In the past two weeks... Warning: it's a semi-long one

With my departure date slowly coming into view, I've been doing a bunch of thinking. Mainly, it's "Man, I'm gonna miss Katie Dale." This is a very true statement, but I'm also going to miss our other friends, too. We have cool friends, we like them. Then I find myself thinking that I'm going to miss Korea, which is also true. Korea is a pretty cool place, I guess. I was talking to a friend and he mentioned that to be here, you need to be positive. So true! You've got to be super positive, which can be super hard at times because you find yourself faking that positivity and that gets tiring. Other than being tired of always trying to be upbeat, Korea is a pretty okay place. It's a good place to start off living on your own and they have an endless need of English teachers, so there are always jobs.
Anyways, *shakes head to get back into groove*, I'm going to miss it here and whenever I start feeling like I'm going to miss something, I sometimes start to doubt my leaving. But it's okay! I was unsure of my leaving for a bit, but then I remembered that I'm ready for the next step. I'm excited to move to Kuwait and make some more monies to fund my 'round-the-world extravaganza (that had best happen)! The next 11 weeks or so are going to fly by, so I'm going to try my best to take advantage of the time I have left to experience more of Korea, so when I do leave here, I won't regret that decision. That was a lot of USELESS RAMBLING, per usual.

Here's the real scoop:

We've got new kids. I am in Zebra class now. I bounce back and forth between Zebra (6 years old) and Elephant (5 years old) everyday. Tuesday and Friday, I have Apple class and Day Care for one period of the day and, on Wednesday, I have a break (much needed break). The kids are somewhat cute. Mostly, though, they just wear me out. Zebra class are all best friends now and it can be difficult teaching them anything at all.
Last year (3 weeks ago) when I was in King class, I was convinced that teaching English was somewhat tedious and easy. Now, with kids that don't speak any English at all, I find that teaching English is, in fact, quite difficult. They don't understand me and I don't understand them. It's frustrating, but when they can finally read "can" and "cat" I feel accomplished and proud.
Here is my Zebra class:

Ian

Ella
Juana

Julian
Annie
Lita

StephanieMore on their personalities and my interactions with them on some other post.

In Elephant class, there is a total of 8 kids I think. One kid, James, just cries all the time because he hates English and doesn't want to learn. Fair. Another kid, Jason, is one of the teacher's kids and he just... oh man. He cries, too; when he sees his mom, when he doesn't feel like sitting down, when he can't ask for the bathroom or water in English, when Jessica teacher leaves the third floor at the end of the day, every morning, etc. One word: headaches. Even with those two, Elephant class is my favorite so far. They are so cute and squishy and they listen to me. When I ask and motion them to stand up and push in their chairs they don't turn to each other and just start talking, they do what I ask them to. They love to sing along with the songs and they do their work. They're beautiful and I love them. Here are my favorites:

Kevin - he is super smart and quiet
Ricky - also smart. He loves to talk and calls the crying kids "babies." And he smiles at me.

David - He's cute. When he sings, he belts it out. And he's super ticklish.

Those are my classes.

Two weekends ago, Katie and I decided that we should do some sightseeing of sorts, so we found out where we had to go to find the Seoul Tower and go up up up! We found it pretty easily, after a hike up a small hill, we got into a cable car and went up the mountain. It was so cool! On Namsan, they also have this thing called "Locks of Love," nooo not the hair thing. It's for lovers. Lovers take locks up there and write messages on them (lovey dovey) and then lock it up. It was really cool and sweet, but I'm a sap for those kinds of things. After looking around the locks, we went up into the Tower. It was pretty cool, really high. It had a good view of the city. We felt accomplished after our day trip to Seoul. This whole paragraph was crappily written, I apologize; I think I'm getting sick and my head is not all in one piece because of this.

in the cable car

locks
locks and the Tower

Peace, love, & kimchi.

Flights

With a lot of help from the padres (thank goodness), I was able to book flights! Needless to say, I'm super pumped now. :)

Seoul - Hanoi on June 4th
Hanoi - Rome on June 15th
Milan - DC on July 8th

Still figuring out: flight to CA? flight to Kuwait - one way.

Super stoked.

Peace, love, & kimchi


PS. I'll be keeping this blog for my other travels.

Positives

First two days back at school with a new classroom and new kids has been crazy hectic. Crying babies, fake smiles, pants soaked in pee, and crying babies EVERYWHERE. So I thought I'd write a bit about some positives going on.

