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Category — Pictures

Hand Art

by Kate

Intertwined, October 2008, Seoul, Korea
This blog post holds another quirky chunk of our trip to Seoul. The day after we experienced the amazing Hotdog Fry we took a walk to the palace near our hostel. On our way to the palace we noticed a little science museum. We decided to check out the little museum. Our two friends that we were with at the time, Eve and Dave, both worked in a Science museum for kids in England so they were very excited!
At the end of our tour of the museum we noticed a bunch of kids crowded around this station. They were all getting these lovely little personal sculptures. Despite our fast approach to our mid-twenties we decided to koin in the Hand Sculpture fun!
1. Choose pose.
2. Cover hand in lots and LOTS of hand lotion.
3. Soak hand(s) in huge bucket of ice water.
4. Dip hands into the hot wax.
5. Repeat steps 3 and 4 until your hand feels like it is being squished to death and the man helping you dip signals for you to stop.
(I clenched tighter and tighter as the wax got firmer and firmer. I’ve never really been to into sticking my body into hot wax. . .)

6. Watch the Master of Wax-Hand Sculpture shave away any random shoots of wax that protrude from your creation.


7. Pick your colors!


8. Place Hand Sculpture in clear plastic bag so that everyone you pass can see your beautiful creation.

It was fun! Now our Hand Sculpture is sitting on top of our huge TV, I hope it doesn’t melt!


October 16, 2008   Comments Off

The Tale of Hot Dog Fry

by Kate

One evening in Seoul. . .

Behold Doota. This is the one tiny shopping maze we entered in the huge shopping district, Dung Dae Mun, in Seoul.

This is how we felt. Blurry Maze. Exhausting.
Chad loves shopping. :)

In hunter/gatherer fashion, he went in search of water and returned with news of nourishment never before seen by our Western eyes.

Which did we choose?
This – - a hot dog covered in batter and french fries.
One bite.

Bigger than my head.

Our friend Eve partaking in this artery hardening endeavor.

Dave took a bite, don’t worry.
Phew, okay, after that dramatic presentation of a taste of the tastes we got in Seoul, hello! We had a marvelous weekend full of things we would like to share with you soon. Most of the pictures we took were of events such as these. So, you get to see the quirks of Seoul. I hope everyone is well!Sleep time!

K

October 8, 2008   2 Comments

Sports Day

by Kate

Sports Day consisted of warm up stretches, speeches in Korean, speeches in Korean, cheering and running, relay races, games, relay races, games, cheering, dancing, really races and speeches in Korean. Oh, and the teachers all were a uniform and the kids all wear white. The kids are then tagged with either yellow or blue to designate which team they are on.

Finish Line!

Tug of War!

This is Teacher Kim. She acts as out co-teacher and English speaking connection!! She has been absolutely wonderful to us. She usually teaches at a Guendeok branch school but the branch school joined us for sports day!


Chicken fighting. Falling. Like what we weren’t supposed to do in the pool when we were kids. The do it on the ground as part of school.


Aerobics. . . what we would call organized dance party for minors. We practiced the dance with them. Pretty fun. We’ll show you when we get back. At my other school, Jang Ho, the students wore spandex midriff and back exposing, bell bottoms, corp tops and halter-mini dresses. Electric green and yellow with kelly green ruffles. Whoa Nellie.


Dress the little guys in clown outfits for their relay race!



Not only the kids do relay races. The parents are major participants in Sports Day. Sometimes they are competing alongside the children, other times against each other. My favorite of the parents vs. parents games is the one bellow.

1. Inflate balloons.
2. Place filled balloon into a huge trash bag.

3. Compare balloon-stuffed trash bag height.

4. Relay race with the balloon-stuffed trash bags.

For sports day Chad and I were assigned to stamp the kids 1st, 2nd, or 3rd when they cross the finish line. Then we made them sit down in their respective line and wait to be escorted back to the holding area for the children. It was a fun way to get LOTS of high-fives in.

During one of my stamp and squat sessions teacher Kim (our English speaking guide) ran over to me, dragged me over to a line-up of mothers with their children and stuck me in a mother place. She told me “You are his mother,” and ran off. No direction, just go with the Korean flow, Kate. The first kid I was mother to was not happy to be stuck with the tall white woman as his Mom, the second held my hand and my third child was incredibly cold and then told me “Good job!” in English when I caught the ball on our turn.


This kid is the only one that held my hand as I played surrogate Mom.

After I acted as Sports Day Guardian to a few children Chad got to play Mom too. The teachers thought he looked sad because he didn’t get to play. :)
He caught it!
Waiting for out turn.
We had to squat the whole time. They constantly squat for EVERYTHING! Have we mentioned that? Western knees don’t work that way.

We won!!

Our VP is the little guys in the blue baseball cap. He is pouring beer for everyone at lunch. The lunch that preceded the noontime beer drinking consisted of lavish sea things. . .Raw? Not sure.

Have fun? We did!

K

September 28, 2008   1 Comment

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