Christmas time is here!

This has been a very busy past couple of weeks. Since the beginning of November, we have been practicing Christmas plays with our preschool and kindergarten students. All plays are teacher written and directed. Matt wrote a version of the Christmas Carol, and I (Eileen) rewrote "Twas the Night Before Christmas" to be about Santa coming to our school. We have rushed academic subjects to get in play practice time everyday for 2 months. This past week we had a Christmas festival where parents came for 3 different days to watch their children preform their Christmas plays and songs/dances taught by the Korean teachers. Blaise teacher's (Matt's) class preformed on Wednesday. They did a great job and pulled off a challenging play. They also preformed handbells (which will probably be posted soon). On Friday, my class preformed, and it was...well...if you met my class it was Pluto class showing off their true colors. Since many of these kids are so advanced, most plays are really spectacular for kindergarteners and preschoolers. However, mine was what you would label a typical preschool play. I was blessed to have a group of students who have great difficulty focusing and are not always with the program. They did a really great job on their play, but it was pretty funny (unintentionally). One student hit his head on the standing mic and was so embarrassed he just stood there frozen for a minute or so. When students hesitated to stand up to talk, other students would yell their name or start to recite their line for them. Many students, frozen by the parents in the crowd, forgot to stand up or sit down at appropriate times. They really were cute though. We were also the only class, as told to me by my supervisor (who was in tears laughing), to heckle Santa. She said there were no other words to describe it. Most classes sat quietly while they got to go up and see Santa and get gifts while their parents watched. They had to stop to get my class to be quiet. Many students where yelling, "Where are your reindeer??" "Why can't we see them?" One girl got up, and on the microphone (see picture) while talking to Santa, told him that Santa is only Korean (a white American was playing Santa). People were cracking up, which is a great thing because many times Korean parents are stone faced and won't crack a smile at some of these school events.
After all the Christmas fun was over, we had a school end of the year party on Friday. They took us on buses to this really nice cafe. We got a steak dinner (of course still served with a side of kimchi) and then exchanged secret Santa gifts. We then had a school wide Norea-bong competition (karaoke) with both Koreans and foreigners. It was really funny watching some of the Korean staff, because it is a whole side that we felt like we had never seen. The directors both got up and sang solos and the president of our school (like the CEO, in the pic above) got up and sang. Here the cleaning and cooking ajimas (what you call a woman who is older than you or of this age) sang a song together.Everything was hysterical. I won first or second prize (I can't remember now) for group singing while preforming Hurts so Good with a bunch of the girls. It was a fun time.
We are very excited and looking forward to our winter break that starts on Wed! We have gotten in the holiday spirit and I even baked "gingerbread" cookies this past weekend. Due to the absence of molasses in Korea (even in foreign food marts), I made an alternative recipe using corn syrup and dark brown sugar. They turned out pretty well and tasted like "light" gingerbread. We miss everyone at home and hope that everyone is having a great holiday season!

Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night!

All I Want For Christmas is You

This is a video of Eileen's preschoolers dancing to Mariah Carey's "All I Want for Christmas is You". They did it for me during class, but it will be preformed in front of their parents next week at the Christmas Festival. Keep your eye on the girl near the middle in the black dress. She gets into it the most and you can sometimes hear her singing over the CD. The boys are pretty hysterical and the girl in white close to the end can really shake it. Enjoy! The more you watch it, the funnier it gets.

Winter has begun

So we haven't posted in a while. Life has been moving very fast. In November we were able to go to the DMZ, or demilitarized zone. This is the strip of land between North and South Korea where no military forces are allowed to build up. I don't think we realized how tense things still are. There was no real treaty, just a cease-fire. It was an interesting experience. We got to set foot inside North Korea while inside a room with guard Republic of Korea, South Korea soldiers. We got to go to different points along the DMZ where they have stations to look out into North Korea. The other side seemed pretty, there were lots of nice mountains. However, they pointed out things like jamming towers that jam all signals from any part of the world into North Korea. They also have a town known as Propaganda village. It is a ghost town and is maintained to show how "well" North Korea is doing. It also has an enormous flag pole with a flag that was just as big as some of the four story houses. When we were in a joint area run by the UN, we got to see North Korean buildings and soldiers. In some of our pictures we can see how some windows are open and they had cameras taking pictures of us. We were not allowed to point or make gestures as that could be used as North Korean propaganda. We also got to see a tunnel that North Korea made in the 70's in an attempt to reach Seoul. When discovered, they painted the granite ceiling black and said it was a tunnel for coal mining.

On a very different note, we got to host a Thanksgiving dinner for all of our co-workers. We searched the foreign food stores in Seoul and found a turkey to cook in our little oven. We are the only people who have an oven out of the 24 or so employees that have apartments. We were really nervous cooking it in an oven whose temperature we didn't exactly know and not having any kind of meat thermometer. It turned out great and Matt carved his first turkey. We also made stuffing and green bean casserole (yum!!) with the help of some food from care packages. People brought lots of yummy food and we fit 15 people into our studio apartment. Everyone was so happy to be full with good western food. There was no kimchi at this dinner.


