Merry Christmas Everyone!
I hope you all had a great day! Mine was pretty good, not the same but still fun!
We we're at the school making tests until like 1130pm Christmas Eve so that we could have the 26th and 27th off (the other teachers are giving our classes the tests). It was not fun being there that late but what can you do really. The morning was a Christmas party for the kinder kids (weird that they have a full day celebration for Thanksgiving, but just half day for Christmas). Ricky (who is the big boss at Michigan Campus) dressed up as Santa and all the kids got presents. They had a singing competition (they all sang Jingle Bells and We Wish You A Merry Christmas) and played games, it was lots of fun! In the afternoon, I didn't know that there wasn't a Christmas party for the older kids so I accidently told them there was one. Then when I found out there wasn't, we just had secret parties anyway, so it was still pretty fun. In my last class of the night there started off with 4 kids in November. Then for Dec one kid left so there were 3. They are the quietest class ever so its really hard to get them to talk and partipate and have fun with them. So then I found out Friday that that class is gone in January. So, Monday there was only one kid. That made me pretty angry since I had tests to write and it was 7:10 on Christmas eve and I had to teach this one kid who had no interest in being there. Anyway, I did it and then started getting the tests ready.
We made it home in time for 12am Christmas celebrations! On the walk home we picked up some $3 sparkling peach wine which was delish :)
So I opened present and cards! Thanks so much to everyone that sent me money and presents and cards :). (I sent a package home so hopefully it will be arriving this week)
Last night (Christmas) we went to the Canadian bar (RMT) where they had this Christmas dinner buffet. It was actually really good! It was a turkey dinner with mashed potatoes, stuffing, gravy, veggies and a lil wine. So that was Christmas. Today (Boxing day here) the plan is to go see the Nutcracker tonight and then head to Busan for a couple days. Hong Kong plans got scratched since we couldnt find a decent place to stay (everything was booked except very sketchy hostels), so we didnt want to risk it. Busan is at the bottom of Korea and its the same temp as it would be in HK so we figured that can be just as fun! So we're heading there for a couple of days then back here for New Years in Seoul!
I'll post some pictures once I get them organized :)
love and miss you
meg
xoxo
Tuesday, December 25, 2007
Saturday, December 15, 2007
blog un
HEELLO!
again, so sorry for the longgg time in between updates. things have been hectic but its almost vacay time so im pushin through hahah! i will start with the school update. things are going well now finally starting to adjust to teaching and working crazy hours. the kids aren't as rabid as they used to be (mostly because the director yells at them everyday). they are all VERY adorable (the kinder ones i mean)and fun. each week is a different unit (aka 1 page a week :S) with their books and one of my classes 'themes' was 'we're blowing bubbes' so i took them outside and we made bubbles and things out of pipecleaners to blow them with. lotsa fun! and every month there is a field trip. last month we went to pick sweet potatoes at this 'farm' dangerously close to north korea (hahah) and we stayed for lunch so all the kids had their little placemat thingy's/blankets to put down and take out their lunches (most popular dish is def rolls, mmm) and they share. and one of the korean teachers made soup so we had that too! (sidenote: they have the most deelicious soups that come with all your meals, i think its like every restaurants 'secret/family' recipe thing.) so this month on Thursday we went to this place called Honeyland (bahah) were they have SLEDDING! soo fun! it was pretty much the only place in korea with snow and you could hardly call them hills but it was still a good time. we started on the baby hill (cause its kinder so some of them are very young). oh ya, in case you didnt know they have the 'korean