Lunar New Year

Earlier this week was Lunar New Year, and we had a party for our kindy students. Everyone dressed up in hanbok (or traditional Korean clothing). The foreigner teachers were provided outfits by our director, and Corinne and I had identical ones. They were beautiful.

The kids played traditional Korean games, some of which we lead, others they taught me. It was a lot of fun.

Corinne and I worked together for most of the day.

I love their traditional headbands.

These are most of my students in KE, my homeroom.

It is tradition to have very bright colored fabric with beautiful prints on it. I was not disappointed.

Then, we got Wednesday to Friday off work! Tricia arrived and we ran off to Seoul. It was a wonderful week. You can expect pictures from our adventures later, but for now, dinner!

Halloween at St. Louis

Sorry for the belated post, but I have had internet connection troubles. For Halloween, we spent an entire day having a party, rather than Kindergarten classes (which disappointed the older students quite a bit!). It was pretty adorable.

This is Iris, one of my Korean coworkers, she wonderful.

This is my homeroom class, K-E. I am wearing a green alien mask, as this year's haunted house theme was outer space.

Martin was sick, but didn't hold him back. He wore a facemask and partied hard anyway.

I was in charge of one station of games for the students, they rotated between foreign teachers throughout the day. This is a Halloween version of twister, some of the kids were really, really good at it.

Some of the students struggled with the rules. They would follow the directions as for their left and right feet and hands... but wouldn't keep them there after I called out the next direction.

The students performed Halloween themed songs. They were choreographed and everything, it was pretty adorable.

It was a great day. The kids had a lot of fun, and it was a nice change from the regular class schedule. Halloween is a bigger deal in Korea then a lot of places, because there are so many foreigners here. I had been worried that I would be homesick during Halloween, but had plenty of fun here. Fall in Korea has been beautiful, and its been an awesome couple of weeks. I hope everyone back home had a good holiday, too.

Chuseok Adventure Part 1

Chuseok! Its a Korean holiday for the harvest, similar to America's Thanksgiving. It means Tuesday to Thursday off work, and great deals on holidays in beach resort towns because most Koreans are with their families and September marks the end of beach season here, supposedly. So I packed up my luggage with clothing appropriate for wherever the week would lead me and a few bottles of wine and went south. Busan is beautiful, my hotel was on the beach and lovely. I was traveling alone and felt invigorated by the freedom.

Busan's Museum of Modern Art was having its Biennale, which is a biannual exhibit. This year's theme was Evolution, which, from my understanding, isn't a contentious issue in Korea. There seem to be references to evolution in every museum I go to here, actually.

This was the exhibit featured on the advertising campaigns, and it really captured my interest. Everything was set up on sand and was about as thin as a sheet of paper. The images really popped against the background and I spent a lot of time trying to guess their connections to one another.

This is a representation of how much blood the human heart pumps in one hour and twenty-eight minutes. Its a mind-blowing amount.

I miss my bright orange Buddha.

This reminds me of Rebekah. Also, its been installed in a handful of pretty cool places. You can see the pictures at the bottom of this shot, of abandoned apartment complexes and houses, a pile of rubble - the bird cages and broken dishes have been hung there, too, which would have actually been a much cooler location to view them.

I love aquariums, so of course I had to go here.

But the main pull was the fact that I am going to go swimming in this tank later this year! I discovered that you can, without a diving certification, dive in the shark tank for a really reasonable price. I checked out the aquarium and made sure it seemed worth the trip - it totally does, check out this video:

I tried to get a picture with a shark, but couldn't. I am really excited regardless.

I took a ton of pictures, and will look through them and update more soon - I also went to the UN Memorial Cemetery, the world's biggest department store, and Beomeosa Temple. You can expect more soon :]