The next day we ate leftover turkey sandwiches. Honestly, turkey sandwiches have never ever tasted so good. Didn't think we would miss turkey that much. We put up the few Christmas decorations that were left by past occupants of our apartment and made stove top leftover casserole. It was an absolutely wonderful day.

School is going well for us. We have fallen more into a routine and are excited that we are not leaving before 8:00 almost every night and not taking work home with us. Things are very busy this month with lots of Christmas activities. We are preparing our preschool and kindergarteners for their Christmas plays. In about a week and a half they will preform plays for their parents and those of several other classes. Matt's class is preforming a Christmas Carol and Eileen's class is preforming a new rendition of Twas' the Night Before Christmas with words changed to be about our school. Both of the scripts were written by us. They are also learning a song, dance, and instrument playing from their Korean teacher. Many classes are preforming dances to "All I Want for Christmas is You" by Mariah Carey. It's pretty hysterical. We will try and tape these performances to share.

A funny note to end on...

Even English schools aren't free from mistakes...

Ha-Ha!! Merry Christmas!!!

As the smell of ripe ginko fruit fills the air...

Wonderful smell by the way, if you have not experienced it before...just kidding. Fall is really come to Seoul as the air is now chilly and the leaves in the park are starting to change. It has even been chilly enough at night that we have attempted to turn on our heat. So far our attempts have been unsuccessful as we are just randomly pushing buttons and turning dials. At least we know how to turn on the hot water. We were able to see fall in its colors as we went to the Seoul Tower this past weekend. It is like the Space Needle but on a little mountain so you can see 360 around Seoul. We also got to see a martial arts ceremony which is a fun experience.

Seoul Tower Adventures

We also got a chance to celebrate Halloween last Friday. While they don't celebrate Halloween here in Korea, our hagwon, school, does. We got to dress up on Friday, as a bumble bee and bear. Matt's costume was a Korean pun. He was dressed as a bear and as GomPlayer. That is a popular media player here. All the kids know it too because we use it to show their favorite part of class, DVD class. Gom in Korean means bear. Many of the older kids and Korean staff that got they pun thought it was very funny. We got to play Halloween games with our kids in the morning and then have a costume parade/walk down a catwalk. It was really cute. There were a lot of red Power Rangers and princesses. Our afternoon kids got to go to our school's "haunted house" throughout the week. This was a room that had been converted and was full of Korean staff members trying to scare the kids. While most of the older kids seemed unphased, or pretended not to be scared, by it, Eileen had the one and only class that had to be escorted out early. So many kids were crying, they could not finish. It was probably that one kid got freaked and his poor, hysterical crying got everyone else a little on edge. It was pretty sad, but most other classes seemed to have a lot of fun. We also got to stand in our classrooms while kids knocked on the door and said trick-or-treat.

Halloween at Kangnam Poly

Two things that we have recently started: a photo food diary and photo claw machine diary. Everyday at lunch, and some dinners, so far we are taking pictures of the food. As we thought that Korean food was just like other Asian food at home, we were in for a bit of a surprise. It is a different kind of cuisine and thought it might be interesting to folks back home. There is an album of pictures if you click on picture link to the right or below. The claw machine diary came about from seeing so many of this very popular street corner game. There are two on almost every street corner, and these are not they type of claw machines that you see back home. They are full of the most random and odd stuff, and most are directed towards adults. There are pictures with labels of some of the prizes we have seen and we are going to keep adding to it. There is everything from vacuum cleaners, to security cameras, to MP3 players, to underwear, to tools, and just about anything else you can think of. This also is an album under our pictures or below. Both of these albums will be updated as we get more material.

Korean food

Claw Machines

Slippery Fish

This video is of my (Eileen's) preschool class singing the song slippery fish. It had to be uploaded to youtube so the quality is a little fuzzy. This was just the end of a speaking lesson. Even though they probably have other songs down better, I thought a snapshot of what they are like would be cute. Just a warning, this song might be the easiest and one of the most annoying songs to get stuck in your head.

Living Strong in Korea

This title was suggested by Matt. We are "living strong in Korea" though we are not managing to update our blog like we thought we would. We had a relaxing weekend and were able to get caught up. We spent some time searching for the very best in regards to Halloween costumes and Eileen has once again resorted to wearing a costume intended for someone under the age of 4. We cannot openly speak about our costumes as we are saving that for Halloween and someone from work might be reading this. (They're not that good...)

Some fun/funny little happenings from this past couple of weeks:
Tonight Matt was excited by using his advanced Korean skills to ask where to buy kimbab. Our two chapters of Korean from the Korean book we bought have served us well. He came back with his prize although we still are not sure what the meat was. It was probably ham with Krab or crab. Kimbab is the Korean form of sushi, except nothing is raw. Here is a picture that looks surprising like the one we ate tonight. We are both presently surprised how much we like the seaweed. We especially enjoy the kind we get at lunch where you can sprinkle it on top of your rice. It kind of tastes like pumpkin seeds.


