the munchkins in their costumes

Well-- after two whole months of blood, sweat and tears, the big day finally came. We had our drama festival and graduation on Friday evening. The entire day was dedicated to dress rehearsal. It was on of the longer days of my life, to be sure. Somehow I got stuck with the job of supervising all of the children who weren't performing at any given time. By myself. 25 children without any structured activities. In short, it was chaos. One boy hit a girl in the face with his shoe. There were several escape attempts and fights among the children. But we all survived the ordeal unscathed.
The stage and the venue was way more grandiose than a kindergarten play should be. I wish I'd gotten a picture (unfortunately I was stuck back stage the entire day). They brought in blow up castles and blow up flowers and a ridiculous amount of neon lights so that the back drop of the play actually DID look like the 1950s backdrop of Oz.
At least the kids looked cute in their costumes! Here's a peek:







In other news, Dad and Julie have made it to Korea safe and sound! We've spent most of this weekend showing them around Seoul, taking them to open air markets, temple, palaces and folk villages. The days are long and exhausting, but worth it to share the experience of Asia with them. I'll do a future post on the whole thing with pictures. We have an entire week of their wonderful company ahead. :)

if only we were on broadway...

We've been quite busy rehearsing "The Wizard of Oz" in preparation for Friday's drama festival. Nothing is ever done half-heartedly here in Korea. All of the kids are even wearing wireless microphones for the production! We haven't been teaching classes all week and I feel like my brain is about to shut off. Anyway, here are some pictures of our rehearsal time! The kids look so cute with their mics on.

thoughts on chingus.

The great thing about friendships is that they're transportable! Thanks to facebook and the wonders of the internet (via Skype), I've been able to keep up with all of my wonderful friends back home while forming new, international friendships here!
One great example of this is Josh and Leigh Jourdain. I've known both of them for years, through various spheres of life (high school and college). About a week ago I got a facebook message from Josh saying that they were flying into Korea later that day to move for good! I gave him my number on the off hand chance he'd need it. It just so happened that that evening just as I got off of work, my phone rang. They'd just arrived on Korean soil and needed a place to stay. I was more than happy to oblige. Seeing a familiar face from home here is like gold (and two familiar faces is double the joy!). It was such an amazing thing to welcome them to Korea, to yell broken Korean to taxi drivers and bus drivers while they swayed bleary eyed and entranced by the plethora of neon lights. I remember the similar blast of culture shock when David and I got off the plane- it was overwhelming to say the least. We tried to get them set up in a motel near our place, but the landlords were eager to rip the "Waygukins" off, so we offered them our bed instead. David and I are more than used to sleeping on the floor by now (and with the consistency of the mattresses it really doesn't matter). Even though Josh and Leigh only stayed for one night before jetting off to their orientation down south, we really enjoyed their company and fellowship.
This weekend we headed down to Dongtan, which is only 45 minutes to the east of us, and hung out with another couple we've befriended. I love my single friends and coworkers to death, but there's something about hanging out with couples that hits the spot.
Speaking of company, my Dad and Aunt are headed this way in a matter of days. I'm so ridiculously excited. If you've ever wanted to see Asia and need a place to crash, by all means, come and stay!

there's a chicken in my bed...

This weekend we broke out of our winter monotony and went skiing with our friends! We went with a large group to Phoenix Park in Ganwando (the province next to Seoul). Since it’s Lunar New Year, we had a long weekend. The bus left early Saturday morning and arrived at the Park before noon, giving us plenty of slope time. Although I’m from the generally snowless lands of South Carolina, I consider myself a decent skier. Green and blue trails are quite fun for me to go down, and I can conquer black diamonds fairly easy if I set my mind and courage to it (which is sometimes a challenge after the “ski-off-of-a-snow-cliff-incident of 2007).
Phoenix Park is by far the nicest skiing facility I’ve been too. There were over fifteen runs… many of which took ten minutes to ski down because they were so long. Over the entire weekend I only had one knock down, skis off wipe out (and yes that was on a diamond run). David is much more daring than I am on skis. He even took his camera out onto the slopes and got a lot of good action shots while we were skiing!






Another great thing about the weekend was the winter scenery. It was snowing pretty heavily when we got there—and the surrounding mountainside became a gorgeous fairy-tale land of snow. It’s not a sight I’ve seen much in my life… pretty breathtaking if you ask me. Fortunately David was there to capture the beauty. It was so refreshing to go for a hike through the iced trees and snow—drinking in the natural beauty of Korea that we so rarely experience here in the city.