1. The babies always smile after a bit, which happen to be cute smiles!
2. I have really cool coworkers. I super like them a lot.
3. My friends are pretty awesome. Near and far.
4. Snurtle and Hank are doing spectacularly (I think; they don't talk much)
5. 65 weekdays.
6. Korean food is amazeballs.
7. My boss saw the purple in my hair and did NOT freak out. YAY!
8. Seester sent me Reeses cups!
9. I found money in my pocket today.
10. It was cold today, but it was a pleasant cold. AKA it was a nice day.

There's tons more, but I think this is good for now.

Peace, love, & kimchi

9 Months

Oh hey! A whole month went by without a blog post from Sophia? Weird.

Not a whole lot has been happening around these parts lately. I told the boss lady I wouldn't be coming back for another 6/9/12 months, so my official leave date is something like June 2nd. My plans are sort of in place, but not really because I haven't booked anything yet :/. Anyways...

We had our big finale show thing-a-doodle on the 15th. It wasn't so bad, guys! I feel like it went a lot better than we all thought it would. Although, having all the Korean teachers leave us three in a tiny room without television and/or some sort of entertainment with 5 classes for about 2 hours was not the highlight of the evening. I was so proud of the kids! They did such a great job. I scored a DVD from it, too! Woot! So now I can watch it allllll. We started at the school to practice and I took some videos of that, and once I actually upload them, I'll post them here! After lunch, we made our way to an art museum where we did the performance. The two classes I was "in charge of," Elephant and King, were great! Elephant class did the drama The Three Billy Goats. Everyone remembered their lines and movement and songs! And King class did their speeches! Super proud of those rascals.

Since the 15th, we were wrapping all the books and stuff up, hurrying the kids to finish them so we could mark them up and send them home last Thursday with all the kids. Yep, last Thursday was the last day of the school year! So sad. I'm gonna miss King and Robot class a tremendous amount! But, no worries, because 7 of the students from King class will be back for elementary classes this new school year!

So even though Thursday was their last day, we had to go in on Friday. And Saturday. Friday, we were taking down our classrooms and doing a general cleaning of the floors. Saturday morning we had to look "presentable" for the parents during orientation. We literally stood up there for 5 minutes. All we had to say was who we were and what classes we will be teaching this year. Katie will be in charge of Robot (which is Puppy class moving on up) and the newest Puppy class. Peter will be in charge of King (which is Zebra and Elephant moving up). And I will be in charge of Zebra, Elephant, and Apple (Zebra = new, Elephant = last year's Apple class, Apple = day care??). So yea.

My new schedule consists of me moving around the third floor a lot! I'll mostly be teaching Zebra (6 years) and Elephant (5 years) Language Arts, Learn to Read, English Village, and Science. And I'll be making weekly visits to Day Care and Apple class. Should be fun! I'm a bit nervous just because I don't know these kids and the kids I do know speak no English! It should be interesting, that's for sure.

Anyways, we went in today, Monday, to set up our new classrooms. We spent most of the day coloring, cutting, laminating, and cutting. Needless to say, my hand is officially sore. We have tomorrow off because it's some sort of holiday and we have to go in Wednesday to finish our rooms, lesson plans, etc and we start teaching Thursday. Yikes! I'm super nervous. I hope it goes well!

So that's pretty much it. All the new, boring news that is happening here! :)

Peace & Love!

Five Things

1. It's a beautiful 40 degrees here.
2. It makes me miss warmth.
3. I think the world is going to shit. There are some things that make me doubt this, which is why I am not 100% sure about it.
4. I sorta miss my friends in the States, but they have made it easy for me to not miss them.
5. I love my turtles. And my friends here.

Evil Laugh

You say you want a gift from Korea?



You got it!

RR: Random Ramblings

1. Peter teacher has been here for a week and one day! It has been the greatest week and one day ever! The kids love him, the staff loves him, and it's just been great! Love it.

2. King class Peter left :( sad day for me. Loved that kid. His family moved too far away to make the commute everyday to school. Le sigh.

3. Our end of the year performance has been pushed back a week to February 15th, which is great! The whole entire school has been working uber hard on this the past week and one day! Every free moment has been dedicated to rehearsing dramas, speeches, and songs. Today the boss lady sat in with me for Elephant's drama and King's speeches. It didn't go too bad. I was impressed. The kids impressed me. They have come so far in the time that I've been here. :)

4. Boss asked me to stay on another year, I said "no" cos of the Italy cruise, then she said she'd give me 3 weeks off if I stayed for a year, then I said "ah shit, guess I'll think about it." Needless to say, I was obsessing over it for about a day. I've decided another year ain't gonna happen. I'm gonna cross my fingers and see if she'll let me stay til at least October/November. I doubt she will let me stay and still give me time off for the cruise, but we'll see.