One funny thing we keep running into at the subway are these electrified racquets. To the left is a picture of a lady selling them in the subway. They show them off by brushing something across the surface. They sound like those blue bug zapper lights. Imagine having a blue bug zapper that you can just wave around in the air and looks surprisingly like something a child would like to touch. We can't believe you don't hear about people getting hurt with these things (not that we could understand if people were talking about them) They kind of scare Eileen and seem like the most hazardous thing you could keep lying around your house. However, as we are nearing the end of November and still being woken up at night be mosquitoes, we are understanding how they can come in handy. The mosquitoes are absolutely ridiculous here! And they fly like 20 times faster than US mosquitoes so you have to try and chase them around. They especially love to bite Matt. While we just got our apartment re-wallpapered, there are already the stains of our nightly battles with the most annoying little creatures on the planet. Note: they do not wipe off the walls even with cleaner.

Another exciting adventure of this past couple of weeks is that Eileen made a pie from scratch! (Eileen writing this now) I feel very accomplished having made a pie from scratch. It kind of feels like I've passed some kind of test of benchmark. It was pretty good pie although I was really worried about the crust. It is kind of hard to use ingredients when you don't really know what you are putting in. Most just said the English word on the front and had the rest in Korean. So I knew it was some kind of flour or butter. Also, there is no shortening around so we borrowed some from a friend who found it in a foreign market. It is pretty tasty and good taste of home.

A little bit more from Eileen:
We are enjoying working at our school and liking that it is a really professional environment. I am really excited to be teaching what they call extra class. It is a time for the 9 lowest preschoolers to get a little bit of extra help. While everything else follows a pretty tight curriculum, I am able to have a lot more flexabilitly to help improve their language. I can pull out a lot more activities and ideas that I have from deaf ed and other teaching experience. They are cute but a pretty wiggly bunch, especially because they have to stay so much later then they are used to. It is fun and I am still figuring out what works with them. I really enjoy that the school has given me some of the younger and lower level students. Even though they aren't deaf, I feel like I am working a lot more with language and I like it.

Last week we also survived open class and pto. Open class is when the parents come and watch their students while you teach them a lesson. The room isn't very big and the children all sit around a central table. The parents sit behind the children and watch you. It can make you a little nervous. Parents are also watching to see if we call on their children equally and whether they get just as many turns as the children next to them. Our experience was that the moms don't really smile (we think it might be cultural as it happened to everyone) and they just stare at you. Anyway, we then had pto where we spoke to the parents about what we are doing with their kids. This wasn't too bad it was just a little awkward as you had to sit there while they translated what you just said. It is hard to know whether you are supposed to keep looking at the parents and nod like you have any clue what the translator is saying, or if you are supposed to look at the translator. Oh well, it went smoothly and we survived. In such a high pressured and competitive society even this early education is very important to them. (Eileen comment) I think it is great that parents are involved, though I feel like some are a little too involved. In the US you could never get all the parents there, especially for preschool.

All is well in Seoul. We miss all our family and friends back home. Keep in touch and remember if you have a webcam and/or a mic, we have Skype!

We finally have internet

This past week we finally got internet! Hooray! Despite the fact that the world wide web is at our fingertips we have not had time to update our blog. A lot has happened in the past couple of weeks. We are still enjoying teaching and are beginning to settle into a bit more of a routine. This weekend we are tackling report cards and writing report card comments. Seoul is absolutely beautiful this weekend with crisp cool weather and beautiful blue skies. We spent Saturday in the park with friends having a picnic and trying out some traditional Korean games, including the ever popular badminton.
Today, which is Sunday, we joined our coworkers for a wonderful Canadian Thanksgiving meal. It was delicious! We did it potluck style with a main course of pork tenderloin cooked with apples and cranberries, pirogies (which we thought we wouldn't get to eat for a year!!), meatballs, and other tasty things. It is good to have a belly full of good western food. We ended with apple pie a la mode and pumpkin pie (both thanks to the chefs at Costco). We are now sitting back feeling very full, sleepy, and not wanting to look at the report cards that we left for tonight.
Last weekend we trekked down to Gyeongju, which is in southeast Korea. It was the capital of the Silla kingdom for a long time. It is full of historical Korean things and large grassy mounds where the Silla kings are buried. We had a good time but it was one of those experiences when you really feel the pressure of not knowing the language. In Seoul, while everything is still in Korean it just seems much easier to find what you need. We had Friday off so we spent two nights there. We saw a Korean craft village (and returned with souvenirs), one of the most well known Buddhist temples in Korea, mounds, a national museum and some other cool sites along the way. The last day we were there we rented a tandem bike. It was both of our first times on one and took a little bit to get the hang down. Our pictures are posted although we are still working on labeling them.