FROM SO CAL TO SOUTH KOREA, AND NOW BACK

Hey blog, it's time that I come rambling home. Our school hit the skids about 6 weeks ago after a failed sale, I found out about two weeks ago that the school would be closed, and lastly I found out on Monday that I will be sent home due to the short time remaining on my contract. Not by any means an unusual occurrence in this business. I, like everyone around me will be sad to say goodbye to the co-workers and the all the kids especially. I've worked with nothing but awesome kids since I stepped foot in Korea, and more selfishly it will be hard to be as silly as I am naturally with out them around to make it seem sane.

So, it's back to Southern California October 6th, 2011, with nothing but great memories, a decent amount of pictures, and (something sentimental that I can't think of right now) as well. 

GOOD TIMES, TALK SOON!

PREEMPTIVE MEAL

Ah I forgot to remember (if that makes sense) what the name of this is, but I know it as it's common name amongst those around me: Hangover Food. I actually ate it with some friends before I went into Seoul to watch a Rugby World Cup, game so I guess I was hoping it could work both before or after a night out. I had no idea rugby was so awesome btw, it has some similarities but it has less breaks than American football which is a bonus. Back to the meal:

It's a rather large bone of, I believe pork, with perfectly tender meat that more or less falls off it still attached, and then the broth with veggies and green onions on top. So first you take out the bone, and then add some rice and the meat that you pick off and devour. Awesome, hearty, warming.

OH Yeah I also lost a game (of rock scissor paper (translated to kai bai bo)) and I had to eat half of that spicy green pepper up there next to the carrots. It ended me, chicken feet style; for a good few minutes I kept my tongue in ice water. Because that is how I spend my free time.

WALK COP

A few weeks back a boy was running and he fell down and broke his arm! It was super sad and all, however the parents flipped out so as a result we had to take turns at lunch standing and yelling at the kids to walk. But you know me I hadda take it a step further:

 That's me and my Walking Patrol homemade sash. I also bought those shades and practiced that sneer all weekend specifically for this 'duty' I was to perform. Oh and that badge says the slogan "Walking Matters!"  WHICH IT DOES.

Here is me, oh sorry, Officer Matt Teacher, with four of the worst repeat offenders, with their hands flat on the desk ready to take em' downtown. Slash send them to the playroom where they were no longer in the hallway and my responsibility.

MINIMAL VACATION, CANDY TREES

That four day break was something else! Add on a three day work week and everything is peachy keen! Sort of, there could be some bad news on the work front coming down tomorrow from The Man up at corporate (I imagine Bill Lumberg from Officespace), but those are problems for higher pay grades, until then it's business as usual.

I have a class with two 6 year old (maybe 5) boys who are best friends named Eddison and Daniel (Eddy wants to be an inventor). We have been studying this same simple book that only talks about six parts of a tree and they have memorized it so to mix things up I went out and did some candy shopping: 

Above are Eddy and Daniel working on the tree which consists of a Kit-Kat for the trunk, broken up wheat sticks for the roots, chocolate and cracker sticks for the branches, and these sour taffy-candies (they had a green package, but turned out to be yellow (upon closer inspection it was pineapple flavor....so it figures)) ripped up to make leaves. Also, Mom, I asked the parents first if it was okay to feed them all that candy -- they were cool with it.

Probably the only thing of note that I did over the break was going to Lake Park with some friends for a dinner-time picnic and kicking of the soccer ball / monkey in the middle session.

The first picture is facing away from the lake park at about 6, it was pretty warm out so it was not nearly as dreary as it looks there. At the bottom is an hour later on the field at which we were sitting, and in the distance you can see a screen where they were showing a free movie - a Korean film called Sunny about some high school friends or something. It was showing at an amphitheater overlooking the lake which I thought was pretty cool. Anyway a couple hours and a half dozen mosquito bites we retired for the night.  I'll keep everyone posted on the news from work, take care all.