age' here, which means that when anyone is born here they start off as 1. so everyone is a year older than what they actually are. so the 6 year olds are actually 5. andd theres one 5 year old in my koala class (the youngest kinder class) so he's actually 4 (and a little much to handle)!! he is actually the one who drove me to give the class the name 'rabid animals' since they are quite rabid at times. understandable since they are very young and theres 7 of them so sometimes hard to handle but they are improving as i mentioned earlier. ok, so back to sledding(or as justine would write 'sleding', thats right, shes a teacher and told the kids to write sledding minus one 'd' on their little art projects, hahah oops). so we were on the little hill until lunch time because there was an elementary class from another school on the 'big one'. so then after lunch the korean teachers said that everyone was going on the big hill. so we walked over and i was like ok everyone start climbing up and then a different korean teacher was like only the 7yr olds can go on the big hill. by this time, everyone was walking up. ooops. but it was fine because we just went down with the kids who were too young/too scared to go by themselves and by the end they were all going by themselves! it was soo much fun hahah. with 2 people on a sled you can go VERY quickly hahah, i loved it. so that was thursday morning. by the time we got back to school we were exhausted and soaked (cause neither of us brought snowpants), the weather was great though, perfect for spring skiing (tear). and then we had to teach elementary all afternoon while the korean teachers went home. not exactly fair so hopefully we get another foreign teacher in february to help us out. also, there are boards in each of the classrooms (for each kinder class). and there were all, fall themes so we had to change them all to winter/christmas themes. so over the past 3 weeks we've been working on those. soo much work, and im still trying to understand why we're stuck with doing everything while the korean teachers do nothing. so 3 out of the 4 are finished and the 4th (in rabbit class) should be done by tomorrow (monday our time). i tihnk im babbling now so im gonna wrap up kinder. theres a christmas party dec24 for the kinder kids before their and our xmas break so we have to put together something for them to present so thats what this week is going to entail which leads me to next update. CHRISTMAS BREAK!
sooo excited for that. we are going to hong kong! after much consideration and many many attempts (failed ones) to try to get flights to either thailand or the phillipines we decided on china. it should be fun because its semi-warm there (which is better than here) and were hoping to get a hotel on an island or with a pool where we can get some sort of a tan. and then head into the city for new years (as suggested by laurel! thanks so much for all your help). we dont exactly have hotels booked yet so that is the plan for today. and then the plan is thailand for the break in feb. our break is from the 25th to the 1st so we leave christmas morning and then come back eee get ready for this one: at 4am jan 2nd! and then have to be in at work for 930 :S until 8. so that should be interesting, hopefully i can sleep on the plane.
ok, so time for general life update perhaps? ill just go over the last couple weekends since thats the only time we get to do anything due to the working late sitch.
a few weekends ago we went to the Coex Mall which is the largest underground shopping centre in the world! wowza, lots of fun but also slightly depressing due to the fact that we had not been payed yet and were on a budget. still fun to look and explore though. there had this one time that was crazy though. it was this game (soccer by le way) on the floor of the mall! there was this projector from the roof that projects the game onto the floor and then you actually get to play (obviously meant for kids but clearly i had to play.) so you kick the ball and play against each other and try to score on the nets! and theres a scoreboard and everything, soo fun! so that was the coex.
