Today at school I was fortunate enough to snag seats to the Haba Olympics. The 6 and 7 year olds split up into a red team and blue team, one class of each age on each. It was the greatest thing to watch. They were all so so so happy and so so so excited to be playing the rediculous games that the gym teacher had come up with. I only got to hang out and help for an hour because I had to go teach the 5 year olds. ugh. They are a handful to say the least. We are working on saying the phrase, "Lets see. One book, two erasers, three crayons, four markers, and five toys". They are cute but a bunch of little monkeys. Anyways... I would like to introduce the 6 and 7 year olds of Haba!! They are all hilarious. I hope you enjoy this exclusive olympic footage.
They don't exactly have this much energy during class, but pretty close.
In the beginning of this video, from left to right, you have Cindy, Nicole, Nick and Dorothy. And yes...Nick does have a mullet. It is wonderful. In the video before you can also see all the usually lovely Korean teachers as well as a shot of the other native English teacher Ryan.
Monday, September 21, 2009
Sunday, September 20, 2009
river hill
Last weekend David and I headed up the Han river, about 20 min outside Seoul, to meet up with his co-workers to hang out on river hill. It was such a wonderful weekend spent eating delicious (and super cheap) Korean food, riding on boats (and a lot of "I'm on booooat" singing), wakeboard watching, dock jumping and overall enjoyment of being outside the city playing in the sun.
Once again we stayed in one of the "love motels". Apparently this area is infamous for being THE place to bring your mistress for an hour or two. Not only is it close to the city but also seen as somewhat romantic. Although I see nothing romantic about places that rent by the hour and have a red light option in the room. The funniest part of all this was that rooms could not be booked for an overnight stay till late in the evening because the motel wanted to make as much money as possible through hourly rentals...oh so romantic. ick.
Once again we stayed in one of the "love motels". Apparently this area is infamous for being THE place to bring your mistress for an hour or two. Not only is it close to the city but also seen as somewhat romantic. Although I see nothing romantic about places that rent by the hour and have a red light option in the room. The funniest part of all this was that rooms could not be booked for an overnight stay till late in the evening because the motel wanted to make as much money as possible through hourly rentals...oh so romantic. ick.
Sunday, September 6, 2009
Swine vacation, river bike rides and football matches
Life in Korea has been pretty great lately...especially since I have had the greater part of the last two weeks off from work.
Two Wednesdays ago I was teaching my rowdy 6 year olds like normal when one of the Korean teachers rushes in and says that we all have to go home. Super confused I went out and asked the other English teacher at Haba what the heck was going on and he informed me that the school just found out that one of the 5 year olds, Raphael, has swine flu and that we do in fact get to go home...for the next week! While neither of us were to concerned and actually pretty happy about this surprise vacation the rest of the school was in chaos. Korean teachers were running around like chickens with their heads cut off, talking a mile a minute on the phone with parents and getting all their students ready to leave. Everyone was gone within a half an hour, it was ridiculous. Eventually our won jon (boss) told us that we didn't have to come back to school until the following Thursday or Friday and sent us out the door saying:
"uh don't tell that Haba playschool is sick...not good. And if you have fever call me. But don't get fever please."
So needless to say I tried not to get a fever and spent a lot of time doing this
and it was glorious. Ended up going back to school on Friday and I was actually happy to be there. I sort of missed most of the kids and we had a really fun day making menus of our favorite food and talking about building houses.
As for the swine flu, all the Haba kids are fine now but we do have to take and record our temperatures twice a day. Apparently the Korean government has issued a new law saying that if one student gets swine the whole school must shut down for a week. While David's school is ignoring this law (he has had whole classes absent because they have all been sick) I'm glad that Haba shut down. It will be interesting to see if it happens again.
In more exciting news I had a GREAT weekend playing on the Han river and watching soccer with David and Danny (a friend from Western who just arrived in Korea two weeks ago). David and I rented bikes at Hangang park and spent Saturday afternoon riding along the waterfront.
It was really really nice to be by some sort of large body of water for a change. After the ride we headed to Seoul world cup stadium for the South Korea, Australia soccer game. Surrounded by a massive amount of people, free beer samples and a Hyundai car stage, we enjoyed a picnic of fried chicken and MGD.
Around game time we met up with Danny and headed into the stadium and had a great time cheering the red devils on with all the other Koreans (and in David's case heckling the few Australians who ended up on the wrong side of the crowd). Most exciting thing was the South Korea, ranked 48th in the world, was able to beat Australia,16th, 3-1.
All in all it has been a great couple lazy weeks but now its time get back into the daily 9-5 grind...ugh
Two Wednesdays ago I was teaching my rowdy 6 year olds like normal when one of the Korean teachers rushes in and says that we all have to go home. Super confused I went out and asked the other English teacher at Haba what the heck was going on and he informed me that the school just found out that one of the 5 year olds, Raphael, has swine flu and that we do in fact get to go home...for the next week! While neither of us were to concerned and actually pretty happy about this surprise vacation the rest of the school was in chaos. Korean teachers were running around like chickens with their heads cut off, talking a mile a minute on the phone with parents and getting all their students ready to leave. Everyone was gone within a half an hour, it was ridiculous. Eventually our won jon (boss) told us that we didn't have to come back to school until the following Thursday or Friday and sent us out the door saying:
"uh don't tell that Haba playschool is sick...not good. And if you have fever call me. But don't get fever please."
So needless to say I tried not to get a fever and spent a lot of time doing this
and it was glorious. Ended up going back to school on Friday and I was actually happy to be there. I sort of missed most of the kids and we had a really fun day making menus of our favorite food and talking about building houses.
As for the swine flu, all the Haba kids are fine now but we do have to take and record our temperatures twice a day. Apparently the Korean government has issued a new law saying that if one student gets swine the whole school must shut down for a week. While David's school is ignoring this law (he has had whole classes absent because they have all been sick) I'm glad that Haba shut down. It will be interesting to see if it happens again.
In more exciting news I had a GREAT weekend playing on the Han river and watching soccer with David and Danny (a friend from Western who just arrived in Korea two weeks ago). David and I rented bikes at Hangang park and spent Saturday afternoon riding along the waterfront.
It was really really nice to be by some sort of large body of water for a change. After the ride we headed to Seoul world cup stadium for the South Korea, Australia soccer game. Surrounded by a massive amount of people, free beer samples and a Hyundai car stage, we enjoyed a picnic of fried chicken and MGD.
Around game time we met up with Danny and headed into the stadium and had a great time cheering the red devils on with all the other Koreans (and in David's case heckling the few Australians who ended up on the wrong side of the crowd). Most exciting thing was the South Korea, ranked 48th in the world, was able to beat Australia,16th, 3-1.
All in all it has been a great couple lazy weeks but now its time get back into the daily 9-5 grind...ugh
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