RAIN!!!!

Monsoon season has begun, I am not impressed.  It has been pouring buckets of rain for the last 12 hours.... and it does not look like it is going to stop. There is so much rain that the rivers are flooding, so there is tons of junk floating down the river. It also means that I get drenched everyday to work, even if I do have rainboots and an umbrella. And the adjamas are CRAZY with their umbrellas. They do not care if you are in the way or if there is no room, they just move right on through. Today I got poked in the eye even though I tried my hardest to avoid it! 

Hopefully this rain will not affect our beach weekend this weekend!! Since it ruined it last weekend :(

Here is a little look of what it looks like outside my classroom window right now...  its from my computer so its not the best but it is very rainy... trust me

Spring Picnic---yes i am well aware it is no longer spring

So my school has picnics for the different seasons.... well at least spring and I have also heard rumors of a fall picnic. Anyways, the picnics are kind of like field day. All the kids load up in the vans/buses and we go to a big park not far from our school. The kids bring lunch and they play games. Then we all pile in and go back to school. Now of course there are some distinct differences between my picnics as a kid and PSA picnics.

                       Some of my kids making mud pies and soup.

Of course there is the food issue. The kids bring their own lunches and it was all kimbop. Kimbop is the korean version of sushi but it is like egg, veggies and sometimes some meat. So all the kids had these little containers just for kimbop with cute little helper chopsticks. I loved watching them eat. Then of course they brought TONS of snacks. I love to see the similarities between my kids in NY and these kids.... really there are more similarities then I would like to admit. Anyways, on field trip days the snack you brought in NY was the most important thing. Kids would bring whole bags of chips they would share with friends. This was a lot like my kids here. They all brought bags of snacks... chips, cookies, candy, weird cheesy sausage things, really anything you could buy at 7-11 they brought. And they brought so much of it! It was enough to usually share with everyone. They were also so nice about sharing it, it was refreshing to see. They even decided to go trick-or-treating at  one point!! They took a bag and went friend to friend saying trick or treat and traded food! It was too cute!

                           Bin and Ryan Trick or Treating

The other big difference was the photographer!! For all the major events we have a photographer (imagine a wedding photographer documenting you life). He first takes a class picture of us then a picture of each kid. Then he will be around the whole time snapping pictures of the kids. He is literally everywhere you turn. Then when we went back to school and wrote about the trip he was still there taking pictures in the classroom. There is a real classic picture of me with one of the kids :) Anyways, so after about two months we get a huge stack of photos (about 300) to sort through. Then the parents pay for what pictures they want. Its crazy because they parents buy all of them, even though some are terrible. I guess though it makes sense because they can't be there but these are the shots they would probably get. 

John is learning how to slide down a pole

Overall the picnic was a lot of fun. The kids had fun just 

running around, it was one of the first nice day of the school year and they didn't have to do any work!!

Heaven's Newest Director

So I know this blog is about my life in Seoul. But at the same time it is about my life.... And I feel it is not right for me to go on posting without talking about something that has happened recently that has had a big affect on me, even if it did not happen here in Seoul.

A little over two weeks ago the world lost an amazing person. Sissy DePrima lost her battle with cancer.  Mrs. D was my musical theater teacher starting in third grade (I think) all the way through high school. With her I performed in various parades, in countless shows and around Lake County. With her I was a southern belle, a beggar selling flowers on the street, was a toy doll, a french aristocrat, a daughter of Canna, walked down the yellow brick road, was a poodle girl, dickens caroler and countless other characters. To say though she was just a brilliant director would not do her justice. She was also much more than someone I saw every Wednesday for an hour. She was someone who witnessed almost every major event of my life. She was one of the first people I wanted to share something with and was always one of my biggest supporters. Whenever I told her where my next adventure was taking me she was always so excited for me. 

She also taught me some of the greatest lessons of my life. She taught me the importance of being truly dedicated to something and not stretching myself too thin. It is better to be great and passionate about one thing than decent and wishy washy with many things. She also gave me my love for performing. I also liked to be on the stage from a very early age but she taught me how to command a stage and audience. From her I feel in love with musicals. There is hardly a musical you can give me that I do no love.... to be honest there is hardly a musical you could play for me that I have not performed at least one of their songs if not the whole show and you would be hard pressed to find a Christmas carol I do not know by heart... with hand motions. 

