"I WOULD RATHER HAVE YOUR BUTT, AND MY BUTT CRACK."

Haven't written in awhile. Here's a couple quick updates:

Had sports day with our kinde kids and their parents a couple Sundays back. One of the most fun days I've had probably. We didn't really have to do anything but show up. There was a company that organized all the games and such. Games ranged from running races, to tug-of-war, to blowing up balloons, to other outlandish games. Let me tell you, these parents were not in it for the fun. They were there to win.

We started out with a race. Us teachers went first, so we were standing at the finish line when it was time for all the moms to go. Two wipe outs. One fairly epic one. This lady was running, running, running her little heart out. When it got to the finish line it was a tight race. She basically sorta accidentally dove for the finish line. Flat on the belly, arms out, face hitting dirt and bouncing a couple times. I wish there was a picture of our faces as we watched this, in what seemed like slow motion. We tried to keep our laughter in for a little, and I think we did pretty well, but soon it was just too much work and we laughed pretty much the rest of the day thinking about that fall. I think the woman was fine. She disappeared for the rest of the games until it came to prize time, and she won the runner-up prize of a medium bag of rice. Needless to say it was an awesome day, topped off with a yummy sam gyeop sal dinner with copious amounts of makali (rice wine). I'm fairly certain fun was had by all.

Here's a pic of one of the many games we played:

We had a long weekend for Buddha's Birthday last weekend. Emily, Chanelle, and I decided to take another Adventure Korea trip to Jeju Island. It is an island off the southern coast of Korea. It is sometimes called Korea's Hawaii since it is a volcanic island. We got there on Friday to pretty great weather. Went to a beach, and got to do a little swimming. The water was pretty cold, but it was fun to be able to swim in the clear, blue water, as I had never done that before. Even got to see a big group of dolphins swim by, jumping out of the water and everything.

On Saturday we went to hike up Mount Halla, which is a big dormant volcano. It was drizzling when we started. Kept raining harder and harder on the way up. We got 6k into the 8k up before they turned us around because of the rain. We were already drenched, which was good, because the trip down was basically like hiking down a stream. You literally had to jump from rock to rock, picking the ones that were sticking out above the rushing water. Kinda a bummer that we didn't get to make it to the top, but an adventure non the less.

Went to a Trick Art Museum, a Tea Museum, a Sex Museum, some caves where the Japanese kept weapons during WWII, and finished the trip off with popcorn and a beer at a Chinese acrobatics/motorbike show, which was amazing. They put I think 6 motorcycles in this little ball all going upside down, and this way and that. I don't think I breathed the whole time I was so nervous they were going to crash.

A pretty good trip for sure. I could have used at least a few more days on the island. I didn't realize how nice it was to get out of the city until we were on our way back.

Back to the grind now. We don't have another break until our week off in July. Don't know what we are going to do for that yet, but our goal is to try to plan that by this week, so I will keep you updated. Hope all is well for you. Talk to you again soon.

Caves

Trick Art Museum

The now infamous, with us at least, jumping photo.

"DE !@#$%& LICIOUS"

Yesterday when we finished classes we were all staying around late to get some stuff done. We had all been just sitting at our desks doing work when, from the corner, I hear our supervisor, a cute little Korean lady say, "Who wants beer?" We all just kind of laughed. She proceeded to whip out a 2L of beer from the fridge by her desk. We proceeded to have a couple glasses while we finished our work. It is also a really big deal here to have food while you are drinking. She felt really bad that we didn't have any side dishes so she found come cocoa pebbles somewhere and poured us each a cup of those. Nice way to finish off the hump day.

Last Sunday it was really nice out. Emily and I decided to go for a little walk to a park right by our apartments. There were some middle aged Korean gentlemen playing this game that is sort of like a mix between volleyball and soccer. We were sort of watching them/messing around on the workout equipment. Soon enough one guy comes walking over to us. He starts talking about something in Korean involving basketball and who knows what. He then grabbed my hand, and took Emily and I over to a bench by where they were playing. None of them spoke English except to tell us that they loved us and we were beautiful. They served us a drink called Makali (have no idea how to spell it in English), its a pretty good tasting rice wine. They also gave us a bowl of ramyeon and some other noodle stuff. I tried some of the noodle stuff, but didn't really like it. He then came with a couple lettuce leaves, loaded them up with the mystery noodle stuff and handed one to each of us. I think I would have been fine eating it had I not looked at Emily, who was basically gagging. Luckily no one was watching us eat it. She ended up being able to find a tissue in her purse and spit it in that. I had to get up and walk away for fear of spewing it everywhere. It's not so much the taste, but the fact that I have no idea what I'm eating that gets me. There was this really big white chunk in it that really grossed me out. I'll spare you the gory details. I did manage to swallow it all though. Just another interesting Sunday in Korea.