next: last weekend! first payday so some celebratory shopping/fun times was in order. friday we continued the friday tradition (which involves dinner at this place we discovered the first night we got here) and a little more wine than usual hahha. they have this meat and cheese and spaghetti sauce thing that is deelish and salad mmm and soup. then just a movie night since we have accumulated quite the collection. saturday, both of us desperately needed new cameras (mine you had to hold the battery cover shut in order to take a picture and justines had no flash so therefore was useless at night hahah) so we went this place called jongnam which is this huuge electronics market to purchase some new cams and cell phones. we were slightly overwhelmed by the choices so it took a while but both ended up with brand new touch screen pink sony cams. there are soo many things you can do it with so i am very happy with this purchase. it even has a smile detector thing you can turn on and so if your taking a picture and someone isnt smiling then it wont take the picture! how cool is that. because the cam mission took soo long there we left the phone mish for another time. so then we were off to get our hair done since we were both desperately in need. i found this place onine in this forum so we were off to itaewon to find it. apparently it had moved or something because we walked for a VERY long time and then ended up going into a VW dealership to ask. he called the place (because luckily i had a number), then wrote down some directions and told us it was a 20min walk. we opted to cab it just so we wouldnt get lost (which are known to do if you can believe that). so we gave the cabbie the korean directions and he still felt the need to call the place. so he did and we waited and then he started driving. it took us ONE HOUR by car to get there! notsomuch a 20min walk mister. so by this time it was like 7pm on a saturday so we were praying that they were still open (luckily koreans work crazy hours and ridiculously hard) so they were open and we got our hair cut. kinda nervous that they would butcher it but they did a reeally good job. some tears were shed due to length issues (justine) but then she got the bangs i couldnt get cause my forehead isnt big enough so everything was good again. so from there were came home and got ready for a night out woo (obvioulsy we had to go back to where it all started, the canadian bar Rocky Mountain Tavern). Sundays festivities were also tres amusant. we went to Lotte World which is a huge mall with an amusement park inside! soo fun. we clearly stayed in the amusement park area for so long that by the time we left there was no stores open to shop in :(. buttt, there was an everything type store open so we went in there and ended up with some fish!! they are pretty much the only pets we can have since we are home so little. and its their week anniversary here and they are all still alive, hurray! their names are lottie, mr watson, and hesus (since we live at the corner of Jesus and Barry Watson and lottie after the place we got them from, Lotte World). Some highlights from lotte world would be the skating rink (indoor!!), the amusement park which had an inside annd and outside, the performances (they had this main stage where they put on different shows every half hour, seriously they had acrobats, cinderella, a christmas one.. and those were just when we happened to walk by, there were many more. the roller coaster was also very fun. we took a video of it cause we got the very first seats but its just all black with lotsa of girly screaming so not much to see hahah. so that prety much wrapped up last weekend.
this weekend we obvioulsy continued the friday tradition (but with less wine this time) then watched some entourage. then we went in on sat morn to school to finish one of the boards then off to dongdaenum which is the fashion mall and huge flee market (we didnt even make it to the flee market due to the mall distraction). then last night we met up with some friends we knew from back home. they live in this really nice area where we were a couple weekends ago called apjung (forgot how its spelled) which is home to the korean rodeo drive! when we were there before we saw all the designer stores (gucci, prada, lv, d&g...) and it is also home to crazy nice car district (ferrari, maserati, mercedes...). so anyway, we met up with them and had lots of fun at their place and then off to this bar called monkey beach (which had a sand stage, soo fun).
today the plan is ilsan for some much needed pedicures and hopefully see that new movie with keri russell and a bunch of other people in it.
i apologize for the length of this but i felt i owed you all a large update. promise to write more often/next week in hong kong
miss you all and wish i could be there at christmas
love
meg
xoxo
and please forward this msg/love and miss to my bebe zoe and cosmo and georgie
.JPG)
The last board that we finished like 2 hrs ago. For Rabbit class (the oldest).JPG)
The first one to be finished in Koala class (the youngest). They all made stockings with Justine so we put them up along the fireplace.
Merry-go-round at Lotte World
Coolest soccer game ever at Coex
The Galleria in Rodeo Drive area
Lit up palm trees in Ilsan
Rodeo
Fishies! Lottie is orange and Mr. Watson and Hesus are brown'y striped
.JPG)
Showing off our hot gloves that the people gave us because we were 'illegally' skating (and we didnt even pick the colours)
.JPG)
The outside of the fashion market building 
Joyce blowing bubbles
.JPG)
The second board to go up. It's winter!! In Pooh class (2nd youngest kids) and guess what! everyone knows how ridiculously unartistic i am .. i made the skates!.JPG)
Third one to go up. In Penguin class (2nd oldest). We took pictures from the sledding adventure on Thursday and then they decorated their picture and wrote "I'm sledding'
Meg & Esther just chillin after the ride down the big hill (we were actually stuck in a snow bank)
Me and Sonia
Me and the Garfields (this was at the movie theatre in Ilsan)
to the left (to the left): as we were leaving the Coex mall there was like 10 of these fish things sooo funny. as we were walking away they we like 'i love youuuu' (think korean accent) soo priceless
Picking sweet potatoes
Me, Emily, Esther, and Sonia
More sweet potatoe picking
Everyone at Honeyland standing in front of the 'big' hill
Tour of Lotte World
The Christmas performance on ice!
