 14 mile run each of the last two weekends. This felt great last weekend. I had originally been registered to participate in a half marathon, but had pulled out when I re-sprained my foot when I was training. As it turns out, my foot was okay by the day of the race, so I just ran the distance on my own. Yesterday when I did my long run, the heat was aweful. I think that I was pretty dehydrated, because by the end of it I was just about dead. I wasn't sweating anymore, could barely breath, and actually was getting the chills and goosebumps.

As I am running along, dying in the heat I look around and this is what I see: All of the people (okay, most of them) around me are wearing long pants, jackets, hats, HUGE visors, and are carrying umbrellas. There are even arm covers that people wear (kind of like arm warmers) to cover any open skin on their arms. They have this intense fear of the sun here. Mostly, they don't want their skin to get darker. I don't know how they can stand it!

Okay, I have 14 work days left at my school, and 18 days until I leave for my vacation. Every time I talk to my mom I get more excited about being in Minnesota where there is fresh air, nice lawns, birds chirping, and lots of family!!!!

Strawberry Farm

This week we got to take the students on a field trip to a strawberry farm. The kids all had to come an hour early, and it was a really long bus ride. It was hard to tell during the trip because everything was so rushed, but I think that the kids really enjoyed it. The bus that my class was on got there really late (we had to wait a long time for a late student, and we got really lost) so we missed a few fun things. There were basically three things that we got to do:

First, we got to pick strawberries. I think that most students found one or two. It was a little frustrating, because all of the other classes had gone through first and picked them all. Even if they didn't find much, they still had fun searching for them.

Next, we got to plant strawberries. The farm didn't really seem to be set up for the number of students that we had, so all the students (I think around 80-90) were squished together between these rows of dirt. Half of them dove in and coated themselves with the dirt, and the other half wouldn't touch it. The dirt divers were more than willing to help the neat freaks. They each got to take one plant home in a pot that was much bigger than it had to be, and we had a great time finding space for all the darn plants on the bus.

The last part was by far the best. We thought that we would make strawberry jam, but the substitute was way better. Each pair of students got a plate of strawberries, one cup of melted chocolate, and one cup of sugary chopped peanuts. I paired most of my students with one girl and one boy, which made it so much cuter when they ate the fondue. While they enjoyed the actual strawberries, what they like most was trying eat melted strawberry with a stick.

I really didn't do much else this week that is worth noting. I am now counting down the days until I leave. There are 23 days of school before I am done. I just keep reminding myself that I am almost done and all of the conflict and stress that I feel will soon be history.

Teacher's Day Dilema

In 1963 the Korean government set aside a "Teacher's Day" to appreciate the work that teacher's do. I was surprised the first time this holiday came around when I was here. I was impressed with how much they value teachers in this country. Last year, most teachers at my school enjoyed generous Teacher's day gifts from parents that ranged from cards or flowers, to expensive skin care products (Lancome, Aveda, Dior and Chanel) or valuable gift cards. Some of the gifts seemed a little over the top, but I didn't hear any complaints.
This year, the school sent home notes to parents explaining that while we appreciate their generosity, we will only be able to accept gifts of cards flowers and food (not quite sure why that last one was included). While admittedly some of us were a little disappointed that we would not be showered with expensive gifts, most of us understood the reasoning. Many parents trying to "buy us off" to give better grades, pay more attention to their child, or simply want to outdo the other parents. I actually found out that these kinds of gifts because such a problem in public schools that in 2008 the government issued a statement saying that accepting these kids of gifts (called chanji) should be banned, and any teacher found to have accepted them should loose their job and be banned from teaching for life. I guess this rule hasn't hit the private education sector yet.
The new policy at my school caused a few problems. There are inevitably going to be some parents who send gifts anyways. Teacher's had to go through an awkward process of writing a note refusing the gift and sending it back home with a confused child. Of course, there are also teachers who decided to keep their gifts ("Ralph Lauren makes chocolate now, really"). I thought I had it lucky when I didn't recieve any gifts, but I ended up getting 2 the day after. Both were small, probably worth less than $5. One of the students that I recieved a gift from sent this same bottle of sunscrean to all three of his teachers. Two of us sent it home with notes, and one teacher kept it. The two of us who sent it home were a little concerned that the other teacher might look bad to the parent, but what could we do. As is turns out, we got a furious phone call from the mother. "How come Erik Teaher accepted my generosity but you two won't?" Wait, so now the two of us who actually followed the policy were in trouble? We'll get in trouble with the school if we don't send gifts back, and in trouble with parents if we do send the gift back. Mom ended up sending the sunscrean back to us the next day. We kept it because administration said it would be rude to refuse again. All over a 40 gram (1.33 ounce) bottle of sunscrean!!! It seemed that the new policy caused more problems than it was worth....

My favorite quote from the week doesn't actually come from a student, but from a parent. I have two kindergarteners who have developed a crush on eachother. I had to sit down and explain to them that kisses are for family. Hugs are good for friends, but kisses are not for friends. (How else do I explain this to a 5 year old who doesn't speak English?) I wrote notes home to both parents, more because I thought it was extremely cute than that I was concerned about it. I got a response from one mom that began with "OMG, I am so embarassed!" I actually laughed out loud that a parent would write OMG to her child's teacher

Congratulations Lieutenant Leeann! I am so proud of you. I wish I could have been there to celebrate the amazing accoplishment that you have achieved. You have grown into such an amazing young woman. 15 years ago I would have never thought that you would grow up to graduate from West Point, but your day has finally come!

I got company!

I had Thursday and Friday off of work this week. This gave me a chance to host my friend Brianne for a few days. Bri got here Wednesday night, and left Sunday morning. We got a chance to hit all of the main parts of Korea tourism!

One of my favorite activities of the whole few days was bungee jumping. Since I had gone once before, I was allowed to go with the cord attached to my feet instead of my back. Actully getting off the platform was a lot scarier than it was last time. I didn't get any pictures of me, but I have one picture from the top. I also had my camera hangin from my wrist when I went, so I got this crazy video shaking all over the place.

After bungee jumping, we went into Seoul. Our first day we hit the folk village, and North Seoul Tower. At the folk village, there was a group that was giving free "traditional Korean medicine" screaning. I'm not very good at saying no to people who are waving you over and handing you tea, so I let us get roped into it. I'm not sure the blood preasure machine and scale that measures body fat was really "traditional," but looking at our toungues and telling us we had muscle soreness was interesting... It was kind of rainy and dreary that day, so there wasn't a great view from the top of seoul tower, but it was still worth it.

The next thing we did was go to the Korea War Memorial. I had been there once before, but it was worth seeing again. We ended up getting half-way through before the guard came and kicked us out because the museum was closing. Bummer.... We ended up going back the next morning to finish the rest of it.

The other highlight for me was a lanturn festival that they had in Seoul for Buddah's birthday. We went to the temple, which was all decked out with thousands of lanturns. The monks were playing drums, and there were displays of fancy animal shaped lanturns and all that fun stuff. At night, there was a huge parade. It lasted an hour and a half, but we only stayed for about half of it. We stood along the side with our spiffy new lanturns lit, and watched thousands of people march by. There were big fancy lanturns shaped like animals, trees, lotus flowers, and buddah etc..... Most of the time thought, it was groups of people from all the local temples, universities, hospitals, or any other place that people generally meet together. After a while, all of them were kind of looking the same. It seemed like the point was to get as many lanturns walking down a street as possible.

Happy Mother's Day to all the moms out there. I speak for all (okay, most) children when I say we appreciate all that you have done for us, and all that you have sacraficed for us. I hope that those who participate in the Race for the Cure have great weather!!!