On Monday I was trying to get my kinde kids to sit nicely in their seats. I've walked by when the Korean teacher Jina Teacher is in with them, and they are all sitting attentively. I know they can do it, they just don't do it for me. So I was trying to persuade them to sit the same way for me.

Me: You sit nicely for Jina Teacher. You should sit nicely for me too.

Kevin: Jina Teacher is scary. You are not.

Me(trying to make an angry face): I can be scary.

Kevin: No, Teacher. I think silly.

One of my favorite things is to sit and listen to these 5 and 6 year olds converse with each other in English. They are too funny. The Korean kinde teachers name is Julie. Those kids listen to her so well it's amazing. She is basically the enforcer. If a kid is really, super bad they get sent to Julie Teacher. So, whenever some one did something another kid didn't like they would always say, "I tell Julie Teacher", "I tell Julie Teacher". A few weeks ago I told them they could no longer say that, because it happened probably 5 times a class. I said I would be the one who would tell Julie teacher if she needed to be told something. After being somewhat confused as to who they should tell, they have pretty much gotten out of the habit of saying it now. I also taught them the word tattle tail, and that has been a tremendous help. This is the conversation I overheard this week.

Ray did something Jamie did not like

Jamie: I tell Jesus.

Ray: I tell God.

"DID YOU SAY READY FREDDY? YOU ARE THE PURPLE PEOPLE EATER."

Been awhile since I wrote, but not too much new to report. Went to the Cherry Blossom Festival last weekend. It was pretty cool. It looks like it's Christmas with all the white blossoms. We just basically walked along a road that was lined with the trees. It was neat.

Can't believe it's already almost May. I've been here 8 months now which is just crazy. Time sure is flying. Have a couple fun trips planned in the next couple months. We are going to Jeju Island on a long weekend in May. That should be a fun trip. Jeju is off the southern part of Korea. It's a volcanic island, and the highest peak is there. And we are going horseback riding! I'm also super pumped for the MudFestival in July. It's basically what the name implies. A weekend full of mud. Another teacher around here organized a couple bus loads of people to go down for one of the weekends. Can't hardly contain my excitement for that weekend.

As an aside...I have THE WEIRDEST dreams here. A few of us have commented on the fact that our dreams here are consistently really weird, and we remember them almost all the time. I think I'm gonna start writing them down or something. Wish there was actually a way to figure out what some of the mean...weirdest ever.

As I said not much new. Hope all is well with you. Hopefully I'll have something more interesting next time. Talk to you later...

"THEN THEY WOULD BE HAIRY...THAT'S EVEN WORSE THAN DIRTY."

Not much new here. I think the weather is finally going to warm up and stay warm. For probably the past couple months we've had really nice days, and then random snow the next day. It looks as though the nice weather might be here to stay this time though. I'm hoping to wake up tomorrow, and run outside for the first time since like October. Hopefully I can get myself out of bed. These days I actually have to set an alarm to make sure I'm awake by noon. O'well.

The warm weather is great. However, spring in Korea also brings along something called Yellow Dust. You can wikipedia it for more precise information, but basically it's sand that is blown south from some Mongolian desert. We've had a couple days with "yellow dust warnings". It makes the day really eery looking. It looks kind of like yellow fog everywhere. There is no sun, and it feels like near dusk the whole day. A lot more people wear masks on these days. It is just a really weird feeling day because it never really feels like day since it's sorta dark the whole day. Apart from that, the spring sure is welcome.

Tried live octopus a couple weeks ago. We had dinner with all the teachers from our school one Friday night. They all wanted to go drink more after dinner, so we went to another restaurant to get more drinks and eat live octopus. They cut the tentacles off the octopus, and then chop them into little pieces. All the pieces are still wiggling all around on the plate they bring you. I found one of the smallest pieces to try. It climbed up my chopstick as I dipped it in some sort of sauce. When you put it in your mouth you can feel all the little sucky things sticking to you. Some one once told me that like 1-2 people die from eating live octopus each year because they don't chew it enough and it suctions to their throat when they swallow it. I chewed and chewed my piece for awhile to be sure I didn't fall into that trap. It actually didn't taste like much. It tasted mostly like the sauce I dipped it in. It's just the still moving, and sucking your tongue that gets to you. Dog soup is next on the list;)

Here's a picture of my kinde class. We went on a field trip to a children's museum a couple weeks ago, and managed to get everyone in for a decent picture. They are sometime's a lot to handle, but I love them all. And they are usually all pretty happy, but they don't like to smile for pictures, ergo facto some kids looked pissed off in this picture. I really do enjoy attempting to teach them everyday though. They are fun.