GOOD FRIDAY

For the afore-mentioned Chuseok I received some gifts, check them out:

The bottles are Korean apricot wine, and were from the head company and given to the male teachers...the female teachers got fancy tuna. I think it's a pretty cool gift mostly because the last two were sets of 10 tooth paste bottles and two soaps. I mean 20 tubes of tooth paste is great, but 30? Cmon.

These little rice cakes were a gift from one of my afternoon students. I only ate one (pictured below) but it was a very thoughtful and great gift. 

Lastly I cooked dinner for some co-workers + girlfriends last night. I made two plates of this stir-fried sesame and chicken dish with (the traditional and popular Korean) sesame leaves (used to make a little taco) and rice with an egg on top and then some wings with my awesome new toaster oven and a broccoli+cheese+olives appetizer.

I forgot to take pics of the other stuff but it was a relaxing way to end the week and start up the vacation! There's supposed to be a typhoon-like-weather this weekend but I'll try to do something cool and post pics.

IT'S CHUSEOK TIME.

I am vacation-izing myself for this (four-day) weekend. Vacation-i-zation is a delicate process that involves a lot of wearing of basketball short/sweat pants depending on the season, very few alarm clocks, and in this context, no communication with anyone under 5ft tall.

Holidays, especially the ones celebrating traditions mean that the kids wear their han-bok (pronounced book) to school. That's their traditional robes that they wear when they bow to the elders in their family. They wore their robes for Chuseok (pronounced chew-suh-k (it helps to stick out your chin when saying the chew, and then push your chin as far back as possible for the suh-k)) last Wednesday at school and we made traditional foods and played games with the kids.

Here are a plethora of pictures:

NICK'S FAREWELL DINNER

It's a transient profession, blog.

People are always coming and going so you end up going to a lot of goodbye parties. This one unfortunately was for a good friend and co-worker, Nick. We went to a place called Big Bread. Big bread is a total trip. It's a Belgian bakery/restaurant run by this Belgian guy who works there all the time. It feels European and the food's delicious and fancy. What's a trip thought is that it's in a strange little corner of our small suburb. It's something that I could total see being in the heart of Seoul and it would fit right in, but we are always wonder how this great little restaurant found it's way to tiny Hwajeong.

Above, my meal was a Bulgogi (spiced beef) melt sandwich. Then there's the original 2011 male co-teachers, Nick's in the Cal shirt, I just got off work, and Zach is wearing his Korean UFC fighter whose nickname is 'The Korean Zombie' tee-shirt that always cracks me up. Lastly there's Nick and his girlfriend laughing about to light up his cake. It's very common to have a little cake for special occasions and you can bring it into any restaurant with you and have it for dessert.

TEETH AT THE NOW DEFUNCT YALE CLASS

We merged two kinder classes the other day because one class had been whittled down to only two kids. The merger is good because that's less classes for everyone all around to teach but a negative though is that when you teach a class with just two kids (one boy, one girl) you can be a lot more relaxed in your manner with the kids and they are relaxed and it makes teaching them, controlling them, and having fun a lot easier.

For example one day we calmly and comically talked about teeth for about 10 minutes. They are both six years old and they are losing teeth left and right. Something I've noticed is that in 6-year-old world, losing a tooth is big news and they always run up to everyone and pull down their lip like I'm supposed to be astounded at the wondrous events unfolding in their mouth. I never know what to say either so I just say, "good job!" like they accomplished something. I remember I lost my first tooth at a (most likely atrocious early 90's) Padres game while I was eating popcorn and I thought it was a seed and swallowed it, because swallowing popcorn seeds is also a cool idea. I'm sure the next day I was showing everyone too. Ah, rambling, sorry:

Below is the reason why I took these pictures -- Jade's lost four teeth recently, and they are the front four teeth. Missing your front four teeth must be so rough I honestly don't know how she eats food!

