Busy Busy

Michael and I have been super busy lately. Here are a few things we are working on:

1) Wedding Plans - That's right, we might actually get married next year! We still have a lot to work on, but it looks like we might have a date set in the next couple of weeks. We are obviously crazy to try to plan from Korea, but we are lucky to have a lot of help from our families :)

2) New Classes - We started a new session on Monday and like always, our school gave us the schedule on Monday. So we have been scrambling to get our lesson plans in place for this session. It usually only takes a couple of weeks, and then we can relax for the next 6.

Classes seem to be going well so far. Michael teaches 5 classes Monday, Wednesday and Friday and I teach 6. We both have after-hours tutoring sessions with family of the school Monday and Wednesday. Michael teaches the advanced class on Tuesdays and Thursdays and I teach two kindergarten classes. Then we each tutor 3 kids in reading comprehension. Finally we each have special tutoring classes on Tuesdays. I help a boy with grammar and spelling and Michael helps a girl with composition. It's a jam-packed schedule. Michael has 29 classes and I 31.

After having a scheduling fiasco last session, we were told that the summer would mean a slowing of classes. This is obviously not the case as our days are almost completely filled with classes. 30 is supposed to be the maximum amount of classes. I am finding peace with this new schedule as I keep busy and also a lot of the kids are vacationing now, so some of my classes will get canceled now and then. I dare say our school needs to think about hiring another native English teacher.

3) Vacation Plans - Our vacation is set for August 2-6. We're not all that excited about vacation. The thing that I was interested in  - a rock festival, is the week before, so we don't know what we're going to do. We are currently thinking of Sokcho on the east coast, Busan, the second largest city in Korea (also on the coast) or possibly just Seoul. We are going to have to pick something that we either do only a couple of days or take Gizmo with us. We looked into Jeju Island, an island on the southern tip of Korea. Unfortunately it will be just too expensive. We also are trying to save money for the wedding, so we don't want to spend too much.

4) A Visit From the Parents - My parents are coming! They will be hear during Chuseok, a holiday kind of like Thanksgiving in the US. We're pretty excited to see some familiar faces, and we're trying to come up with things we can do while they are here.

5) Potty Training - It has been an interesting experience. We're kind of at a standstill at the moment, but I will be posting more on Gizmo's progress later this week.

Well, that's about it. As each item on this list gets worked out, I'm sure there will be more to blog about. July marks five months of being in Korea. I don't know about the rest of you, but it seems like time is flying. That's the upside of being busy, I guess!

Another session over, only four more to go!

This Friday marks the end of the second session at our Hagwon. For those of you who haven't been keeping track of the days going by, we teach in sessions at our academy. Each session is eight or nine weeks long, or about two months. We have been officially teaching in Korea for four months. Woot woot! We're approximately 33% of the way finished and we're anxiously anticipating our week of summer vacation in the upcoming weeks.

At the end of each session, the kids are tested to check their English abilities. Most of the time, the kids pass (50% is passing). Sometimes, the kids are not working hard enough, or they are new, or they miss too many classes. Anyway, those kids fail and have to repeat the level. Even more rare are the kids that are so impressive that they skip levels. About 3 kids have done that so far.

This session was pretty much normal. A couple of kids we expected to fail failed. A couple of kids we expected to do well failed. One kid surprised everyone but me. She was the underdog and I was rooting for her. She seems to be exceptionally smart, but she doesn't interact well with the other kids. Her brother, who is also one of my students, is the same way. They both seem to understand what they read and can talk with me one-on-one, but put them in a classroom with a few kids and they are the trouble makers. The girl has crying fits and refuses to participate. The boy makes grunting noises and smears his spit on his face, papers and other classmates when he is allowed to get near them. They are problem children, but I think they sometimes get too much heat on them. I actually feel bad for them sometimes and other days I want to send them packing to another academy. But anyway, they both passed this session and I feel good about it because no one was rooting for their success but me.

One of my troublemakers in my advanced level 3 classes failed and it put a smile on my face. He's Michael's problem now, he he. Every session, we trade classes so I should be getting his monsters and he mine. It's kind of a fair trade off, except a lot of his trouble makers left school this session. That means that I will have one difficult class of four boys (ages 8-12), but he will have to deal with 3 troublemaking 6 year olds, a rambunctious class of misfits, and a couple of misbehaving middle school boys. Have fun, Michael.

I will keep you posted on our new schedules. They should be interesting. Hopefully we will not be scheduled for overtime and we will get a vacation!

