Posts from — November 2008

A few Fridays ago (why always Friday?) we took part in the Samcheok Lifelong Learning Fair. Thursday evening we set the booth up (about 30 people were put on that task). On Friday we showed up to be the token English teachers!

The Guendoek Booth

This booth was packed with things the students have done. It is also peppered with English Village themed things like a poster of the English teachers! Guendoek is one of the few school that has an English Village so it puts a lot into showing off the facilities.

Above is our good friend Mark in his booth. Definitely the coolest booth! It was all Halloween themed and there were even costumes to try on!

Blue Bobo

Spicy Mexican

This is a complicated tug of war game. I don’t really know much about it. I know that the tug of war rope looks like a pretzel and that the game is very old and a big tradition.

Apparently the pretzel knot is a great place for relaxation after a drum performance.

Chad, Kate, Principle (Kyo Chang Songsamniem), Vice Principal (Kyo Kom Songsamniem), Kumo (A secratary?), and the Special Ed (Slash Art?) Teacher.

This picture was taken right after all of the Education Big Fish came through in their suits. We kind of think that they are the biggest reason that this Fair happened. To show the Big Guys (And Gals) what the schools are doing. It seemed like a lot of money to pour into 10 seconds of bowing and handshakes per school. At least there were fun things for the kids to do at the fair like making soap and mini-books and little creatures made of bark and twigs.

There was also this,

Chad will have to correct me but I think this is like a harness for para-sailing? It was fun and we got some funny pictures of Chad. A newspaper even took pictures and interviewed him about his experience. According to Teacher Kim they wanted to talk to Chad about his experience in this contraption because he looks happy and Koreans don’t show emotion. Yes, that is what she said.

After Chad and I had checked out all of the booths Teacher Kim arrived at the Fair and had us go around with her. It was fun and we actually did some of the activities with her.

A stop back by at Mark’s booth.

An obligatory cute Korean child picture.

Well, that all the new on Lake Woebegon. More to come. As usual I am behind with posting. We have been preoccupied with planning our winter vacation. All of our computer time has been sucked into that. We do have our tickets booked now, so thats exciting!

I just made muffins. The muffin tin was too big for our petite oven so I had to double up the paper cups and bake the muffins on a cookie sheet. We’ll see how they turn out. Oh, that reminds me. . .

Last Sunday Chad made peanut butter cookies. They were fabulous, I just polished the last one off yesterday. We brought a large portion of the cookies to school thinking we would share them with the teachers during our 10:40 snack time/teachers meeting. We put them out on the communal table and they were gone before school started at 9:20. Amazing. I love the teachers we work with.

Have a great week!

K

Chad – “Hey, Kate, pose in front of that light.”
Kate – “Okay!”

Again,
Again,

Together! You get the picture.

Chad’s turn!




Crazy Mountain Man!

Rocky on rockies.

Chad’s internal dialog – “Should I do it?”

Chad’s external answer. . . .

CAVE MONSTER!!

Lean on me!
1. . .
2. . .
3. . . .
4. . . .
Failed pose but fun trying!

Chad left but I stayed behind to pretend to be a ballerina-cave dancer.

Monster emerging from the midst.

BlAHHH!!!! Getting closer!! This is like getting Big Foot on camera! Luckily we got away in the nick of time! Phew.

We had fun.

A couple of weekends ago Chad and I decided to hike this trail that we saw when we visited Hwasnagul Cave in September. This post is jammed with pictures! Woot!

Our climb ended up being a little more difficult that we anticipated. Basically this mountain proved to us that our previous thought that Korean hiking is wimpy was wrong – the ropes and stairs are needed. Instead of nice little switch backs everywhere the climb went all the way up and then all the way down.

At the beginning of our hike. Happy little climbers in Korea! Oh, and due to the Kimchi, Chad has grown to be 6″ taller than me.

This little cave caused us to take about 20 minutes out of our climb to take pictures. Above is a sample of those pictures. They will be in another post. Yes, I plan to post again.

Steep stairs to help us down. I have to confess, I thought we were close to the summit. Nope.

Tampoon – pretty fall leaves in Korean

Crazy Mountain Man! That is what our coworkers like to call Chad. He shared some of his summer hiking pictures with them a few weeks ago. With good reason they were in shock of how intense some of his climbs were. Yikes, me too!

Okay, this picture is an image of the “uh-oh” on our hike. We realized the sun was going down and we had NO clue when we were going to hit the middle point. Sadly we turned around so that we would make the last bus and not die of hypothermia.

Graceful climbing.

Break in the leaves. I think that we would have been OK if we had chosen to stay the night on top of the mountain. The leaves were very cozy!

I know this doesn’t look that tough. I was tired, recovering from a cold and the rocks were very slippery! Thank goodness for those ropes!

I love these persimmon (kam) trees. The are like big hovering skeletons trimmed with bright orange balls that look like they are just floating in the atmosphere surrounding the trees.

Overall Update:

We are doing really well. The cooler weather is definitely rolling in. School is still going really well. We are in the midst of planning a trip to Thailand and Malaysia for our break in January. Exciting! We miss everyone a lot and I wish there was more time in the day and less of a time difference so that staying in touch weren’t so tricky. Though, I am not complaining, we would be lost without all of this technology.

We miss and love you all and I hope that everyone is doing well! Thank you for keeping track of us!

K