Some of my fondest memories as child and teenager was staying after in the studio talking to Mrs. D. We would all hang around, secretly hoping our parents would be picking us up late. It was even better when we were able to drive because we could stay as late as we wanted. We would talk about anything and everything sitting in these little pink benches. If it was a really special day we might head to baker square to get a slice of pie! 

Mrs. D also worked at the local catholic high school. She ran a show there in february that many people from the county would come see. In middle school I would always go to the shows and wish more than anything I could be on that stage but thought it was not an option because I would be going to the public school. It was that show and her that helped persuade me to leave all my friends and go to the catholic school. The two years (soph and senior year) that I got to do the show were some of the best memories from high school. Also, it resulted in another great lesson. It taught me to never give up. My junior year I did not make the show because of a bad audition. I was heart broken and I think normally I would have just quit going to lessons on Wednesdays. But Mrs. D made me realize that things do not always work out as we want. Instead of giving up though you just have to work harder. I started attending additional lessons in addition to my wednesday classes. 

It is has been very hard for me to process this loss. I feel like even halfway around the world I am constantly reminded of her. I would say about every 4th song that comes onto my iPod is a song that I have song with her... I have decided that my iPod random shuffle is a major no-no for awhile if I want to stop tearing up randomly on the streets... I already get enough stares being white. 

It is even harder to think that when I go back home she will no longer be there. Every place in town holds some type of memory of her and I think it will be a rough shock when I finally go back home. I just hope that I can continue her legacy. I hope that I can spread the same lessons that she gave to me. Below I am attaching a video of one of her last shows at my high school. This only gives a little insight into what an amazing director she was. 

Open Class

So I am going to try to get caught up this week on what has been going on since the next 5 weeks are going to be CRAZY! Mom, Dad and Colin come on August 3rd. When they are here I know we are going to be running on all pistons since there is always lots to do in Seoul. We are also going to take a weekend to go down to the coast. And what I am most excited about is........ LADY GAGA!! Lady Gaga is coming to Seoul on August 9th and we are going to go! I can't wait!! But before the family even gets here I will be going to a Mud Festival this weekend, a Music Festival in the South next week and then a week in HONG KONG! Needless to say there are many fun things ahead!!!

But not to get ahead of myself. Here is some of the stuff I have been up to the past couple weeks..er.. months... May 27th to be exact

So every school has some type of Open Class. It is usually similar to open school night or parents night in the states. In most schools the parents come to the classroom for an hour and make sure the thousands of dollars a year they are putting into their child's education is not going to waste.

Well since at my school the parents put in thousands of dollars a MONTH our open class is just a bit more intense. So for the entire month of May we prepped for this open class. It consisted of an opening message, pledge, song with dance, a lesson by my korean teacher, a lesson by me, then a closing song with dance THEN a closing message and finally the kids give a gift to their mothers. 

Now in case you have forgotten most of my kids are 5 (easy to forget with the crazy Korean age system) and not always the most graceful. They also have trouble focusing for more than 15 minutes, once again the whole age thing. Now take the fact that we practiced this everyday for 3 weeks! It was all a little intense. To say I was a bit nervous before it actually happened would be an understatement....

I might have threatened my kids within an inch of their lives about a second before the parents walked in. 

And to everyones surprise they actually pulled it off!! Only once do I have to give one of my "unimpressed" looks to Daniel C. And we only had one kid almost cry. Poor Tommy got up to answer a question and forgot the answer. My Co-teacher whispered him the answer and he still could not say it. I guess Tommy has done this every open class last two years. Overall the parents seemed very happy and I still have my job! So now I just have to think about what we will be doing for the next one in October :)

Oh one more crazy thing about this whole thing... each child needs to speak an equal amount of times!! So everything is rehearsed with the kids before hand. Each question they know is coming and they know if it is their question or not. I did not do it as scripted because I thought it was pointless but I did give my three special boys their questions 2 weeks in advance which I had them practice all the time!! 

Here are some pictures from that day!

 This is about when I told DongJun I would make the next 6 months a NIGHTMARE if he jumped like a frog during openclass.

The kids giving their gifts to their moms. Andrew (boy in red) is resinging all the songs for his mom.