"I'VE GOT A GOLDEN TICKET"

Howdy. I decided awhile ago that I wanted to try my hand at rugby. I had my first practice on Saturday, and it went pretty well. A few other friends from around here all went to the first practice to see what it was like, and I'm pretty sure we are all going back. I'm sure it will get harder, but it really wasn't as rough as I was expecting. I was pretty sore on Sunday though. I think it was just the fact that my body hasn't had to move like that for awhile. All I've been doing is mostly running, biking, and swimming on and off for the last 5 years, so it will take a bit to adjust to being physical again. I had an awesome time though, and can't wait for our practice this weekend. I have a few bruises, and thought I might have pulled my groin after inadvertently doing the splits at one point, but all in all pretty successful I think.

On the teaching front...Our kinde classes got changed up at the beginning of March, so I now have 8 kids in my class instead of 5. Those 3 extra kids sure do make a difference. I really didn't have to discipline much with my other class, but things can get kind of out of control with 8 kids, if none of them are listening to you. I had to lay down more structured rules today. They now get one warning for bad behavior, and then they have to sit against the wall in the "thinking chair". After that they have to go sit in the hallway. Then, if they are really bad, they have to go see Julie Teacher. She is their Korean Teacher who has some sort of power over those children. All she has to do is say their name and these kids snap to attention. I was very happy that the kids all seemed to understand that I meant business, and I only had to put one kid in the "thinking chair"today. We will see how they do tomorrow...

Other classes are going well. There is maybe only one class that I just don't really like at all. One annoying girl just kinda gets them all riled up. And there is another girl that is not my favorite. Her name is Ann. She doesn't like the way I say her name, and yells at me almost everyday. "My name not Ann." I guess I emphasize the A too much. She wants it short. Ann. I guess I say something like Ayann. I don't know, maybe it's my Iowa drawl. I think she uses it as an excuse not to answer the question though because she doesn't usually know what's going on. So her way of covering is by yelling at me that I said her name wrong. I now make a point to say her name extremely short. She didn't yell at me today, so that's a plus.

The other day I walked into one of my classes, and it was really cold in the classroom. I said, "burr, it's cold in here." I of course couldn't stop there. I had to keep going with the claps, and knee slaps, and stomps saying, "there must be some Toros in the atmosphere, I said burr, it's cold in here, there must be some Toros in the atmosphere."(It's from a movie, if you don't have a clue what I'm saying) None of them had any clue what I was doing, but I got a good laugh out of the one of the girls, Sandy. At least I amuse myself.

Not much else to report. Things are good. The weather is mostly starting to warm up. We did get a couple inches of wet, slushy snow last week, but then it was back up to the mid-fifties over the weekend.

Hope this finds you well. Talk to you again soon...

'THEY SLEPT IN THE WOODS!?"

Went on an awesome trip last weekend. Emily, Chanelle, a co-worker friend, and I went on an Adventure Korea trip to Geomundo/Baekdo. Adventure Korea is a company that offers a bunch of different day and weekend trips all around Korea. Since we had a three day weekend we decided to take a trip with them.

We went to Geomundo/Baekdo. This is basically a group of around 100 islands off the southern part of Korea. We left on Friday night at about midnight. We drove through the night on a charter bus. It was probably one of the worst bus rides ever. I sat in the worst possible seat...second to the back row. The smallest amount of leg room on the bus, and then my seat partner was taking up half my seat, I think I was right by a heater because I was sweating non stop, and my seat partner took her shoes off and had the WORST feet odor ever. I think I got maybe a total of 45 minutes of sleep.

We arrived at some little southern port city at about 6:30am. We had about an hour to wander around until we caught the 8am ferry to Geomundo, the island we were staying on. I've only been on one ferry in my life I'm pretty sure, at least I only remember one ferry ride. I think it was maybe a 20 minute ride down in Gulf Shores, Alabama to Dauphin island. So, I didn't really know what to expect from this ferry ride. Well as is turned out the waves were pretty big, and a bunch of people on our trip got sick. We were rocking around so much. We sat on the second floor. When you looked out the window it basically went from seeing only sky to seeing only waves, and back and forth and back and forth. If I hadn't been so completely exhausted I probably would have gotten somewhat sick too, but luckily I felt alright.

We got to the island and checked into our hotel. I'm pretty sure the proprietor of the hotel/motel we stayed at was a witch. We all agreed. A good which though. We wanted to get a picture with her before we left, but she shot us down because she thought her hair wasn't good enough or something. We got to our room and of course no beds, but rather mats on the floor, and no hot water till 5pm. We had lunch, went on a little hike to a British cemetery and the beach, took a nap, ate dinner, and went to bed. We were all pretty tired, and there wasn't much at all to do on the island.