5. Katie's dad came today! And this Wednesday-Friday we have no school because of the Lunar New Year! Exciting. Then we come back and have three weeks left with King and Robot then they move on to elementary school and then everyone moves up a floor. Scary/exciting. I'm gonna miss King and Robot a tremendous amount; I've become very attached to those kids.

6. Pretty sure that's it. Peace, love, and cookies.

Sarah, Cindy, and I on picture day!

Peter and I! <3

7.5 Months Down

It's been a month since my last post. Not a whole bunch of new stuff going on, I suppose.

The family visited for Christmas/New Years. The parents came on the 18th. We hung out for the weekend and waited for Sarah to get in. Unfortunately Sarah had some plane mishaps (surprise surprise, right?) and arrived, like, a day late. Not too bad. Parents and Sarah stayed up in Seoul for the later part of my last week before Winter Vacation. They got to go to the DMZ and did the Seoul City Tour and a bunch of other neat-o things while I got to work work work. Yay.

Mommy, Daddy, and Sarah at the DMZ

It was a pretty good week, the week before vacation, especially Christmas Eve! We had a party after lunch and didn't have to teach! That was exciting. And for our elementary classes, we watched Christmas movies and then had another party. I ate soooo much food. Ridiculous. It was a lot of fun though. I like the kids. They can be cool.

King and Robot partying it up on the Eve of Christmas

Elementary boys digging into our salsa we made.

I went up to Seoul on Christmas Eve and we spent Christmas Day wandering around this Korean village thing in Seoul. It was pretty cool. They had huge ice sculptures! After making our way back to the hotel to grab their belongings, we hopped on the subway for an 1.5 hour trip back to Ori. Once we arrived, we had our Christmas. We made chicken, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, corn, stuffing, and bread from the best, Paris Baguette. It wasn't too shabby. Christmas was weird. It was our first Christmas not in the States or with the whole family. We weren't completely prepared, so I think it was a bit disappointing, but it was still very nice to be with family for the holidays.

Ice sculptures!

Famjam on Christmas

Christmas dinner.

We hung out and didn't do much on Sunday and Monday I went up to base to visit Nate. Then on Tuesday we rented a car and drove down to Busan. I didn't think it would take as long as it did, but I totally forgot to factor in the drivers here... But we got there safely and got to our nice love motel! It was like a castle! Pretty cool.

The ceiling of one of our rooms

Ow! Ow! Love Motels!

While we were in Busan we visited two temples and the famous Jagalchi Fish Market. We also spent a lot of time in Nampodong Market. Also visited Haeundae beach and market and ate at Fuzzy Navel Tacos (YUM!). It was a nice getaway from lil' ol' Bundang.

At Haedong Yonggungsa Temple

At Beomeosa Temple

Rents left on New Years and seester and I got to hang out for a week. We didn't do much because I am lame and was exhausted after work, but we got to watch a bunch of movies and play catch up. Love you, seester and sorry for being lame.

Other than that, there really isn't a lot going on here. Still waiting for Peter to get here. Still rustling around getting things done. Still trying to figure out my next step. I have about 4.5 months left here. Just enough time, I think. I'm going to miss KatieDale, for sure though. She's been a great friend to me.

Hectic Hack-tic

Hello folks,

It's been about two weeks since my last update, so I figured another one was due about now-ish. That, and the familia starts coming in this weekend! Wahoo!

The past two weeks and a day has been pretty hectic. We are down one English teacher at school due to certain circumstances and so Katie and I have been runnin' the joint and trying to own it as much as possible. It has been difficult and not the least bit of fun (just a little bit of fun, seeing as my cry count is up to something like 10 for December). Since we're down one English teacher, Katie and my friend, Elise, has been filling in til lunch time and doing a splendid job. The boss loooooves her and so do we, so it's perfect. Only thing is that Elise teaches at one, too! So she has been quite the busy bee, as have Katie and I. We've taken on extra elementary classes and not for extra pay, unfortunately, but seeing as the school is des.per.ate. we are doing our best at trying not to complain too much. So, our planning time has drastically decreased, leaving us breathless and exhausted at the end of every day. It's tiring! And also sickly! Yea, Katie and I are both sick (sshhhh), hence the "hack" in the title of the post, eh? eh? yea? You like? Yea? I'm cool.

BUT! We have a new person coming in soon, hopefully. It's someone who left the country earlier, like summer? And has been wanting to come back and Katie recruited him to our school! Thank goodness.

