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:

BACK IN RADIO CONTACT / Vacation Pics Part Uno

WELL HELLO! 

Me. And my pictures. So the week long, wait, scratch that, the four days + a weekend vacation has concluded and it was a fantastic time, very relaxing and I mostly induldged on great food, great company both of which were a welcome and needed relief from the mmmmeeeehhhh not so great weather (video). I never thought the title of this blog would indicate such a great distance as the difference in weathers during the last week of July, 2011. Yikes.

Let's Picture Time!!

Here was one of the best days:

First I finally tired this really popular bakery/coffee place called Paris Baguette. I'm pretty sure it's a large world-wide chain but none the less, for 2 bucks I had this for breakfast:

Calmly and slowly having French toast wrapped egg salad and coffee for breakfast around noon on a Tuesday? Vacation.

Next I met up with some friends for this Korean dish that's shaved ice with various fresh fruits, some cereals, a couple types of ice cream and as a side-kick, some Kahlua & Coffee. 

After that we moseyed back to Insadong district to check out one of the largest temples around. It was monsoon-ing so we would periodically get stuck under an overhang for a while but either way it was a beautiful former royal compound.

After the wetness-ises of trudging around the compound we stopped at a fancy-pants tea house. I think I got Red Papaya or something flavor but most notably it came in such a snazzy presentation: the waitress poured the tea form the lil teapot into the bowl slowly, then she poured the tea into the teacup for you for the first serving. After all those steps I very impressed (with myself as well for being at such an establishment) that I said to the tea-server, quoting my wonderful Aunt Linda, "Oh, hey now!" And those mini cookies delicious.

Here's part one, I'll be back again for part two soon!