Skating at Lotte World (round 2 since round 1 we got kicked off due to the Christmas performance)
Best ride EVER. At Lotte World
again, so sorry for the longgg time in between updates. things have been hectic but its almost vacay time so im pushin through hahah! i will start with the school update. things are going well now finally starting to adjust to teaching and working crazy hours. the kids aren't as rabid as they used to be (mostly because the director yells at them everyday). they are all VERY adorable (the kinder ones i mean)and fun. each week is a different unit (aka 1 page a week :S) with their books and one of my classes 'themes' was 'we're blowing bubbes' so i took them outside and we made bubbles and things out of pipecleaners to blow them with. lotsa fun! and every month there is a field trip. last month we went to pick sweet potatoes at this 'farm' dangerously close to north korea (hahah) and we stayed for lunch so all the kids had their little placemat thingy's/blankets to put down and take out their lunches (most popular dish is def rolls, mmm) and they share. and one of the korean teachers made soup so we had that too! (sidenote: they have the most deelicious soups that come with all your meals, i think its like every restaurants 'secret/family' recipe thing.) so this month on Thursday we went to this place called Honeyland (bahah) were they have SLEDDING! soo fun! it was pretty much the only place in korea with snow and you could hardly call them hills but it was still a good time. we started on the baby hill (cause its kinder so some of them are very young). oh ya, in case you didnt know they have the 'korean age' here, which means that when anyone is born here they start off as 1. so everyone is a year older than what they actually are. so the 6 year olds are actually 5. andd theres one 5 year old in my koala class (the youngest kinder class) so he's actually 4 (and a little much to handle)!! he is actually the one who drove me to give the class the name 'rabid animals' since they are quite rabid at times. understandable since they are very young and theres 7 of them so sometimes hard to handle but they are improving as i mentioned earlier. ok, so back to sledding(or as justine would write 'sleding', thats right, shes a teacher and told the kids to write sledding minus one 'd' on their little art projects, hahah oops). so we were on the little hill until lunch time because there was an elementary class from another school on the 'big one'. so then after lunch the korean teachers said that everyone was going on the big hill. so we walked over and i was like ok everyone start climbing up and then a different korean teacher was like only the 7yr olds can go on the big hill. by this time, everyone was walking up. ooops. but it was fine because we just went down with the kids who were too young/too scared to go by themselves and by the end they were all going by themselves! it was soo much fun hahah. with 2 people on a sled you can go VERY quickly hahah, i loved it. so that was thursday morning. by the time we got back to school we were exhausted and soaked (cause neither of us brought snowpants), the weather was great though, perfect for spring skiing (tear). and then we had to teach elementary all afternoon while the korean teachers went home. not exactly fair so hopefully we get another foreign teacher in february to help us out. also, there are boards in each of the classrooms (for each kinder class). and there were all, fall themes so we had to change them all to winter/christmas themes. so over the past 3 weeks we've been working on those. soo much work, and im still trying to understand why we're stuck with doing everything while the korean teachers do nothing. so 3 out of the 4 are finished and the 4th (in rabbit class) should be done by tomorrow (monday our time). i tihnk im babbling now so im gonna wrap up kinder. theres a christmas party dec24 for the kinder kids before their and our xmas break so we have to put together something for them to present so thats what this week is going to entail which leads me to next update. CHRISTMAS BREAK!