More Seoul Adventures

After the War Museum, we headed to Yongsan's electronic district to do some browsing and possible buying. I didn't take any pictures, so it is kind of hard to picture, but imagine an open air market and put it underground and have it sell video games, DVDs, cameras, computers, cell phones, etc.

Michael was able to find a few games and we just wandered around from store to store. I bought a cooler for my laptop and we found some places that sell black market DVDs (we did not purchase any). I can imagine we will be back here again since Michael is a gaming addict : )

We went over to L'Park Mall, where we had been the last time we were in Seoul, to meet Juhee, Jason's girlfriend. Once we had all met, we headed over to Hongdae to get dinner. For those of you back home, Hongdae is a kind of trendy area of Seoul. We went to Dos Tacos, since I was craving Mexican food. It wasn't anything special, but it did contain black beans and cilantro, so I was essentially happy.

After dinner we walked around, people watching and window shopping. We stood in a line for a while, for no particular reason. Seriously, what is the line for?

We saw some interesting Konglish and ate some ice cream at Baskin Robins. Around 8 O'clock, we were back at the train station in Cheongnyangni and had to say goodbye quickly as our train left only a few minutes after buying the tickets. Back in Chuncheon by 10:30 and home to see Gizmo, who was very happy to see us.

We had a great time and we can't wait to go back!

Korean War Museum

We met up with our friend Jason on Saturday, who graciously took us around Seoul.

We arrived around 12:30 and immediately set to find some food. Jason didn't know the area very well, so we stopped at a Chinese restaurant that we saw as we walked. This was our first experience with Chinese food, and my food tasted pretty Korean. It was delicious but left me in an MSG induced coma for the rest of the afternoon.

The War Museum is located near Yongsan in Seoul, a walk away from a U.S. Army base. Outside of the museum are all kinds of planes, tanks and monuments depicting courageous acts of the Korean military. It was a pretty cool site.

Right now admission is free, which was pretty cool. We went in the massive building and weren't quite sure where to begin. This was Jason's third trip to the museum and he said there were still things that he hadn't seen. We got a glimpse of ancient warfare, a look at the Vietnam War, and spent quite a while at the Korean War section of the museum. We also got to see how Korea is currently helping other countries through their involvement in the UN.

Here are some replicas of ancient ships. They were pretty cool.

There was one section of the museum that had an admission fee. It was an "Inside the DMZ" 60th anniversary exhibit that we didn't look at, but we saw parts of it from the stairs. There were some planes and stuff hanging from the ceiling, which I thought was cool to look at, although probably terrifying for someone afraid of heights.

Overall, it was a worthwhile trip for anyone that's interested in the history of Korea or for someone who likes to look at old tanks and aircrafts. It was a really cool experience. I didn't take a lot of pictures, partly because  it was smoggy outside and because a lot of the exhibits were not conducive to photo-taking.

Toilet Training Week Two

Monday night we moved the Litter Kwitter onto the toilet. Something that I have learned from this process is that Gizmo is self-conscious. She doesn't like it when I take her picture while she's on the potty.

She seems to have no problems at all doing her business on the toilet, which makes me encouraged and also eager to move on to the next phase. I am hesitant though, because I know the next phase is a lot of work for all of us. First, Gizmo has to start getting her duty into the center of the ring because that's the spot that will empty into the toilet. Second, she has to start getting used to not having so much litter. Gizmo loves her litter. She also likes to bury things. She buries her food after she eats, she buries her poofs after she chases them down, and she also buries the food that Michael and I consume. She spends a lot of time in her potty box digging around and finding a good spot for her stuff. Once we start the next phase, she has to start going in one spot, and it has no litter. This will be a challenge. 

So far, so good on the potty training front. I will report back next week on whether or not we moved to phase 2. 

Porridge!

We finally stopped in to the new restaurant that opened up in Suksadong. It's a traditional Korean porridge restaurant. I have no idea what it's name is, it's Korean.

We've been trying to eat healthier, so we thought we'd give this place a try. When Koreans are trying to be healthy, they put the words "well being" on it. So this restaurant having posted those words all over has to be healthy, right? It actually isn't too bad. It's a little bland, but that's not a bad thing. It means it probably has no MSG in it, or at least I hope.

Anyway, we went in Saturday night and had a good time. Michael ordered the vegetable porridge and I the pumpkin. They were both pretty tasty. The enormous bowls of soup came with small sides of kimchi, shredded beef, and some other kimchi'd food that may or may not have been meat. I ate the kimchi, Michael ate the beef, and we both left that other side alone. It also came with a salty cold soup that was unappetizing to both of us and some fermented apple juice which was pretty good. It was a lot of food, so we took a lot of our porridges home with us.

