Garden Goodness!

Once a month we go on a field trip with the kindergarteners at our school.  This week we went to a botanical garden.  We piled the kids into two vans and drove 30 minutes or so to a garden in the country run by a university.

Clayton's homeroom on the way to the garden.

Getting all the kids in one place is, as our favorite PU prof would say, like herding cats. However, their interest and attention span seems to increase exponentially when on a field trip.  A future study, perhaps?

The entrance to the garden.

The garden was lacking in flowers.  We both agree that we visited the garden a few weeks too early.  Had we waited, I think there would have been many more flowers blooming. But, it was a warm enough day, and the children enjoyed it anyway.

We call this girl the "Informer." At any given moment, she will to rush to the teacher's room, giggling and speaking so fast that the Korean teachers can't even understand her, and then run away.  She's like five kids packed into one.

How they say Root around the world!

After looking at flowers, they brought the kids to catch tadpoles! This is a right of passage as a child, if you ask me.  There were quite a few tadpoles for them to catch and release. There were also dragonfly nymphs to hold and observe.  We had never seen a dragonfly in that form before, and they were really cool. They come complete with detachable jaws!

We were a bit worried that one of the kids would take a swim. Luckily there was no need to revive the lifeguard skills.

After the tadpole expedition, they gave the kids capes with pictures of different insects on the back, and had them pretend to be bugs (super bugs, perhaps?).

After saying some things we didn't understand, the ladies who work at the garden made Clayton wear this sweet bird hat and chase the super bugs around the deck, trying to eat them.  

One of the perks of Clayton being the token male working with the kindies is that he gets roped into wearing the silly hats, and I do not. Instead, I get to take pictures for the world to see. Tee hee.

Arrrrgh Matey!

Thursday was Pirate Day at Grace School. Since pirates are pretty much the coolest thing ever (check out 'The Pirate Movie' if you don’t believe me), we were pretty excited. Plus, it meant that we did not have to teach classes for most of the morning... a definite bonus. The kids were divided into three groups, the "Green Skulls," the "Purple Skulls," and the "Pineapples." The Pineapples, of course, were the fiercest pirates.

We had three stations for the pirate groups. In my room, there was a giant Treasure Map for the kids to assemble. The pieces were hidden throughout the school. Their task was to find the pieces and put it together without killing each other. For this, they received the most valuable treasure of all: stickers.

Now, I am not sure if this is something common to all ESL schools, but at Grace School the sticker is a staple disciplinary method. It is policy that the kindies earn them at the end of every class (whether or not they deserve them).  And to coerce the children into behaving, teachers threaten to take stickers away.  We have yet to see how this is an effective form of behavior modification, in fact our backgrounds working with children suggest otherwise, but what do we know? We're just psychology majors...

Now, normally the kids receive one sticker at the end of each class, but on Pirate Day we gave away FIVE stickers for completing the puzzle. Needless to say, the kids loved it. In the next room, another native English teacher at our school was in charge of dressing the kids up like pirates. They made bandanas with skulls on them (cute, non-threatening skulls of course), eye patches, and telescopes.

Once they were fully pirate-ed up, they went to Clayton's room... the Treasure Hunt! Because what Pirate Day is complete without a good treasure hunt? Clayton painstakingly created a grand treasure hunt, complete with an overhead image of a giant treasure chest, and a pirate song. He even talked to the kids using his best pirate voice the entire time. He pirated his voice right into oblivion, but the kids thought it was great fun.

All in all, I think we would agree that it was a good time had by all.

   Here are some of our little pirates:

Ahoy! Pirates ahead!

Two of our youngest kids after putting together this amazing treasure  map.

It is unfortunate that stealing adorable children is frowned upon at the school. 

This little guy is one of the sweetest kids ever!

This week, it is back to our usual schedule, but we do something special the third week of each month... so stay tuned for more pictures of cute kids!  Go ahead... roll  your eyes. We're used to it.

Insadong and Yongsan

This past Sunday, we woke up to a beautiful sunny day, so we decided to head into Seoul again. We were thrilled to be out in the sunshine after a week of bad, wintery weather. We decided to take the bus, instead of the Subway for speed and to see the scenery. 

Last weekend we had gone to Seoul with people who knew where we were going, but we figured that it couldnt be too difficult to find our way again. When the bus came, we got on it, sure that it was the right number. Long story short, it was not actually the correct bus and we went all the way into a different part of Seoul and halfway back to Bundang before we realized what was happening. An hour later, after our long detour, we made it to Insadong.