The next morning Emily and Chanelle went to breakfast as I tried to squeeze a few extra minutes of sleep in. When they got back they said that three people from our group were missing. They hadn't returned after our little hike. We were catching a 10am ferry to go around to see all the other islands, so we were all discussing where these people could have gone. There was a pretty much full on search and rescue going on, with announcements being made over loud speakers, and our guides sorta freaking out. Well about 10 minutes before we set sail our guide says, "They found them, they are over there." He points across to the other island that is connected to the one we stayed on by a bridge. So the three people get dropped off by the ferry via police car. We all thought they just maybe decided to get a different hotel or something. Nope. They went hiking, got lost, and ended up sleeping in the woods. WHAT?! Yeah, that's what we were thinking too. It was a pretty cold and rainy night. I don't know what made them just give up. We were on a pretty small island. They sorta looked like people who might get lost out in the woods and spend the night though.

So we went on a nice sight-seeing ferry ride to see all the little islands, and then came back to have lunch, and go on about a 4 hour hike to a light house. It was a beautiful day. The hike was pretty awesome. Amazing views. I even got a little tan going on my nose and cheeks. We ended the hike back at the beach. The water was pretty cold, but we put our feet in anyways. It felt pretty nice after a decent hike.

We were supposed to leave the next morning on the 10am ferry. That night was rainy and super windy. I forgot to mention that along with the witch that ran the place, we were also pretty sure that the place was haunted. So that night when it was raining and windy the windows and doors were rattling a bunch. Apparently I was the only person who was waking up and hearing these things, but I finally had enough at about 4am. I thought the window in the bathroom was cracked open a bit which was make it rattle. After laying awake for about 15 minutes I finally got the courage up to go into the bathroom to shut it. I left the door to the bedroom open though, so Emily and Chanelle could hear me scream in case I got shut in the bathroom by some ghost and needed help getting out.

Anyways, when we signed up for the trip there was a little disclaimer at the end saying that in case of bad weather we might have to stay on the island an extra day blah, blah, blah. I didn't take it seriously at all. I thought it was just something they had to put on there for whatever. Well, we got up to catch the 10am ferry after hearing the wind howling all night. They said they waves were too big. We were supposed to come back at 11:30 to check again. 11:30 turned into 2pm, which then turned into 3:15. They then told us that the ferry was not going to go out that day because the wind and waves were too bad. None of us could believe that we were actually stuck on this island. There were about 50 people on this trip, and we all had to call the directors of our schools telling them that we wouldn't be able to make it into work the next day because we were stuck on an island. Really the worst part was the fact that the only thing they had to eat on the island was fish. I'm not a big fan of fish. I basically ate rice, potato chips, and cookies all weekend.

We finally made it out the next morning. After a decently calm 2 hour ferry ride, and another 6 hour bus ride we made it back to work for our night classes. Luckily our directors and supervisor are super nice. They weren't mad at all. They were more worried about our safety.

As usual, the weekend was an adventure for sure. It was a really great weekend though. We had a lot of laughs. It was really nice to get out of the city for awhile, but it was also pretty much just as nice to get back to the city, where you know where you can get things you need, like pizza, easily. The island really was pretty beautiful though. Definitely unlike any landscape I have ever seen. It's good to be back, but I'll be ready for our next adventure after I catch up with a little R&R this weekend. Here are some pics from the weekend...enjoy.

"TEACHER YOU ARE ROMEO AND JULIET AND DIE, DIE"

Last Friday I made my all time favorite little student, Ray, cry. It was not at all on purpose. He was offering me a cherry tomato that he had brought for snack. He just kept putting it in my face. I said, "No thanks, Ray. I don't like tomatoes." This was at the end of the day, so I was busy putting shoes, and coats, and book bags on. I was sorta running around making sure every one had everything they needed and Ray kept punching me in the stomach. He sometimes does that so I ignored it for awhile, but then they turned into really hard punches and I said, "Ray, stop that hurts." I then looked at him and he had tears in his eyes. "Ray are you mad at me?" He just shook his head yes. "Why, Ray?" Then in the most heartbroken, sad voice, while trying so hard to hold back tears, "You don't like tomatoes." I felt so bad. I told him I would eat one. He didn't want to give me one anymore though. So I just gave him a hug, told him I was sorry, and thankfully he forgot about it by Monday.

Today one of my students asked me if I knew what son of a bitch means. Yes, I speak English. I know bad words in English. I think he thought he might be able to stump me with that one.

Some words are hard to define to students. Today we had the word cool. How do you define cool other than saying, you know...it's cool. Cool. It's undefinable. I think cool just is. To define cool would be like taking the coolness out of it.

Last week I had one of my classes write a diary about 10 things they want to do in their life and why. It mostly turned into 10 things I want and why. Most diaries were full of things like I want MP3 because I want MP3. There were a few gems though. For example, Jenna, one of my favs, wrote...I want a baby brother because I want to tell man what to do.

Going on a trip down south this weekend. Hopefully I'll have some cool pictures to post from that. Other than that, I hope everyone is doing well. Talk to you again soon...