We will be coming back here again.

Gangneung Danoje Festival

Dano is supposed to be one of the biggest holidays in Korea, but I think it has fizzled out a little bit in current years. I really don't know much about it, so here is a link to wiki to explain it further if you like: Dano Festival

Michael and I hit up what is supposed to be one of the biggest arts and crafts festivals in Korea on Saturday on a depressing rainy day. The temperature was nice though ~75 degrees. We were a little disappointed with what the festival offered.

We saw a lot of ajummas dancing, like here:

They didn't do any spectacular moves or anything. In fact, it was fairly reminicent of last month where they danced around to campaign music for the elections. There were a couple of cool performances like this mask performance, but it was also a little boring because we don't know much Korean.

There were booths for making your own mask, designing your own fan, making ancient malt beverages, and making your own tteok, a glutonous rice cake treat. These booths kind of looked intriguing, except for the fact that it was all kids doing the activities. I did not see a single adult make a mask or fan. If they were in the booths, they were helping the kids do the work, so we did not partake at the chance of feeling awkward.

We were definitely made awkward when we were interviewed by a bunch of high schoolers for some sort of school project. They did not know much English, but they did give us free cans of crappy coffee for our trouble.

There were a lot of kid-oriented activities, such as rides, arts and crafts tables, magicians, and stuffed liquor bottles.

The main highlight of this festival is supposed to be the nanjang, which is an outdoor market with thousands of arts and crafts vendors (It's supposedly the largest market in the country). This was majorly disappointing. There were a few booths with wooden sculptures, traditional masks, and various other works, but the majority of the booths were for food and random crap for your home. We saw at least ten booths selling mops and choppers, two dollar store type mega booths, and many vitamin supplement type booths. One woman had a booth to feature her python, but she didn't do anything fun with it. She talked for what seemed like an hour and then showed us her arm, where it was once bitten by the python. The highlight of the whole thing was her taking the rear end of the python out of a basket. That's right, she did not show the whole python, only the last few feet of it.

It was overall a downer kind of day. The bus ride was two hours there and two hours back and very expensive. Michael wasn't feeling well again and we only stayed in Gangneung for about three hours. Oh well. Everything is an experience, right?

Olleh!

The Spanish word ¡Olé! is used a lot here in Korea. My kids shout it whenever class is over, when they get a good score on their tests, or when they win at Rock-Scissors-Paper (which I still believe is Rock-Paper-Scissors). Korea Telecom (KT) uses the slogan Olleh for their adds and this Koreanization of the word ¡Olé! is a bit annoying.

Anywho, Korea just won their first game in the world cup (Korea 2 Greece 0) and everyone is shouting "Olleh!"


We were able to stream the game online and had a nice relaxing night in. World Cup Mania has taken over South Korea as everyone seems to be wearing red and sporting their finest "Korea Fighting!" shirts. Every little boy and girl on the street has their red devil horns on and Chuncheon at least seems to be pretty excited about Korea's chances in the World Cup. 


As an American, I would like to support the USA's effort in the World Cup, but sadly, they will not make it very far. So, I will have to root for the country I currently reside in, Korea! I'm looking forward to seeing France and Brazil play as well. 

Toilet Training Week One

For those of you who are wondering: no, we don't have a toddler, we have a cat! And she is hopefully going to be litter free in a few months. I'm probably going to post weekly for a while and then these poop-filled posts will start to taper off once she is proficient in toilet using.

Day One:
We cleaned out Gizmo's litter box and put it in storage. We filled her Litter Kwitter tray with new corn litter and set it next to the toilet.

Introduced Gizmo to new system. What does she do? She starts eating the litter! We had this problem when we switched to crystal litter and found the solution to be putting some poo in the clean litter to show her this is where she does her business, not where she eats. It seem to work for the litter box, but then she started sniffing around the apartment, trying to find the bag of clean litter to eat.

Litter is now high up out-of-reach in the kitchen.

It took several hours, but when we woke up the next morning, she had done her business. Success! The Litter Kwitter is on the floor next to the toilet for now. At the end of the week, we will be moving it onto the toilet. Hopefully she will do as well with this stage as she has with the floor.

Day 3:
Gizmo is now doing her business with no problems on the first step of Litter Kwitter. We were worried by introducing many new things at once - haircut trama, new corn litter, moving the potty box to the bathroom, and giving her a new toilet - but she seems to be taking it in stride.