Aside from skiing, the weekend had other adventures as well. To keep the cost of the trip down we stayed in a hostel with all of our friends. In Korea, most people sleep on the heated floors instead of in a bed. There are cushioned pads and little else. I’ve never found it terribly hard to sleep on them. In fact, both nights I was so exhausted from the day of skiing that I fell asleep while the room’s other nine inhabitants socialized.
Although I consider myself a heavy sleeper, I was roused from my dreams last night at 4 AM to hear some of our drunker roommates stumble in and turn on the rather bright lights. I groaned and someone else in the room yelled for them to shut off the lights. I rolled over on my side, determined to slip back into my hazy sleep. There was a strange fluttering sound and the soft brush of wind against my cheek. I paid little attention to it. That’s when I heard it: cluckcluckcluckcluck. I shot up, flinging my covers away from the mat. A few inches next to me huddled a shaking, petrified chicken.
Still in my dazed, half-sleep, I lurched out of bed, screaming something to the effect of, “Oh my God, there’s a chicken in my bed!” As soon as I scrambled a good distance away from it, my wrath and fury was turned to the several pranksters who crowded the door into the hallway. Without even a second thought, I whipped out my teacher’s voice, “Get it OUT! NOW!!” They simply laughed and rushed out of the door, leaving the shuddering hen cowering in the corner, getting dirt and poop all over my sleeping mat. By this time everyone else in the room was awake and gaping at the misplaced fowl. David, who actually restrained me from running after the culprits, gathered the chicken inside a blanket and tossed the poor creature out into the hostel hallway. We locked the door and I was left fuming for at least an hour before I could fall back asleep.
By morning my anger had waned, and incident became much more hilarious to my fully awake, non-traumatized self. I mean, really, how many people can say they’ve woken up to a chicken in their bed at a ski resort in Korea? Not many. Not many at all.

Folk Dance in Progress

So part of the drama festival that I mentioned before involves our children doing a folk dance. We've been practicing it for about a month now... it's shaping up pretty nicely. Here's a preview:

Follow the Yellow Brick Road...

The countdown is on: graduation is in fifteen days. This means that half of our mornings are spent rehearsing this year's school play, The Wizard of Oz. I always enjoyed the movie as a kid. I loved the way Glinda's dress sparkled and I was enamored with Dorothy's shoes. The fact that the lion, tin man and the scarecrow all looked like real people didn't bother me in the least. And the flying monkeys... they were much more fascinating than terrifying. Yet hour after hour of coaching children to say their lines ("be LOUDER! and MOVE AROUND for goodness sake!) has sapped a bit of the charm out of the whole storyline. I must say though, that the play is shaping up. I'm sure that by the time the parents see it it will be something to clap over.
This week has been dreary- the type where you want to curl up in your bed and sleep all day. Unfortunately, teachers don't have the luxury of sleep. I wish they had a naptime class. I seem to remember having one as a child. Of course, at that time, I hated it.
I might be getting a whole new class come March. We'll see. Things at Kid's College change so quickly and so often that nothing is certain. David's class is definitely graduating, so he'll be getting new children.
I had two children lose their teeth in my class last week. I've never felt more like a mother than in the moment of telling them to gurggle the water and wrap their baby tooth in a wad of Kleenex.

Things to look forward to:
Skiing this weekend in Pheonix Park! Woohoo!
Dad and Aunt Julie are arriving in two weeks! Oh boy!

Sorry the post has been so scant. Such is life...

Retreat

After a very harrowing week of school (see last blog entry!) we were able to get in a nice weekend of retreat, fellowship and refreshment. Our church, Jubilee, had a married couples retreat that we’d signed up for a few weeks ago. We went to a place about an hour outside of Seoul—a retreat center surrounded by mountains. It was so relaxing to get away from the city, you don’t know how suffocating being in a big city is until you’re outside of it. On Saturday I took a nice albeit muddy hike through the mountains, getting red dirt all over my new shoes and breathing in the rainy air. The only wildlife I spotted was a feral calico, which dashed out of my sight as soon as it heard me coming.
The weekend was full of talks and Costco snacks. It was really great getting to know more of the married couples at our church. There were lots of little kids there too!









David took advantage of the opportunity to become the retreat’s official photographer. He ran around with a huge smile on his face and camera in hand, snapping everyone’s conversations and moments. He even got to do a few photoshoots for different couples… for free of course. He’s still in practice mode, so that means some lucky people get some nice pictures simply for printing cost! He’s been pretty dedicated to building his portfolio. I never run out of new Facebook profile pictures!
We got back to Seoul on Sunday night and went out to dinner with our friends Jacob and Amanda. They showed us this nifty little taco restaurant called “Dos Tacos” (Mexican food is relatively difficult to find here, as you can imagine). David ordered a burrito and I got a whole plate of loaded nachos. It was really delicious.


Nachos of Death.

Unfortunately, at 3am that night, my body thought otherwise. Food poisoning. I threw up for every half hour until dawn, dragging myself up and down the steep stairs as I grew progressively weaker from dehydration. By morning, I realized that I wasn’t in any shape to teach, so I sent David off to school and slept for a majority of the day. By Monday evening I was able to eat two crackers and a cup of rice. Powerade pumped all of the lost electrolytes back into my system. So that makes 3 incidents of food poisoning in my life. The first was in Asia (Cambodia), the second was in Mexico, and the third was Mexican food in Asia! Haha. No really, I hate food poisoning. It’s a pretty miserable experience. I’m glad it’s over.
One of my girls is coming back so I’ll have three kindergarten students instead of two!! I’m pretty excited about it. We’re revving up for a school play at the end of the month, so the school is in the throes of chaos at the moment. The children who are graduating have major senioritis, throwing fits about the slightest bit of work. It’s frustrating.

Here’s a good laugh for the day though. I was playing an animal guessing game with one of my students:

Student: It has flippers.
Me: Is it a dolphin?
Student: No.
Me: Um, a fish?
Student: No.
Me: *somewhat desperately* A penguin?
Student: No.
Me: I give up.
Student: It’s Nessie!!