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."