Picture Post

Mary is adorable! I finally found out why her English is so good. She went to kindergarten in the Philippines, and her school was taugh all in English.

I was teaching my Wed. conversation group how to do the "WOW" thing for pictures. They thought it was really cool. I really am terrible. I tell them everyone does this, and I tell my roomies that the chicken dance is a classic American tradition.

MinKyu. He is such a pushover. He didn't mind us painting his fingernails. I added the heart and the cross. They were too ugly otherwise.

I can't imagine anyone would actually buy this! It looks like something you would only see in a magazine for a photo shoot. Therefore, I had to pose like a model. It couldn't be helped.

Miok and I being silly at Forever 21. We have the same headband on. Shiny silver bow.

I am such a goofy kid! But this couch was just calling out to me! I had to pose this way!

Miok and I at Doota, a shopping mall in Seoul for independent designers.

A Christmas shop! There were so many lights! I wanted to buy something, but everything felt so American! I wanted something in Korean.

This was a building! The men were scrolling up and down. Daniel was amazed by it! He couldn't figure out how it worked. It was kind of funny to see him trying to imagine it.

This is a mega church! They had translators for 6 different languages. The translator for English wasn't very good though. I listened to a little bit in Spanish.

This is Daniels normal pose. He's always taking pictures!


On my trip to Seoul, we went to Itaewan, which is a big foreigners place. I found a Mizzou hoodie! There was also a Nebraska hoodie, but I didn't feel it deserved a picture.


Kevin took this picture. He wouldn't stop taking pictures of me, so I was doing all sorts of crazy poses. This was gangster Korean.

KEVIN! This kid is hilarious! He's a little frustrating sometimes though because he spends all class goofing off and doesn't do his work. He'll only do what he's supposed to be doing if I sit next to him and walk him through it. And by that, I mean point to each new problem/sentence he's supposed to work on. He also hijacked my camera and took a ton of pictures.


My students seem to think that I have long curly hair. I don't mind though. They also think I'm extremely skinny. That's a little scary.


My 5th/6th grade class, enjoying the cake I brought in for our Thanksgiving day party!


Two of my 3rd grade students. The one in pink just joined the class, and I think she really likes me. She's a sweet girl.

Not a real post

After a terrible week of trying to get things figured out for next semester back home, and then a weekend of pretty unsuccessful shopping in Seoul, I'm tired and a little too depressed to make a good post.

And Thanksgiving is coming up this next week and that makes me feel even worse.

So I'll just post this fake filler-post to let everyone reading know I'm not dead, I'm just sad.

Days 99-105

Another Sunday, and another day with time for a post.

I mentioned in my last post that I was feeling much better after being sick for a week. I then had to go to school, and try to control a bunch of 1st/2nd graders who hadn't had class for a week and a half. My voice was gone after that. I was still sick-ish most of this week as well.

Not much happened this past week. My kids were normal. My conversation groups were normal (when we actually met). All in all, everything has been kind of....so-so.

Wednesday was Pepero Day, which is sort of like a valentines day, but where you only give pepero, which is....a stick biscuit dipped in chocolate. I only mention it because most of my friends, who all teach on Wednesday, got tons of Pepero, while I got none. It was pretty depressing, actually.

Some good things about this past week....I bought two dress-tops (what do you call tops that are too long to be a shirt, but not long enough to be a dress? Mini dress? Tunic-length top?), and a pair of boots off G-Market (like Amazon for Korea), and they all arrived this week. I really want to wear my boots, but I'm waiting until my suede waterproofing spray arrives. These were pricy, so I don't want to ruin them the first time I wear them.
My package from home also arrived, so I had stuff to munch on this weekend (most of the candy is gone already. -_-u).

The only other big thing....IT SNOWED THIS MORNING!
Daniel called when he was on his way to meet me so we could walk to church together and he said it was snowing. I didn't believe him, but it was. And of course, as luck would have it, it didn't start really snowing until we were on our way to the church, which was across the river.

Church was okay. I was really tired, and didn't understand much (er....more like...the translation given to me was so summerized, that I understood it the first time, and didn't need all the smaller points that went with it).
After church, Daniel, myself, Mr. Joe Lennon (a teacher at Daniels school), and another foreigner named David, all went to the movie theater and watched 2012. It was a pretty good movie. It's definitely my favorite genre (worlds-going-to-end-need-someone-to-be-compassionate-and-save-humanity) for movies though, so I was pretty much expecting it to be good. I was expecting it too be more....preachy than it was.

After the movie, Daniel and I went to Mr. Lennon's (I should learn his real name) house and watched Men In Black until dinner time, when Daniel went to eat dinner on campus with someone, and I went with Mr. Lennon and his family for samgyupsal. I felt a little weird just because Mr. Lennon is the only one who speaks English, but I've become comfortable enough being around Koreans that it wasn't too bad.

After dinner....I came home, and realized I had a ton of stuff to figure out and get done.
I need to book my flight back home, which I'm hoping I can get either on the 8th or 9th of January. However.....it's peak season, and I might have waited too long. However, I couldn't book a flight before I found out when the Winter English camp at my elementary school would be, and they wouldn't tell me until I found the right person to ask.

I also need to find a way to get this in-school deferment form for my student loans. I pulled it up the first time I was looking at it, but I haven't been able to get it up since then. I hope I didn't break it! I really need it!
I also need to figure out my schedule for next semester. I thought I had it all figured out last Spring, before I came to Korea, but when I looked at my degree audit, things had changed, and now I'm a little worried.
But if worse comes to worse, I'll just have to take a course during Summer school. I'm pretty sure I can still walk in May, if I only have one course or two left to take.

And on a different note...this is a picture of one of my 1st grade students drawing Chaewan, my guy TaLK scholar.

Text says: I hate Lim Chaewan
My kids are really rude because they're supposed to use a title for anyone elder, but my kids don't when they're talking about Chaewan.

Days 86-98

Well, Mom says it's time for another blog update.

Oct. 29-30, I went on a trip with the Tourism English Interpretation department to Oedo (pronounced way-do). It was alright, but the island felt very fake to me. It was just a bunch of foreign (normal to me) plants that a couple had planted on the island. The gardens were very exciting to the Korean students, but it felt just like gardens back home so nothing special. The view from the island was very beautiful though!
And the next day, we went to a temple. Temples are all the same after you see the first one, but the mountains are still beautiful.

Saturday was Halloween. Eunmee and I went to Suwon for a party some TaLK scholars from Chungbuk were planning. There were a lot of people and I had fun. All night long, Eunmee was being followed by creepers. I felt bad for her, but she didn't seem to mind all that much.
The party didn't end until 4am. Instead of searching for a place to stay, we went to the train station and chilled there for two hours until the first subway to Cheonan arrived. From Cheonan, we took the bus home to Gongju, and then Eunmee and I slept pretty much all day.

Monday, there were no KNU classes, so I didn't have a conversation group, and I received a text saying no TaLK classes all week because of swine flu. That was fantastic, since I got a cold sometime between the Halloween party and Monday. (Probably from not bringing my coat with me to the party. It's cold outside at 4am!)

I was sick all week, and felt pretty bad, so I canceled all of my conversation groups and just spent time at home resting. I started knitting a Christmas gift and I hope to have it done by the end of the month so I can send it home. After a week of doing nearly nothing, I feel a lot better.