Also! Katie is now the head teacher! Woot! And I'm pretty sure Sunnie and Boss have put me in charge of the graduation song. It's difficult. We've come up with different songs to use, so I'll sell them to the Boss tomorrow and hopefully she'll really like Somewhere Over the Rainbow, because that song is the best!

Speaking of graduation. Oy. In February (Feb. 8th to be exact) we're having our performance. The kids put on either speeches or plays for everyone and the parents so we've been trying to get them ready for that on top of having to do everything else and then some at school. HECTIC. Chaotic. Downright ridiculous right now. I'm in charge of doing a play with Elephant class. We're doing the 3 Billy Goats... super fun. I'm also in charge of getting King class ready with their speeches. I'm not too worried about most of King class, cos they're pretty smart; there's just a few I'm super worried won't get it at all (coughcoughalvinandliamcoughcough) grrrr.

Anywhos, after dragging myself through school days, I come home and practically collapse, but it's still difficult to sleep, odd. But whatevs, I've been trying my hardest to get ready for the rents to come in on Saturday. Katie and I got Jason's apartment all cleaned and ready for them, so that's exciting. Just gotta clean mine. Ugh. I'm so lazy I don't want to, but I gots to.

Other than that, folks, there's not a whole lot going on. OH! The DMZ has reopened, so I'm just gonna throw this out there, nothing is going to happen, just like I knew.

Mkay. Peace and love to infinity my people. Keep dreaming.

Thanksgiving - NK - Hiking

It's really too bad I can't come up with more creative titles for these posts, but then again, the posts aren't all that creative or exciting, so I guess it fits.

1. It's the end of November, guys. Tomorrow is the end of November, guys. I have one more teaching day of November, guys. I have been working for six months so far. That means I have six more months to go! The past six months have literally flown by pretty quickly. They've had their sluggish moments, but for the most part, they've flown. I've had so much fun so far! I hope the next six months prove to be just as exciting! Let's be honest, they are looking like they might be! Harry Potter comes out December 16th (I have a love-hate relationship with this day because Nate is leaving... weak); December 18th the padres arrive!; December 21st the seester arrives!; week off for Christmas/New Years; January SaraBrown comes back to Korea; February Taylor Swift concert with Anthony?!?; February Lunar New Years! Hopefully in a distant land...; March new school year starts! The end. That covers, like another three months right there! Craziness. Exciting. Lovely.
My contract should be up and over the end of May, which means I'll have about 2.5 weeks to travel wherever til I go to Italy to meet up with the famjam for a cruise in the Mediterranean! Awesome! After that, I'm hoping to have the opportunity to travel a bit in Europe before heading back to the States before I figure out my next big adventure! Yup!

2. We celebrated Thanksgiving the weekend before Thanksgiving because Jason went home for a week since he signed on for another year (he also had a wedding to attend to). J found a website that made Thanksgiving dinner for you, so we paid for it (about 100$) for a turkey, stuffing, veggies, mashed potatoes, pumpkin pie, and more(???) to feed about 10 people! Baller. Jason made some home made stuffing and I made eggplant bruschetta, yum!
Katie, Jason, Nate, Ian, Carly, Ben, Ben's gf, and I all dug in and enjoyed a delicious Thanksgiving meal! It was a great time! I did miss having Turkey Day at home, but this was pretty awesome. I even got to watch the Thanksgiving Day Parade on actual Thanksgiving! Yay! Here a photo from the day's events:


3. North Korea. Now, I know everyone has heard about this. Guys, I'm not too worried. Some people are freaking a bit, but so far, I'm not worried. Everything is fine here. Things are running normally, and the Koreans don't seem too flustered. But, all in all, I'm fine. I've been in worse situations (I feel).

4. Hiking! This past weekend I needed to get out of Ori, so Nate and I went up to Dobongsan (Dobong Mountain). We originally had planned on hiking Suraksan, but we wandered around til we found a mountain and the one we found was Dobong. It was awesome. Started off really swell (as usually) then it started to get a bit crazy. It felt like I was rock climbing as opposed to mountain climbing. There was one part where I had to hold on to a rope and hoist myself up. Craziness. It was freezing at the top, but gorgeous. I was scared, ha, weird. The peak was, like, 4 rocks piled on top of each other. Insanely amazing. The wind was rough, so I was holding on to the metal railing for dear life while Nate took pictures. It was a gorgeous view of Seoul, though!

We also saw the first snowfall in Korea on Saturday night! Cool. And it snowed Sunday night, too! Ahhhh. At least it was kind enough to wait til after Thanksgiving. :)Takin' a break. Near the top.

At the top!

At the top!

Recap: 6 months left in Korea, Thanksgiving was fun, NK is lame, Hiking mountains is fun.

THE END!