sooo excited for that. we are going to hong kong! after much consideration and many many attempts (failed ones) to try to get flights to either thailand or the phillipines we decided on china. it should be fun because its semi-warm there (which is better than here) and were hoping to get a hotel on an island or with a pool where we can get some sort of a tan. and then head into the city for new years (as suggested by laurel! thanks so much for all your help). we dont exactly have hotels booked yet so that is the plan for today. and then the plan is thailand for the break in feb. our break is from the 25th to the 1st so we leave christmas morning and then come back eee get ready for this one: at 4am jan 2nd! and then have to be in at work for 930 :S until 8. so that should be interesting, hopefully i can sleep on the plane.
ok, so time for general life update perhaps? ill just go over the last couple weekends since thats the only time we get to do anything due to the working late sitch.
a few weekends ago we went to the Coex Mall which is the largest underground shopping centre in the world! wowza, lots of fun but also slightly depressing due to the fact that we had not been payed yet and were on a budget. still fun to look and explore though. there had this one time that was crazy though. it was this game (soccer by le way) on the floor of the mall! there was this projector from the roof that projects the game onto the floor and then you actually get to play (obviously meant for kids but clearly i had to play.) so you kick the ball and play against each other and try to score on the nets! and theres a scoreboard and everything, soo fun! so that was the coex.
next: last weekend! first payday so some celebratory shopping/fun times was in order. friday we continued the friday tradition (which involves dinner at this place we discovered the first night we got here) and a little more wine than usual hahha. they have this meat and cheese and spaghetti sauce thing that is deelish and salad mmm and soup. then just a movie night since we have accumulated quite the collection. saturday, both of us desperately needed new cameras (mine you had to hold the battery cover shut in order to take a picture and justines had no flash so therefore was useless at night hahah) so we went this place called jongnam which is this huuge electronics market to purchase some new cams and cell phones. we were slightly overwhelmed by the choices so it took a while but both ended up with brand new touch screen pink sony cams. there are soo many things you can do it with so i am very happy with this purchase. it even has a smile detector thing you can turn on and so if your taking a picture and someone isnt smiling then it wont take the picture! how cool is that. because the cam mission took soo long there we left the phone mish for another time. so then we were off to get our hair done since we were both desperately in need. i found this place onine in this forum so we were off to itaewon to find it. apparently it had moved or something because we walked for a VERY long time and then ended up going into a VW dealership to ask. he called the place (because luckily i had a number), then wrote down some directions and told us it was a 20min walk. we opted to cab it just so we wouldnt get lost (which are known to do if you can believe that). so we gave the cabbie the korean directions and he still felt the need to call the place. so he did and we waited and then he started driving. it took us ONE HOUR by car to get there! notsomuch a 20min walk mister. so by this time it was like 7pm on a saturday so we were praying that they were still open (luckily koreans work crazy hours and ridiculously hard) so they were open and we got our hair cut. kinda nervous that they would butcher it but they did a reeally good job. some tears were shed due to length issues (justine) but then she got the bangs i couldnt get cause my forehead isnt big enough so everything was good again. so from there were came home and got ready for a night out woo (obvioulsy we had to go back to where it all started, the canadian bar Rocky Mountain Tavern). Sundays festivities were also tres amusant. we went to Lotte World which is a huge mall with an amusement park inside! soo fun. we clearly stayed in the amusement park area for so long that by the time we left there was no stores open to shop in :(. buttt, there was an everything type store open so we went in there and ended up with some fish!! they are pretty much the only pets we can have since we are home so little. and its their week anniversary here and they are all still alive, hurray! their names are lottie, mr watson, and hesus (since we live at the corner of Jesus and Barry Watson and lottie after the place we got them from, Lotte World). Some highlights from lotte world would be the skating rink (indoor!!), the amusement park which had an inside annd and outside, the performances (they had this main stage where they put on different shows every half hour, seriously they had acrobats, cinderella, a christmas one.. and those were just when we happened to walk by, there were many more. the roller coaster was also very fun. we took a video of it cause we got the very first seats but its just all black with lotsa of girly screaming so not much to see hahah. so that prety much wrapped up last weekend.