10 DAYS!?

Feels like it's been so long since I've updated. I have been hoarding pictures though, so sit back and relax -- like Mir ('Mir-cat') chillin in the library picture below on two separate occasions -- and barring any unforeseen Arizona-based blackouts I hope you enjoy them!

FLEA MARKET DAY, SWEET SMELL OF COMMERCE, BROKEN HEARTS

It finally came!

The day everyone (under 5 ft.) has been waiting for at school, the annual ECC Flea Market Day. A week or so ago the kids started bringing in unwanted stuff for to be sold (with fake money, of course) to other students. They practiced sales language like greeting a customer, asking the price asking for a discount, and such.

During Arts and Crafts the kids made signs for the different stores that would be featured. Here's the one I made with the oldest kids:

I have to admit I was pretty proud of this sign because I just sorta walked into class not knowing what to do.  Then it hit me and I traced two brown lines on the top and bottom of 7 sheets of paper, and I had the kids color in the lines to make matching shelves. Then I told them to draw books and if the could, write the names of their favorite books. If you can't make out the titles, some of them are Chicka Chicka (yes, as in Boom Boom) Harry Potter, and the name of a book we read about Antarctica.

SURPRISE FIELDTRIP!

Back to the farm again, this time to plant cabbage! I don't mind field trips at all, they're most always a fun break and it's the only time we can wear shorts to work. This one was a little different because no one bothered to tell us 3 foreign teachers that it even existed so I came to work Monday morning in my finest black-on-black attire and learned that we'd be heading out in the 85+ degree heat to a farm. Ah well, load em up!

HALF-DAY, PRE-SCHOOLERS, CAKE

Well hello again,

I just made some great bbq chicken wings in my new toaster oven and they were delicious. More on that soon but for now I have more pictures from my day to share. The morning kindergarten kids went on a field trip to an in-door sand playground of some sorts, but I didn't have to go so that was awesome. After heading in to work about lunch time I decided to eat lunch in the right classroom, because it was one girl's birthday! Check out the cake:

You can tell it's the birthday of the girl above, Angelina, because she is not dressed for a field trip to the sand palace. The cake was some sort of fancy pink cake with white chocolate on top.

BITS OF MY DAY

Hhhooo 2 posts in 2 days, blog!

Sometimes, I'll admit, that I get caught up in the day to day and I forget, well first to take pictures, but also that interesting stuff is happening a lot of the time. So I decided to take a lot of pictures today and here are the highlights:

Above was my lunch today: Udon noodles with a Korean pancake in it. I love Korean pancakes because they fried up with veggies and are usually golden, crisp and delicious. Those qualities are sorta lost when you put it in to a soup hahah but none the less it was still a good lunch/break from work. As always it's served with Kimchi and Korean radish. 

I went to the bank today and I saw mother of one of my students, Paul, because she works at the bank. She came and gave me the juice you see above. How much good stuff can they pack into one juice box?

Later in the day I had to correct some book reports from the kindergarten classes (ages 4-6). The AC doesn't work in the teacher's room so I went to an empty kinder class to work and I gave one roaming, bored student waiting for the bus my camera phone and she took this picture: 

Here are some of the book reports. What I like about this first one was that I didn't write that 'Amazing! *" which means that Melody's mother must have, which is great that she shows positive support, but at the same time I'm not sure 'amazing' quite captures it. 

Simplistic 5 sentences:

Ah, the best part of my day. The second section especially:

Haha when Gini wrote 'Teacher' is like in a movie when all of the sudden the main character turns the to the camera and starts talking to the audience. Only I doubt the line of dialogue is ever, "Teacher!!! Do you like prince?" In the comments section I wrote, "His earlier stuff was pretty good." 

COOKIN CLASS, BEAUTIFUL DAY INDOORS

Hello Good Evening!

I was greeted by this miraculous day outside on my 30 second walk to work. I was the first real-deal beautiful day we've had in weeks and, although there are no windows at work for which to enjoy it, the sight was a breath of fresh, barely humid air to kick start the day.

