A Day in the Life

I just got home from a pretty wonderful Friday at school. One of the last three Fridays I will ever spend at HABA actually (huh? really? only 2.5 weeks of school left?) Being in such a good mood caused me to take way too many photos and some pretty silly videos. They represent a fairly typical day.

My day always begins with the inevitable screech of the alarm clock at 8:05 am. I shower. Eat breakfast. Check the internet. And then go back to bed for another 15 min. Around 9:05 I drag myself back up and head out into the freeeeeeezing cold and walk to HABA. When it's not raining/snowing/incredibly windy its a delightful 15 minute walk. This morning we had what they called the "HABA Bazaar". All the kids brought a bunch of toys, books and clothing to sell on little mats to their classmates. It was soooo much fun to watch how some of them really got into selling their junk, turning into yelling, bartering, ajummas. After the fun morning (usually a morning filled with 30-60 min classes) I head to Violet class to help serve and eat lunch with them. Most of the time I sit quietly and listen to what I assume are conversations regarding the state of the economy and South Korean politics. Other times I talk about animals and food and make silly faces. Regardless, lunch time is generally relaxing and sort of entertaining (unless it is squid or pressed fish day. Then I'm not such a happy camper)
When 1:40 rolls around it is time for afternoon English Club classes to begin. English club ranges in age from 5 year olds to 3rd graders. All of us English teachers get to teach each group of kids at least once a week and everyday the schedule is different. On Friday's I teach "Cooking in English" to the 5 year olds. Its always sticky and usually fun. Today we made "giant sandwiches".We put ham, cucumbers, apples, cheese, tomatoes and mayo on a giant baguette. They actually turned out delicious and a little too big for their tiny mouths. Sally : "This is veeeeery big". After cooking its time for EC7A, a class full of incredibly bright and energetic 7 year olds. We spend most of the class doing book work but always ended playing board games or singing or dancing. Today Chris decided he wanted to sing me a song. Does anyone recognize it?



Finally, I will leave you with one last video of the 5 year old cooking class working on their recipe coloring sheets. As you can see, I have a lot of conversations with myself. And have NO idea what is really ever going on.

My body, my town

Every Friday morning at Haba is spent preparing for what we call 'Presentation'. Each English teacher spends the first two hours of school with the same 6 or 7 year old class doing 'Show and Tell'. This show and tell usually consists of teaching the kids a phrase about the monthly topic and then typically a song. Oh yeah, each month we have a different theme. January's is 'My body, My town'. February is 'Friends and shopping'. A few classes are centered on these themes and your presentation is supposed to be related to the theme somehow. At 12:00 sharp Friday the 6 and 7 year olds are marched into the gym and perform, along with their teacher, what they have learned that day for everyone. It is usually very fun and always super cute to see what actually happens when the kids are standing up front with a microphone in their face.

For most of the time that I have been at Haba, I've spent these mornings with schwarz class. This is a very interesting class because it is full of 6 rambunctious boys (who most the time think that they are honestly transformers) and one very sweet girl. While I have a hard time always controlling them and keeping them from harming one another, we also spend a lot of time laughing and having fun. This past Friday we talked about our body parts and how many of each part we have.For presentation they talked about whatever body part they wanted ( a lot of "I have one head", "I have two arms", and "I have one mouth"), and we all sang the song "I have two arms". I was very proud of their performance. The following video is them practicing the song before we headed out to meet the rest of the school. You can see that most of the kids are doing great but in the right corner Optimus Prime (Antonio) and Megatron (Roy) being a little feisty.

Oh, we also had a 'Sorry, Sorry' dance party.

They dug it.

Paris

Spending the better part of my winter break in Paris was a very interesting experience. Not only was it my first time in Europe, it was my first time traveling alone (our winter breaks only overlapped for Christmas eve and Christmas, so David and I had 1.5 days in Paris together), as well as the first time I had left Asia for the past 7ish months. My introduction to the 'city of light' was stepping out of the Metro station in Montmartre at 11 pm Christmas eve night to be faced with an overwhelming amount of diversity, grit and no idea where I was. After walking around for awhile, David thankfully found me and led us towards our cute Parisian apartment that I had rented off of craigslist. From there the trip was only to get better.
Christmas day was spent exploring the quintessential Parisian sights, accompanied by a lot of "wows", "are we really here?", giggling, eating and of course "kiss me under the eiffel tower"s. I'm not going to lie that when David left the next day I felt apprehensive about my ability to explore this new and seemingly overwhelming city on my own. But to my surprise I spent the next three days walking for hours, taking a million pictures and thoroughly enjoying the sights and sounds of this famous city. I even went down into the catacombs alone which was creepy but very very cool. I really had a wonderful time and am so thankful that working in Korea has allowed me not only to pay off debt and save money, but has also given me the freedom, and confidence, to step out into other places in the world. I learned that yes I can be a confident, independent traveller, but enjoy having a buddy there to share the experience with much more. Once I landed in an icy cold Korea, I was quite happy to hop on the familiar airport bus in Incheon and have it drop me off in front of the grocery store where I have bought food for the last 7 months and walk down the friendly (and clean!) street to my semi-warm apartment. It oddly felt like coming home.

One day left

Until school is out for Winter break and I am off to Paris. David left yesterday morning and is already enjoying cheap brie and croissants. I can't wait to join him and have an adventure outside of the Asian continent. I wanted to post this picture awhile back because it is pretty much the best way to explain the couple of blocks surrounding my school. The street is called the Hagwon-ga, which means 'private school road'. As you can see in the sign there are floors upon floors of English schools, math schools, pc bangs (rooms with computers that Korean's spend hours playing starcraft and other various computer games) and of course, because this is Korea, there is a random bar thrown in the mix. Such a crazy, but cool place.

a little holiday message from my friends

Starring Weisse class 6 year olds, Eagle, Brian Lee, Marcella and Alex. Eagle was loving it. The others were really into coloring Santa.

Highest Art Gallery in the World

David and I spent Sunday exploring the Seoul National Cemetery as well as one of Seoul's tallest buildings. The cemetery offered a peaceful hike through rows of graves and monuments dedicated to South Korea's most honored soldiers, generals and presidents.It was refreshing to be out of the concrete jungle of the city. We even signed the guestbook saying we paid our respects to the past presidents of the country we currently call home. After working up an appetite we headed to Seoul's 63 building. With 60 floors above ground and 3 below, the building was quite an interesting mix of entertainment.The basement housed a wax museum, aquarium (complete with penguins...underground. strange.), a hugely expensive buffet, food court, imax theatre and of course a bakery. We also discovered that the 60th floor was currently home to the highest art gallery in world, showcasing the work of several iconic artists. The promise of a sunset and views of Seoul from South of the Han beckoned us to the top. We weren't disappointed with what we found.

Sa wa de kaa.....wait where am I?

Saturday David and I met up with Danny and his co-worker Gabby in Dongdaemun market. While I wouldn't suggest anyone go to this market around Christmas season, on a Saturday afternoon (one could hardly move because there were soooooo many people out) it was fun to explore the never ending stalls of clothing and accessories and pretty much anything else you might want. Outside of the big shopping centers one could find stand after stand of ajummas (old ladies with perms and visors) selling stacks of books, as well as more scarves and beanie hats than I have ever seen. All really interesting, but just a little too crowded.

After a full afternoon of shopping, we headed back across the river to South Seoul for some very tasty Thai food. We spent two lazy hours feasting on duck curry (with the most delicious pineapple I have ever tasted), chili chicken, noodles and of course a giant pitcher of beer to wash down all the Thai spice. So so good.