Happy New Year – from Puerto Princesa
Happy New Year! (belated.. )
Hello all,
I wrote a longer post a little bit ago but it got deleted 
Sorry… here is an abridged version -
Kate and I are in Puerto Princesa right now sitting in an internet cafe surrounded by World of Warcraft Gamers. This morning we were in Manila – which was an interesting experience. Very grimy gritty city – more third worldy than we expected but it was definitely worth a day or two. It Put everything in perspective for sure. We will post more about that later.
Kate’s sister Molly was in Korea for the last 2 weeks visiting us. We had a great time with her!! She came to school with us.. toured around Samcheok and went to Seoul for a few days before she flew home and we flew to the Philippines.
Making Lanterns at Bongeunsa Temple in Seoul
Again at the Temple
Kate and Molly on a Seoul Bus Tour 
Kate and I had to wait in the airport for 12 hours for our flight (after Molly flew out in the morning) . Gave me some time to practice with my Camera
Kate doesn’t like sitting in the airport for 12 hours
Some Kids in Rizal Park in Manila. They were really excited when they saw my camera
Kate, Blanca and Ana (friends we met at our hostel) at Fort Santiago in Manila.
The view from our hostel tonight on Palawan Island – Puerto Princesa City…. Pretty amazing.
We’ll post some more pictures sooon when we get internet access again.
More soon,
-All the best
—-Chad & Kate!
January 11, 2010 1 Comment
School Photo
We had school pictures a couple of months ago and our teachers all took these two pictures together. We also took individual photos, which we never saw, but we were given these a few days later – just getting around to posting them now, sorry.
The first is a standard posed picture – (from the roof of the school) with all of the Geundeok teachers and staff. This is everybody
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The second picture is a new-age-awesomeness picture envisioned by the artiste photographers… If we were a band, we would be awesome… but we’re not, we’re elementary school teachers – so it’s just goofy. But that’s Korea!!
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Some of these people are really amazing. We’ve become great friends with a number of them and will miss them greatly when leave in a few months. One advantage of being at such a small school is that it’s really like an extended family. I know every one of these people pretty well and some of them are really our best friends in Korea. That’s much less possible at a school with 80 teachers that is departmentalized and divided. I’d list the names and positions of everyone in the picture but it would probably be silly. Our closest friends are the woman on the far left (black sweater tan skirt) – She’s the 5th grade teacher, teacher Kim Young-mi and is a year older than us. She came this year from Taebaek and has been a great friend! Can’t imagine the past year without her great sense of humor and fantastic English. The woman in the front with the White Jacket (younger woman) is our official Co-teacher, Son Eun-Jin. She’s amazing! Such a fantastic friend and always willing to help us when we have problems. (And she’s the hardest working person in our school ) In front of Kate (to the left a bit) in all black is Teacher Kim Suk-jin. She was our first friend here in Korea and really helped us a lot our first semester here. She was in the U.S. last summer studying English and is now teaching most of our classes with us (long story). She’s great and we will miss her a lot. Hopefully some of these ladies will come to our wedding!! There are a number of other teachers I’d love to tell you about and surely will sometime soon, but for now that’s it Just wanted post these pictures while I was thinking of it.
All the best…
Kate and I are enjoying homemade apple pie and whip cream tonight. Thanks KATE!
-Chad
December 14, 2009 3 Comments
GyeungJu School Field Trip
Recently our school went on a double field trip day with some of our Garden school funding.
NOTE: Our school was designated a “Garden School” earlier this year and given some huge amount of money to renovate and redesign the programming. Kate and I have no idea really why our school was given this “honor” but we can assume it has something to do with our Vice Principal who last year was a supervisor at the office of education, so he has lots of connections. This all doesn’t really affect us toooo much except that everyone is going crazy trying to figure out how to spend all the money and we’re cramming in a bunch of field trips before the end of the school year to use some of it up. Hence.. the double field trip day.
The 4-6 graders went to Seoul for 2 days to visit another Garden school and to see some museums etc. The 1st-3rd graders went to Gyeungju. This city is about 3 hours south of Samcheok and used to be one of the dynasty capitals before the country was unified and Seoul became the capital. We’re talking 600-1000 years ago… So we toured some of the major historic sites, a museum, and a famous Buddhist temple. I’m glad we got to go on this trip even though the 1st-3rd graders are more difficult to handle than the older kids. We’ve seen Seoul so many times, it was nice to check off another place (even if our trip was very fast and not at all comprehensive ).
Here are some of our pictures from the trip. If you’d like to see the full gallery check it out in the photo pages or click here.
*A note to the reader, Chad did the grunt work for this and I am filling in the captions. Now you know why Chad suddenly became much more effeminate. It’s just me! -K
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The sunrise on our way to see the old city. We have to leave at 7!
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Approaching the tombs. They are from the Silla dynasty (they think). They were enormous and I think they are one of Korea 1 billion wonders. I think we saw about 10 that day. They are scattered all over the place which was very striking when we were driving up. Did we mention the cold? It was cold.
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This is one of the fist astronomical observatories in Korea! It’s next to the tombs. We stopped there long enough for each class to get a picture then we moved on.
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Next we visited the old royal palace. If my memory serves me well I’d say it burned down a few hundred years ago and the building are abotu 20 years old (replicas). There was a time lapse.
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Now we are visiting a temple. I have to say, the Korean temples have sadly started to melt together in my memory but this one really stands alone. It has two towers inside and they were beautiful. One of the towers was being restored and we got to climb the scaffolding and peak at the man working.
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This is one amazing picture! That new lens has really been paying off!
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Isn’t this amazing?
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Here is the man working on the tower.
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That’s me and my man!
Well, on another note, we are doing very well. I have been grinding away on my applications and Chad has been AMAZING through it all. He deserves lot’s of high-fives.
I hope that everyone is doing well. This is out last Christmas in Korea. We are pretty excited – there are a lot of wonderful things coming up!
Oh, and Molly will be here in 2 weeks then we get to go to the Philippines! Lucky dogs!
Kate & Chad
December 12, 2009 2 Comments