Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Relationship Advice...

...from a 9 year old. In her second language:

"I think if you like someone, you should just see them a lot and make sure you do things once. Fight once. Eat once. Play once. Then if you still love them, you can marry them."

At this point her classmates balked at the idea of fighting. "Fight once?! You don't want to fight once with people you love!"

To which she replied, "It's like fighting with your friends or family. You still love them. But you have to know how he fights. If you never fight, then you get married and if he's very bad when he fights, then you won't know until it's too late. But if you fight once first, and he's very bad when he fights, then you just dump him and get a new boyfriend."

At this point I had to ask the class, now deeply invested in this discussion and far more opinionated about it than I ever could have anticipated, "How does a person just find a new boyfriend?"

From one of the boys in the class, "You have to just make him love you. Wear a lot of makeup and be a little mean to him. Then go find a book called '100 Ways to Find a Boyfriend' and read it. There's probably a book like that, right?"

I love my job. I love my students (yes, this is the highest level class at school). I love the way their brains work (enough to write all this down while still trying to teach, haha).

And I love you all!

Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Sports in Korea

Two posts in one night?!! Can you handle it?!?!

So I've been lucky enough to go to two sporting events in Korea recently, and I'd like to share the proof with you here.

First, I went to a World Cup qualifying match between South Korea and North Korea. Stacy invited me to go with her and Eric, and the first thought I had was "Holy Cow, how can I pass this up?!" It was a school-night, so we didn't make it there until half-time, but that was plenty of time to watch SoKo score the one and only goal of the game!! Yay Democracy!

The World Cup Stadium in Seoul:

It was so noisy here... We kept trying to pick up the chants, but the closest we got was "Hey, Puerto Rico!" (I later found out it's actually "Dae Han Min Guk" which means "Republic of Korea!")

The field:


Us loving being there:


The final score:


Also, on easter weekend I got to go to my first baseball game in Korea: LG Twins vs Doosan Bears. Talk about another noisy venue... The fans never stopped! Each side had all these intense cheers and the stadium wasn't even moderately calm at any point! I will definitely be going to more of these!

The stadium:


Some Doosan Bears fans:


Proof that I was there:


The score: (the Bears were winning, for the record)


So, in short, I'm enjoying the fact that it's finally great weather again here...

OH! PS - I'm not sure I've announced this here yet, but I've decided to go ahead and extend another 6 months, so I'm in Korea until the end of February, 2010. I'll be back in ICT for a week in August, but otherwise you all need to start booking tickets to come visit :)

Love you all!

Easter in Korea

Happy Easter everyone!! You've all heard the Good News, right? :)

I had a fantatic Easter... it wasn't Ham and Cheesy Potatoes with the family, but it was Brunch with some damn fine people :)

Catherine, Trish (the Dish), Andrew and I went into Seoul for a fancy champagne brunch at the Hilton Millenium Hotel... It was amazing!





And Catherine came prepared with little candy-filled plastic eggs and fun fuzzy ears for all of us to wear:









We stayed there for about three hours gorging ourselves on shrimp, scallops, duck, chicken, beef, and BREAD PUDDING!!! (my first bread pudding in over 8 months)... Then we went walking around Namdaemun Market and buying up some fun Korean-ized shirts (I got one that says "Can the It-Bag Change Your Life?"). It was a very happy Easter! I hope everyone at home had a great Easter, too!

Fun Bonus Pictures:
I have to have a diagram of the human body with parts labeled as part of my "required classroom decoration." Well I didn't want it to be boring (or hard), so here's what Brett, Jordan, and I came up with:



And here's my smartest class posing in front of it:


And for Michele - This is what a Korean Girl Scout Uniform looks like:



Love you all!

Monday, April 6, 2009

Happy Birthday Breea!

For my best friend in the whole wide world...



I love you so much. I'm glad you were born!

(ps - I swear they're saying "Breea")