First song "Getting to Know You"

Korean Cowgirl

Very quickly I found out that my friend Kiwi and Patrick both have horses back home. Several nights we kept saying we should go riding so I finally decided to do something about in May... this is my tail... heheh couldnt resist

So as you could expect the riding places are not in the center of Seoul but instead on the outskirts. We found one place that was at the end of the subway line which is about 1hr15 from where we are. I had my Korean Teacher call the place a make a reservation for the three of us. So we got on the subway and headed up there. We had no idea where it was so we took the name of the places and finally when we got up there we jumped in the cab. Thankfully Patrick has wonderful Korean so he spoke to the cab driver and we were off. We got on the highway and drove another 10 minutes. Soon we were in this bizarre mix of suburbs and 

rural ko

rea. There were really nice proper houses right alone rice paddies. We pulled up to a bar that looked a little questionable. We walked into the main building and right away a woman walked up to us freaking out because we were english. P

atrick quickly saved the day by speaking korean though. Very quickly we met the crazy owner. He was one of hte scarier men I have met. He very quickly told us to come look at his riding pictures on the internet, then he demanded we eat the food he had for us, then he demanded that we sit in the nice seats, and about as quickly said in english "GET UP" when some other family came in and they were to sit there. We spent the next 30 minutes basically jumping whever this owner spoke. He was also pretty funny. When we first got there he kept saying he would be taking our picture to put it on their website. It would say that the "

Western people rode here". 

Our reservation was for 1:30 and by now it was about 2 and the owner had now kicked us out of the main building. He informed us we needed to go on a tour. So we sat outside the place watching the ring below. A man was training (maybe?) a horse that was being a punk. The man actually got thrown at one point, the horse was refusing to do what the man wanted. After our little show we were called into the other building which looked like 

a banquet hall through into a room with chairs and a mechanical horse! We were with a bunch of kids who were also riding. So the lady explained how to hold the reigns and put the kids up there. She made them post and all this other crap. Then she looks at us and tells Patrick in Korean it was our turn.... HELL NO! we just busted up laughing and made the little x sign with our hands that is so pop

ular. So finally it was time to go ride... we thought

We climbed down the hill to the arena. There was an big outdoor area with a jump in the middle then a really tiny covered arena. The kids went first on their horses on the inside arena. Then it was FINALLY our turn. By now I would say it was 2:30. So we got on our horses and they stuck us on the inside arena. Which was super small and annoying. I got a pretty tame horses that was fairly passive. Patrick got 

this beautiful horse but it had a bit of the crazies. This horse would not walk, it was constantly trotting. Patrick actually had a goal to walk once around the arena and it was one of the most painful things to watch. Though Patrick is an amazing rider so it was fun to watch him on an amazing horse. Kiwi also got a bit of a crazy horse and ended up switching horses a bit in. The second horse was also still a bit crazy.

So after going around about a billion times and feeling a bit dizy we talked the guy into letting into the outdoor area. So Patrick was the first to go out and his horse handled it pretty well. I was next out the gate and my horse decided to practice for the upcoming Derby. He shot across the ring in a nice gallop. Unfotunatley I was not at all prepared for this and definitely lost my stirups but thankfully stayed on. He did stop though when he got to the entrance to the barn.... it seems he thought it was time to go inside. After I caught my breath I rode for about another 15 minutes in the ring. I was nice to be riding again since I havent been in about a year. 

When we were done we went back upstairs. We found out that the whole time we were being watched on the TV and the owner actually offered Patrick to come back and ride for free in exchange for letting the owner take pictures for the website.

We asked the owner to call us a cab since that was the only way back to the station and he said he would. After 10 minutes though he informed us that there would be no cab we had to leave go to the end of the street and wait for the bus.... which did not make much sense because we were out in the middle of no where which had street construction on all sides. So we went down and sat by the paddies and shockingly a bus came bumping down the road. Patrick asked if we if went to he subway which the driver said yes. We made a school boy error though because we did not ask HOW long it would take. We ended up on that bus for about 45 minutes. We saw ALL of northern Seoul.

Overall it was a fun adventure. Can't say I will do it again but I am glad that I did it at least once!!! 

