Quick update

This week has been rather uneventful. This weekend I stayed in Dangjin and didnt get up to too much. Friday night Nat and Nick had a few people over and we just hung out there for awhile. Saturday Nat and I went to the local market and got a bunch of veg and made a nice vegetarian dinner that night and we went to the jimjilbang. Sunday Nat and Nick went to go pick up Natalie's brother and his girlfriend from the airport and me and Dominic hung out for a bit watching movies and relaxing. Then school started again on Monday and Natalies brother and his girlfriend arrived so we all went out to dinner. His girlfriend is British too but she lives in China studying and working. She loves it there and is in Beijing. She leaves in July so I dont think I will be able to make it there before that.
School is pretty normal, nothing to different. We do have one little boy who has decided he wants to pull his pants down and moon everybody. He started Friday and is still going strong. Its pretty hilarious buuuut we need to make him stop its getting out of control. Students keep coming and leaving which makes class kind of difficult bc you can never plan accordingly but it all works out in the end...to a degree.
Friday we have a sing and dance contest...my kids arent very good but we do it every month so hopefully in a few months time they will improve. The foreign teachers and I have decided each month we should pick a genre and video tape all the performances and then put them online for you to choose which is the best. Ohhhh the stupid things that excite a teacher hahaha

I just made a nice dinner with a bunch of garlic and ginger and now Im heading off to do back to back yoga classes because I will not be going on Friday. Im heading to Seoul and we will show the visitors some sites and it will be good for me too since I havent see any sites yet!!

Ill take pictures to show you later

Hope you're all doing well. I miss everyone!

Easter at school

Not much happened this weekend. I stayed in Dangjin. We did celebrate Easter at school Friday. We had an Easter Egg hunt inside because it was raining out, a spoon and egg race, and pin the tail on the bunny. They had a lot of fun but I dont think they completely understood it. Easter is celebrated here but all they do is go to church. There is no Easter bunny or candy or Easter baskets etc but they had fun anyway!

Joshua & Andrew eating their Peeps. I shared mine from America!

Gloria in her Easter best.

pin the tail on the bunny

typical lunch cuisine

Monica vs. Gloria in spoon and egg race

Kids looking for their Easter eggs.

I gave me Korea teachers my peeps because they have never had one before!

A rather insignificant weekend

A video of me talking about what happened this weekend! woooo!

Giman,Melissa,Dana and me

one of the many cherry blossoms

mushroom house at Children's Park

Grand Children's Park in Seoul

Grand Children's Park in Seoul

the groom chasing after his bride in Dangjin

And some photos!

Specifically for Keith and Terri

I just wanted to say thank you so much for the wonderful package! It was really amazing to get this at school! You know everything I like so well! I was soooo excited! Thank youuuuuuuuu!!!

Camera Shy

Here are my friends I work with and my boss at the coffee shop after school. They didn't want to talk so this is all I got for now!

Kijisi museum

Today we took our kindy kids to the Kijisi Museum. This is a museum dedicated to the tug-of-war that happens every year in Dangjin. This is a very big deal here. The process to make the ropes for this event takes a very long time and they ropes are so long they run entire street lengths and takes about two days to set it all up. The kids didnt seem too interested but then at the end they got to do their own tug of war and that was a lot of fun.

My class now has 7 kids. I forget if I told you that. 

David, Joshua, Sarah, Andrew, Jerome, Gloria and Zoey.

Black Day

In Korea, Valentine's Day is a very long drawn out holiday. Today is black day. A day for people who arent in relationships to wear black and eat black noodles to commemorate their singledom.

South Korea celebrates Valentine's Day, where local custom dictates women give gifts to men. It has taken on a popular event born in Japan but sweeping Asia known as White Day on March 14 when men return the favour with gifts for women.

But Black Day, on April 14, is a South Korean original. It is marked by people who have not found love dressing in dark colours and commiserating over meals of black food, with the dish of choice being Chinese-style noodles topped with a thick sauce of black bean paste.

"I had a miserable time on Valentine's Day, felt even lonelier on White Day and now I'm crying over a bowl of black noodles," said a young women who asked only to be identified by her family name Na out of embarrassment.

"Things better be different next year."

At universities across the country on Monday, students without lunch dates ordered black noodles, dined with other lonely hearts and searched for companionship.

South Korea marketers have hatched special days for the 14th of each month to create a calendar laden with love.

Some days have gained traction such as Black Day, while others such as Green Day in August, when couples are supposed to drink cheap liquor that comes in green bottles and walk in the woods, have yet to attract much of a following.

Black Day events have snowballed, with a major matchmaking service this year providing an evening of speed dating where the dish of choice is sushi blackened by squid ink.

An on-line company for movie tickets sponsored a speed eating competition of black noodles for those who bought single tickets for the latest films.

"It is depressing enough going to the movies by yourself," said Shin Youn-joo of the company called Max Movie.

"We just wanted to spread a little joy to the 'with-outs'."

jimjilbang

I think Ive told you already what a Jimjilbang is but if this is your first time tuning it....its a bathhouse basically. There are women and men areas full of huttubs, saunas, dry saunas etc and you go naked. Then there is a co-ed floor where you were uniforms and just hang out sitting on the floor and doing whatever. I go to the bath part and tonight this little girl decided I was her new best friend. She is 11 and her English name is Jennifer. Her English wasnt amazing but she could say a little. All I wanted to do was be silent and relax tonight but this little girl made it a point to bounce along to wherever I was. It was cute though, I think she was just excited to use her English outside of school. It was a bit strange sitting around and talking about English naked with a little kid but you get used to being naked around everyone and it is okay. To you..this might sound very strange but its normal here.
At one point Jennifer and I were laying on these sun beds and I was looking at my fingers. She explained to me that we have "grandma fingers" because they were all wrinkling from all the hot water. It was so adorable.