Insadong is a popular place for tourists. It's an entire street of little shops and street vendors. In the past, it had many antiques and different kinds of art. Now, it is mainly geared towards tourists, with manufactured mask replicas and many many clothing vendors.  Since we are most definitely tourists, we did not mind. We ate from street vendors and took random pictures, as always.

After Insadong, we headed to Yongsan, which has a 6 floor Electronics Mall, aka Clayton's heaven. We actually weren't that impressed. It didn't have as many cool gadgets and gismos as we were expecting. We did get a wireless router and walk through a sea of camera and cell phone salesmen.  At the end of the day, we bought some gimbap ( korean sushi, sans the fish), and fried chicken, and headed home on the subway.

Standing guard.

A Korean Starbucks!

I love taking pictures of buildings!

A hat shop!

Clayton as the Tin Man

Insadong!

Yongsan subway station... It was huge! We actually had to ask for directions to the right platform.

Yongsan by night.

kids and cake!

Last week there was a birthday party at our school for all the kindergarten children who have March birthdays.  The kids all brought gifts, we sang Happy Birthday, and they got cake and fresh fruit after lunch.  Our boss also bought Clayton a birthday cake on Thursday for his birthday!

The boy in green and the girl are in my homeroom. The one sitting down is Clayton's.

Everyone gathered in our "gym" room for the festivities.

The little guy on the desk is barely 5, but in Korean age, he is 6. He is ridiculously cute!

This is my homeroom (plus one), and Anne, the Korean homeroom teacher.

Clayton, his homeroom (plus two of mine), and Sophia.

Clayton's homeroom. We eat with our classes during lunch.

My kiddos!

Corned Beef and Kimchi?

This weekend we decided to head to Seoul to explore a bit. We ended up going with some friends to Cheonggyecheon Place in downtown Seoul for the St. Patrick's Day parade. Who would have thought that our first St. Patrick's Day parade would be in South Korea? :-)

The parade was fairly small, but there were a zillion foreigners, a stage with live Irish music, and free Guinness and Guinness t-shirts! We went out for some delicious spicy chicken (again, we failed at remembering what it was called),  and then explored around a bit. Our friend Jeff's fiancee showed us around to a few places. We ended up seeing two different temples. They looked so colorful and artistic against the tall gray skyscrapers in the background. It was as if the city simply rose up around them. The larger of the two temples was holding a Buddhist service while we were there. There were large windows from which we could watch it.

As we continued back to the St. Paddy's day festivities, some people in our group found other friends. By the end of the afternoon, our group of 6 or 7 had turned to almost 20!  We met a bunch of other foreigners who live in our area. Some of them have been here for 5 or 6 years. A few others were new, like us. It is really helpful to meet people who can give us tips on how to get around the area.

Here are a bunch of pictures from Saturday! I am pretty sure you can click on them to make them larger.

St. Patrick's Day festivities! The day when everyone is Irish!

The parade!

They were doing free face painting as well!

Yes, it is what you think. A women's parking spot. It is longer and wider than all the others. Awesome.

Jogyesa Buddhist temple

The view inside the temple.

People light these candles for wishes and good fortune.

Amazing neon-lit horse drawn carriages!

Samsung Tower. It is not Samsung headquarters... just named after Samsung, like many other things in Seoul.

This is the street view near where we had lunch. As you can see, the sky is a strange color. This is from the Yellow Dust that blows over from the Gobi Desert. It is chock-full of all sorts of delightful pollution that makes you sick if you inhale too much of it. It started blowing in mid-afternoon and by around 5:00, the sky looked like this.

Overall, it was a great day! We left a bit early and found our way back home via the subway. We are thankful for the English signs in all the subways! This next week we will do a bit more grocery shopping and perhaps set up our bank account. Next weekend we may go back into Seoul to do some more exploring!

Our new home!

Here is a tour of our apartment! It is lacking in color or decoration... but it is all we need!

We live on the 4th floor... which is apparently bad luck. The word for 4 sounds like death, so we live on the "death floor".

Our building.

The view as you walk in the front door. We have gotten used to taking our shoes off and wearing slippers inside. Not that you need them on the warm floor.

The bathroom is to the right as you walk in the door. It is small, but it works for us.

Our kitchen.  Also tiny. Notice the washer beneath the stove. We haven't actually used it yet, as the buttons are all labeled in Korean.

The view from the top of our loft.

The bedding and bed were brand new when we got here. Apparently bedding is pretty expensive here, so we are grateful that this was provided.

This is the view looking back toward the door from our bed/couch. The loft is pretty much empty for now. We may get some pillows and turn it into a reading/computer loft.