It's My Birthday

Going to stop trying to give excuses for not blogging... just going to have to accept it will be sparadic (and full of spelling errors) at best.

So in every culture birthdays hold some type of importance and with that importance comes a celebration. In Korea is the birthday this is a little difference since the actual day of your birthday does not hold a whole lot of weight in regards to how old you are. But Koreans do celebrate their birthdays just like we do in the USA, they actually might do it (at least in my school) about a billion times better! Let me explain....

So every month all the kids who have a birthday that month will hold a joint birthday party in the classroom. The parents will get together and discuss what they will bring and all that jazz. This is about on par, and at first I thought it kind of sucked for the kids they had to share their birthdays with someone else. I mean your birthday is your day! 

Anyways, I was wrong, very very wrong.

So the moms dont just bring in a cupcake for each kid or a little cake. Oh no... first they bring a feast for each child.... fried chicked, traditional korean dishes, hotdogs, juices, yogurt drinks, fruit and pasteries. Then there is the cake. Each child gets their own cake. So the day we had 3 kids, we had 3 HUGE cakes. I actually took one home completely untouched. Then there is the teachers meals. Many parents then bring a seperate meals for the teachers. This month we got three huge tupperware full of cut fruit, a box of these amazing tarts and then each our own box of rice cakes (which I was told were $75 a box). 

So that is just the food. Then there are the gifts. Each kid brings a gift for the birthday boy or girl. The gifts are supposed to be from $10 to $15. But when you have three people with birthdays there are just gifts everywhere. Then the kids who are having the birthday bring "Thank You" gifts for each child. These gifts now can be a bit crazy. This month the mom bought all the girls princess shirts and the boys power rangers. Last month the boys all got starwars books and the girls got shoes that are similar to crocs. The gift you give is a pretty big deal. 

Now the parties might seems a little out of control, but the thing is this is the tamed down version. The parents when they come to the school have to promise not to hire party planners!! One mom in another class wanted to bring someone in the night before to redo the whole classroom so it was themed!!!! These parties do not last more than 20 minutes!! The class next to me last week had a performer. She came dressed as Cinderella. She made the kids all balloons and then did this amazing face painting on each child. I am not sure how that mom slipped that woman in but I am sure now every part after that in that class will have a performing.... its all a bit crazy. 

Needless to say birthday party days are a big deal and we all look forward to them on the floor. The kids usually cant eat 1/3 of what is given to them so it usually ends up in the teachers room.  I am known to be slipping into the room to grab a slice of cake :) though most of the korean teachers know now so just bring things like cupcakes straight to my room!!

so much for hoping korea was make me herion addict thin... oh well!!!

Mini-Olympics

So I am going to just forget about trying to post this stuff in order, I have come to terms I am going to just post when I get a chance. I want to at least get one post up a week!

So this post is about Mini-Olympics. Mini-olympics was actually back in May, the first week of May to be exact but I am going to go with it. So MO was an all day event at my school for the kids. The 6 year olds had it Friday then 7 year olds had it on Monday. So there were 5 stations set up and there were 2 foreign teachers in charge of each station. Then our Korean teachers took our classes around and they competed with other classes. I am proud to report that Jupiter Class (my class) beat Dolphine class in every single event. We definitely won the MO for 7 year olds... I refuse to listen to anyone who says there were no winners. So overall it was a lot of fun with the kids and was only better with the fact we won.

Though my kids did great, I did not get to see them compete in anything but my station.  My station was the hula hoop station. Now this station was a bit of a mystery for a couple weeks. The school gave us our assignment a couple weeks before the event and Ian and I got assigned to Holla Hoop. When we asked what it was my directors response was "they take the hula hoop and all go inside and they run across the yard and they win". When we heard this Ian and I were convinced we heard wrong. The day of the event we asked them again what they wanted and again we got the kids go in the hula hoop and run. So we made it a relay race with 4 kids in a hoop at once running from one side of the yard and back. We quickly learned though this was possibly the most dangerous race EVER. The really fast kids would just take off and be dragging the kid across the yard. Ian and I spent most of the time racing after the children being dragged. After the second group we changed the activity so they ran on the outside of the hoop, making it must safer but no where near as entertaining! 

Anyways, MO was tons of fun! I love fun days at PSA!