this weekend we obvioulsy continued the friday tradition (but with less wine this time) then watched some entourage. then we went in on sat morn to school to finish one of the boards then off to dongdaenum which is the fashion mall and huge flee market (we didnt even make it to the flee market due to the mall distraction). then last night we met up with some friends we knew from back home. they live in this really nice area where we were a couple weekends ago called apjung (forgot how its spelled) which is home to the korean rodeo drive! when we were there before we saw all the designer stores (gucci, prada, lv, d&g...) and it is also home to crazy nice car district (ferrari, maserati, mercedes...). so anyway, we met up with them and had lots of fun at their place and then off to this bar called monkey beach (which had a sand stage, soo fun).
today the plan is ilsan for some much needed pedicures and hopefully see that new movie with keri russell and a bunch of other people in it.
i apologize for the length of this but i felt i owed you all a large update. promise to write more often/next week in hong kong
miss you all and wish i could be there at christmas
love
meg
xoxo
and please forward this msg/love and miss to my bebe zoe and cosmo and georgie
.JPG)
The last board that we finished like 2 hrs ago. For Rabbit class (the oldest)
.JPG)
The first one to be finished in Koala class (the youngest). They all made stockings with Justine so we put them up along the fireplace.
Merry-go-round at Lotte World
Coolest soccer game ever at Coex
The Galleria in Rodeo Drive area
Lit up palm trees in Ilsan
Rodeo
Expensive car district
Rodeo!
Rodeo!That's right, we have our own store!
Little Christmas village in the Rodeo area
Little Christmas village in the Rodeo area
Fishies! Lottie is orange and Mr. Watson and Hesus are brown'y stripedThe outside castle at Lotte World
.JPG)
Showing off our hot gloves that the people gave us because we were 'illegally' skating (and we didnt even pick the colours)
One of the shows at
Lotte World
.JPG)
After a lil shop shop at the Fashion market in Dongdaenum
Lotte World.JPG)
After a lil shop shop at the Fashion market in Dongdaenum
The outside of the electronics market
Another performance at Lotte World .JPG)
(cinderella!)
.JPG)
(cinderella!).JPG)
The outside of the fashion market building 
We got kicked off the ice the first time because of this performance (well worth it though)
Our pretty Christmas tree!
Thanks for the ornaments moms!
Prada on Rodeo
Prada on Rodeo
Joyce blowing bubbles
.JPG)
The second board to go up. It's winter!! In Pooh class (2nd youngest kids) and guess what! everyone knows how ridiculously unartistic i am .. i made the skates!
.JPG)
Third one to go up. In Penguin class (2nd oldest). We took pictures from the sledding adventure on Thursday and then they decorated their picture and wrote "I'm sledding'
Meg & Esther just chillin after the ride down the big hill (we were actually stuck in a snow bank)
Me and Sonia
Me and the Garfields (this was at the movie theatre in Ilsan)
to the left (to the left): as we were leaving the Coex mall there was like 10 of these fish things sooo funny. as we were walking away they we like 'i love youuuu' (think korean accent) soo priceless
Pre-skating posing
Ashley and Ann sledding at Honeyland
Bus ride home with David, Sam, and Darren
.JPG)
Me, Esther and Justine
Everyone at the top of the big hill
Ashley and Ann sledding at Honeyland
Bus ride home with David, Sam, and Darren.JPG)
Me, Esther and Justine
Everyone at the top of the big hill 
Picking sweet potatoes
Me, Emily, Esther, and Sonia
More sweet potatoe picking
Everyone at Honeyland standing in front of the 'big' hillTour of Lotte World
The Christmas performance on ice!
Skating at Lotte World (round 2 since round 1 we got kicked off due to the Christmas performance)
Best ride EVER. At Lotte World
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