Today was the second-to-last day of 'Intensive' month and it was action packed. During second period I had only one student, the 7 year-old Erica, and we had a 'cooking class'. I was worried when my manager gave me the recipe that morning before class because, if you can read it below, we were making a real-deal 'Ubu' or fried bean curd.

Those are a lot of ingredients! Especially for a seven-year old girl and myself to tackle in 40 minutes. I was worried when I walked into the room where we were going to have class. Good thing though, the only thing in the room was small bowl of rice, the Udu wraps, and half a pack of processed ham wrapped in saran wrap. So we (I) cut up the ham, clumsily mixed the two together. We still had a great time though making, and absolutely eating, the Udu:

TEE-SHIRT DROUGHT DURING TIMES OF RAIN

Quick thought: This weather is terrible for T-shirts. I go through at least two T-shirts a day, three if I exercise in anyway. Because when you get home from chasing kids all day the first thing you have to do is change out of ALL the work day clothes, and then if you go do something after that (assuming you don't get off at 8pm like some days), even if the errand is minimal then there's another shirt + a shower. Before you know it I've gone through 20 T-shirts in a week! Well I don't have 20 T-shirts, more like 9 so the washing machine / clothes drying rack / ironing board are stocked constantly. The humidity is okay though because it makes it in consequential that it is STILL raining every day for the 2nd 'summer' month straight because you're going to be wet either way and mostly the rain will cool you down a bit.

This is Sam 'The Main Event''s 'It's raining agian!?' face. 

VACATION PHOTOS, deux

Not really vacation photos per-say, but here's a great restaurant at which we ate a couple weeks ago when I was on break. It was bbq-style where you make the lettuce/meat/spicystuff tacos but the meat (pork) came already seasoned and cooked.

Below are the side dishes they brought out first with the usual kimchi and spicy peppers. Also there was a cold soup with ice (foreground) that was tasty and there was also hot soup in the background with tofu (center) and couple other things that are escaping me now. 

Here's the pork that came with pre-made rice pellets and some spicy roots of some kind. 

Also I had some seafood and tofu soup, above. You can see the octopus in the middle, there was also a prawn or two and some tofu and veggies. It was hot but not super spicy. As usual for that vacation it was pouring rain outside so hot soup was a nice way to finish the meal off!

MATT QUINN, MEDICINE MAN

Have a bit of a head cold, blog.

All the symptoms are there, the biggest one of course is working around 60 elementary school kids, so sick happens. Here in Korea the second you start to feel a little sick you go to the doctor (because of how easy and cheap it is). That is def. not my instinct so I wait another couple days and then when I finally (had a break at work) went I walked in as the doctor was leaving early for a four day vacation! So I went to the pharamacy in the same building and I (with my hands) described my condition and they gave me all this:

Those two packets are for cold symptoms and the both cost $2 and they did the trick wonderfully. Those other bottles are one of my favorite things about Korea: they are vitamin C bottles. They cost .50 cents at any Mart and they are a full day's worth of vitamin C. So I downed those two bottles, had a couple of the cold pills and now the next day I'm almost right as rain. Doctors? Who needs 'em?

IF MY COOKING COULD BE COMPRESSED TO ONE PICTURE

It would be this one:

INTRODUCING THE STICKER MONSTER

Thursday was the last day of classes for the month and so my co-teacher told me to just have fun in class. Deal. I noticed that the book we use in one class is sort of terrible, as some books are, and there are pages of stickers with no real clear place to put them. So as a last day activity I gave some steps for to make for my kids to follow:

1. Peel off stickers

2. Apply stickers to make Stick Monster.

3.

One of the best things about kids though is that after they were done creating the Sticker Monster and laughing, I conducted the rest of the class with the stickers on my face and they didn't really bat an eye.

Then my boss walked by and looked into the classroom and saw me teaching and looking ridicilous. Here is Sam 'The Main Event' doing his impression of my boss's face at that moment: