Thanksgiving 2010

This past Thursday was Thanksgiving but being so far away from our family and friends made it feel unlike our usual Thanksgiving days. We woke up early on Friday morning (Thursday night in MN) to Skype with our families. It was so nice to talk to everyone but if left us both feeling very homesick. The day continued on and we focused on our own celebration. Most of our co-teachers got together on Saturday to celebrate. We bought two pre-made turkeys in Seoul and all got together at Steves on Saturday afternoon. Each person brought a dish to share and we ended up mashed potatoes, gravy, stuffing, pasta salad, corn, bread, pomegrante seeds, tomato-basil-mozeralla salad and apple and pumpkin pie. There ended up being about 18 people at the dinner. After we ate and watched football from Freds NFL package we all played charades. After the games we headed to our local bar. All-in-all we had a great Thanksgiving but we really missed our families. Now we are looking forward to the Philippines in about 3.5 weeks!


Our meal

Enjoying the food and football

Fred and I

Ann and I

The group at the bar

North Korea Attack

Just a quick update since the recent attack from North Korea. Yesterday afternoon the North attacked an island that lies near the border. This island gets attacked often however this time people were killed and injured. As of now the South says they will only attack if the North takes more action against the South. Everyone here is discussing this however most people are not too concerned as of now. We have heard more helicopters since the attack however we have not seee much else. Fred and I will keep you all updated on the changes. Here is a link to the most popular English newspaper out of Seoul. http://www.koreaherald.com/ Feel free to look here for more updates from the South Korea perspective.

Apartment Update

Our apartment is finally feeling like home. It has taken some time, but now our home for the next 9 months feels like ours. Last weekend we orderd and received our new couch. We ordered it from a company near our area and had it delievered. It also folds into a futon for our hopeful future guests!




This past week at LCI was very hectic. Every 3 months we have to complete a detailed status report on all of our Kinder students to send home to the parents. We had to have them done by Friday which added a lot of work on top of our exisiting spelling tests, weekly Kinder reports and essays. We were all relieved to hand them off to our supervisors on Friday evening.

Today we headed back into Seoul and are now heading to see a movie. This upcoming weekend we will celebrate Thanksgiving on Saturday with our co-workers. It is hard to believe that we have already been back in Korea for 3 months! Only 4.5 weeks until we head to the Philippines!

A few new photos

Here are a few photos of my Kinder students.


Danny and Judy

Jacob and Johnson

Young

Audrey and Cheny

A great example of Konglish (Korean-English) that came on a plastic box full of oranges from Cheny

Suwon Soccer Game Video

Here is a video from the last Suwon Bluewings soccer game.

Happy Birthday Kevin K.

Today there was another birthday in Fred's class. Smart, cute and loud Kevin K celebrated his 7th birthday (6th in America). To celebrate Kevin K's mom brought a chocolate piano shaped cake, rice-cake treats, mango juice, oranges, fried chicken and a special salad for Fred Teacher. Kevin K even gave away giant bottles of hand lotion to all of his classmates-a very unique party favor. Everyone enjoyed celebrating his birthday!

Relaxing Weekend in Suji

This past weekend was very relaxing. On Friday after work we had Korean BBQ for dinner then we headed to our local bar. Our friend Josh was having a concert at the bar. He played the guitar and sang to a variety of songs including all of our requests. Many of our foreign friends came out and we also met up with some of our Korean friends and co-workers. It was a very fun night.


Enjoying the concert

On Saturday we relaxed in the morning then spent the afternoon at a coffee shop before Fred got a haircut. We then headed to the store and got a few things for our apartment including plastic for our windows. I am hoping this helps keeps us warm! We then met up with Josh and went to dinner at a Mexican restaurant 5 subway stops away.

Christmas lights outside of the subway station

This morning we woke up and headed into Seoul. Josh, Steve and Fred wanted to get dress shirts so we all went to the foreign district. They went to a tailor that they knew about from other teachers and all got measured for custom shirts. Then we headed to the art district and shopped around for a while. We are now enjoying the rest of our Sunday night. Even though this weekend was low-key, it was nice to relax and enjoy one of the last weekends before it gets really cold in Korea.

Lanterns lining a stream in downtown Seoul

Street vendor

Halloween Photos