We have been advised to keep the new potty box as scrupulously clean as possible. So, we are scooping out the waste as she creates it. We have been encouraging her like crazy and tell her "Good girl!" every time she uses the potty. Whenever we clean out the box, she gets excited and comes to watch. She especially loves watching her poop getting flushed down the toilet. She has always had a thing for toilets.

Day 5:
Gizmo seems to be adjusting quite well to the new system, so we will be moving the Litter Kwitter to the toilet on Sunday night. The next stages of the system are more difficult, so we plan on moving forward in two week stages for the remainder of the training. If she is having difficulty, we may do them longer. We're talking about a world traveler, our cat, so I think she should be able to do all of this at a good pace :)

The Birthday That's Never-ending!

Two packages arrived Monday at the hagwon. One, the Litter Kwitter. We set it up almost immediately, many posts of poop and trial and error to come.

My parents sent me a package complete with compression stockings (woohoo, blodclot awareness!), two pairs of flip-flops for me, a pair of flip-flops for Michael, a sweet bag and a card. Thanks mom and dad!

It was an awesome night indeed. 

Haircut Day!

Because I was still kinda sick (really, really should of gone to the doctor last week, oh well), we didn't really do anything this last weekend. So, haircut time! I should open up a salon, I cut so much hair, ha ha.

Michael got a standard buzz and Gizmo Jones aka Kitten Mitten Head got a trendsetting short Lion Cut. She looks fashionable and she stays cool while we are at work during the afternoon. It's hard to get good pictures of these goof balls :)

Other things we did this weekend included walking to the pizza place (3 miles round trip) and perusing Hi-Mart and HomePlus (about four miles, then we took a taxi home). We're on the boat about what we're up to next weekend. If we find a way to get there, we are going to a Folk Festival on the East Coast of our province. Otherwise, we will be headed to Seoul to catch Korea's first World Cup game and check out the electronics market at Yongsan. Maybe we'll do both? 

Birthday!

I am digging the fourteen hour time difference between the US and Korea right now, probably because it meant I got to celebrate my birthday for two days! And the fun doesn't stop! Not all of my presents have arrived yet, so I have even more birthdayness to look forward to!

Anyway, my birthday fell on a Thursday this year, and that meant working. Work was decent enough. On Thursdays I have two actual classes to teach and 3 "tutoring" sessions, which means one-on-one babysitting. I was in a cheerful but lazy mood. I brought origami paper with me to my kindergarten class and we made paper fans and drew pictures of rainy and sunny days.

My youngest tutoring student made chain paper caterpillars with me. They were the cutest pink and green caterpillars ever. In my last class of the day, my brightest student "Sharon" made me a card while I wrote down her spelling words on the board.

I have been anxiously awaiting some packages in the mail. Only Mike, Carole and Brandon's arrived, but that was okay. After work, Michael took me out to eat at Yumsem for cheaply priced Korean food. Gimbap and Koreanized Udon Noodles make for a delicious meal. Afterward, Michael was fairly insistent that we get a cake. Ice Cream Cake! Those who know me well know my favorite birthday cake is an ice cream one. Baskin-Robins makes a pretty good cake. We chose this one because it was the prettiest. Michael lit candles and sang to me and everything, but those pictures are not available because someone thought he needed to wear only his boxer-briefs.

The cake was part cherry, part hot-fudge sundae with nuts flavored if you are wondering. We took a gamble and it turned out to be a pretty good one. We'll be going back for Michael's birthday next month!


In a group effort Michael and his family got me a "practical gift" - a supply of environmentally friendly, flushable litter and a Litter Kwitter. Thanks guys! We're going to try the toilet training thing again with Gizmo. We did it once before with mostly success, but Gizmo had a litterbox buddy, Morpheus, who wasn't too keen on the idea of using the toilet instead of a litter box. So we went back to the litter box. Now we just have to wait for the thing to get here!

We're Cute

Despite being 24 years old now, I still feel really young. My "kids" guess that I am about thirty. They are lucky they are so cute or I would probably bash them over the head for saying that. 

Gizmo and I hold on to our cuteness by taking cat naps. 

Election Day

Today is Election Day in South Korea. While many schools are closed today, our school is all business and has therefore decided to stay open. Many of the kids either didn't realize that we are open today, or just straight up lied to their parents and told them the Hagwon was closed, because attendance is at about 30%. Luckily for me, that means my first class was cancelled! Since I'm just tooling around until my next class, I thought I'd post the pictures from the Mime Festival last weekend.

There are over 100 photos, so if you are feeling ambitious, go ahead and check them out here:

Chuncheon International Mime Festival