The end

Strawberry festival minus actually picking strawberries

Every Friday at school, our kindergartener’s have an activity day. This last Friday we celebrated April Birthdays. We had about 5 – 6 kids for April. What we do is there is a big table with cakes and fruit and presents. All the birthday kids sit at the table in front of everyone and we sing happy birthday. Then, each comes and talk to a teacher about their photos. We show baby and kid pictures of the kid that their parents gave us on a projector. They are really cute photos and the kid explains what is going on. Then after we play lots of games together and then they watched a movie. I have lots of pictures from the birthday party.

Oh yeah, so the picture above of my small class of four students have now expanded to 7! I have recently got three new students. One boy who came with the name Jerome haha and he is a naughty boy. Then two new girls who I named Gloria and Zoey. I also got news that soon I will be teaching a new kindergarten class but really they are babies. 2-3 year olds. I have to play with them not teach them. Im hoping it will be fun. So far I picked out the name Alfie for one of the little boys haha.

Friday night we had a quiet night. I went over my co-workers house Nick and Natalie and hung out for a bit chatting with two other friends. We all went to bed early so we could get up and head to Nonsan for the day. This is about 2 hours away. There they were having their 13^th annual strawberry festival. We went there with the intention of picking heaps of strawberries.  Clearly we are just silly westerners…..strawberry festivals are for buying strawberries and going on rides and looking at lots of food vendors. We could not pick strawberries but it was good fun. We walked around for a few hours because it was our first real nice day. T-shirt weather. It was the first day to see the cherry blossom tress…so beautiful. After Nonsan, we drove to the city of Daejeon, this is where I was last Friday. We stayed at a love motel. In Korea, there really isn’t such this as a regular hotel. There are these houses you can rent for week trips or there are love motels. Love motels can be rented by the hour or over night. They are quite nice because they have beds (the house places juse have mats on the floor). Tvs, computers with internet, full showes, drinks in the fridge, shampoo etc etc. The reason why you can rent these for the hour is because if you are not married or are still living with your parents you can not have the opposite sex in your home. Even if you have been dating for a very long time. Soooo it is very common for couples to go to these love motels. They are also very popular for the westerners because it is just as if you are staying at our version of a hotel.

We met up with a few friends that live somewhere else here in Daejeon. We all went to an Indian restaurant for dinner then a popular ex pat bar called Santa Clause. They were having an improv night there so we watched that for a bit then ventured to another bar where we played pool. In this country there is a very popular drink similar to Vodka but slightly weaker called SoJu. It cost about $1.50 for a bottle and you can buy it anywhere and everywhere. I decided to buy two of these this Friday night so needless to say I got a little drunk. We all decided to go to the Noribang…..which is Karaoke but in small rooms you rent by the hour and just sing with your friends…..no audience. I had a blast. We sang and danced to millions of songs and there are few silly pictures of me dancing.

The next morning we drove to a quiet little Buddha Park about halfway back towards our town of Dangjin. It was full of beautiful giant Buddha statues all spread apart. Most of Korea is Christian but there are a good amount of Buddists here too. The park was beautiful.  I am a little sick AGAIN so once we got home I fell asleep at 7PMand woke up at 7AM to get ready for school.

Now its back to being healthy, going to yoga and gym and school of course

My korean information

My address is:

Wonderland
Sarah Budd
Samseong BD 2F
300 Eupnae-Ri,
Dangjin-Eup, Dangjin-Goon Choong Nam, Korea
zip code 343-805


just in case you ever want to send me something : )

and  my telephone number is
010-7935-0533 (plus the korean country code)

and my skype is
S0916B

April 5 I get a new student AGAIN

Today I got a new girl in my kindergarten class. The four little hellions have become six. She did not have an English name so I got to name her! She is now Gloria! She is really cute except her teeth look rotten. For some reason, so many korean children has the most gnarliest teeth Ive ever seen. They dont have fluoride in their toothpaste or water here.
I really wish that most of my classes werent about teaching phonics. Phonics is so boring! I wish my kindergarten was much better too. They are making me hate teaching kindergarten, they give me no respect and completely ignore me! I keep trying to figure out the recipe to make them behave but it hasnt happened yet. Some of the other kindy classes at my school are so cute and love to learn and are behaved! I wish I was blessed to have one of those classes. My favorite classes are my older students. They are behaved and interested and I can actually have conversations with them.

Tonight, I am going to hot yoga with my friend Natalie. This whole week is full of yoga in the AM and PM, gym workouts, and saunas! Im really trying to get fit while Im here!!

What I do after my workout at the gym

My first weekend in April

Foreign teachers of Dangjin

Dominic teacher and I

Dinner with my co-workers

Fortress

Mallipo beach

Mallipo

Mallipo beach

St. Patrick's Day

Rant about yoga and so on

third video blog

sick and tired...already

April Fools Day

my class is from balloon country

Funny mask group

They got "Hit by a bus"

This is "Jonny"

Today was April Fools Day and it fell on a friday at school. That was good because we have activities on fridays with kindergarten. I gave the idea to make this friday all about being funny and doing jokes. I went to school early and pranked all the other teachers. I put tape under all their computer mouses so they wouldnt work. Everyone was very confused and worried that their computers were broken! It was really funny. Then each class got to dress up silly. I had  my class put funny glasses on and tape a bunch of balloons to their bodies. It was very funny. Then we pranked them with a bunch of candy. Some wrapped pieces still had candy while others had a piece of paper inside with a silly face on it! They thought it was hilarious. We pulled some other jokes too. It was a fun day. Tonight I am going to a different city with a south african friend from my town. Im not sure what we are getting into but Ill let you know Sunday.