January Update

What a month already! It started out fab - my birthday was the 4th. We had dinner and drinks in Gangnam on that Saturday, then went for ice cream on my actual b-day... Lots of ice cream.

We started with a cow-shaped ice cream cake:


After the 6 of us devoured that, we turned to my new favorite dessert: Ice Cream Fondue!


And after all of THAT, we were missing some good ol' American Pepto Bismol, haha!

School has been exciting. The Kindergarteners have been busy being forced to memorize lines and songs for Festival, the big end-of-the-year program LCI puts on every year. After two re-writes, I finally got my script for a modified version of The Wizard of Oz approved for the skit portion of the show. And the kids will be singing "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" for the song portion... I'm gonna Kansas-ize them yet!!

The re-writes were ordered because I had apparently made the skit too "easy" for my students - it was explained to me that the directors and parents expect a lot out of my class, as they are very smart. I think they forget that, though they're brilliant (of course!), they're FIVE YEARS OLD! Now, they are reciting lines like "Your heart beats about 100,000 times a day, and keeps all the blood flowing through your body," and "Your intestines (a fancy word for guts) help your body get energy from the food you eat." The amazing thing is that we just gave the kids the script and recordings (me reciting the lines slowly) on Christmas Eve, and most of my kids have most of their lines memorized!!!

A few parents were a bit concerned however. I got a note back in a weekly report from Andrew's mom that I just have to share:


I tried to reassure her in the next report that the kids are all very intelligent and that, since we're practicing so much in school, I don't feel they'll have much of a problem with it. This is the note I got back (along with some delicious chocolate!):



This is part of what makes my job so awesome :)


In other often-overlooked-job-perks news:

One of my darling elementary girls (10 years old) gave me this today (the shell is from the Philippenes, where she went when she was 8):


Talk about a boost to my day!

Also, here in Korea there are often silly uses of English. In fact, I recently bought a sweatshirt that says "always hear white & clean." There are so many instances of this that are just HILARIOUS! Once example of this is a pencil case that one of my 8 year olds had today:



Between this, more chocolate from other students, the seashell, it was a pretty perfect day! Especially since it started with this:


Beautiful, sweet, clean (but actually probably polluted) snow!

On a more personal note -

I'm going to China on January 24th for the Lunar New Year! Jordan (a teacher/friend/produce-partner) and I will be heading to Beijing for 4 days, on a tour that already has all of our meals, activities, airfare, and hotel taken care of! Talk about a low-stress vacation! It's going to be pretty cold there, but I still think it will be a blast (and interesting to see what's been obviously updated for the Olympics!)

I've been working out more. There's a church about 5 minutes from my door that has a gym that's only $20/month. I feel pretty good about it. I've also been trying to eat better. I steamed my first chicken breast the other night, with some broccoli and onion, and it was AMAZING. I didn't know something so healthy could be so delicious! :) In fact, my supervisor asked me earlier this week if I'd lost weight since I came here... that was pretty flattering (and motivating!).

I've also been trying to figure out what's next. I promised myself I wouldn't do that until I'd been here 6 months, but with three co-workers leaving at the end of February, the concept of "life after Korea" has been on my mind a bit more. Boston has a pretty awesome progam where you can earn your Master's in Education in just a year, and get a lot of hands-on experience. It's actually a Teacher Residency model that Obama's trying to push towards in more school systems (Boston is one of only 3 districts in the country that do anything like this). And I've also considered spending a month in Costa Rica to get my TEFL certification... So many options!!!

Anyways, that's the up-to-now update. I hope it's enough to keep the angry masses at bay for a little while (MOM!)... :)

Love you all!