It's official...

I will be back in Canada on June 1st. There is still a lot to see and do in Korea, but I am very excited to get home to friends and family.

This weekend, weather cooperating, a few of us are heading to a warrior festival thing a few hours away. They let you make your own armor! Here's hoping it doesn't rain.

School is busy... they have maxed out all the foreign teachers' schedules so that they can pay the Korean teachers less money. Our school is struggling financially (due in part to zero marketing before the new session in March). We're all tired and a bit cranky at the moment - more so because they are not replacing Patrick when he leaves at the end of the month. Over time is good, over time is good...

Happy Birthday, Mom!

Two words

Shabu shabu. Had a delicious dinner last night with some of the girls. Granted, shabu shabu is japanese, but I like to think the Koreans put their own special twist on it. Spicy soup with veggies that you get to cook your own meat in. Yummy.

Three more Olympic gold medals today. Canada is now tied for the highest number of golds at a winter Olympics in history. It puts a little pressure on the Men's Hockey Team, but hopefully they can make it happen and break the record. Too bad the game airs at 5AM here (if it even makes it on television). Here's hoping I wake up to victory.

How did that happen?

It's almost March. Unreal. This has been a pretty busy month - in a much better way than January was. For Sul Nal (Korean Lunar New Year... better known as Chinese New Year for those playing at home), five of the teachers at my school and myself headed to Beijing for four days. It was unbelievable. The pictures I posted on Facebook tell a better story, but I'll give the run down. We flew out of a very quiet Busan Gimhae International Airport. New Year's is a big time to spend with family, so very few people were traveling out of the country besides foreigners. There were 17 people on our tour, including Valerie - the girl from Sudbury I met at orientation.

We arrived in Beijing around 4:30PM on Saturday, the 13th. We met our tour guide and headed to dinner and then an unbelievable acrobat show. Even that early in the evening, the fireworks had started. By midnight that night, they filled the entire sky. People were shooting them off on the street, from the roof and even out the window of a few apartments.

On Sunday, we toured a Jade factory before hitting the Great Wall of China. There are a few sections of the wall you can climb. Our spot took us up to one of the highest points. It was over 2000 steps. Everyone was pretty tired by the end, but it was the most satisfying experience of the whole trip. The afternoon brought us to the Summer Palace. It's a beautiful spot that would (unsurprisingly) be even more beautiful in the summer. I think some of the mystique was lost on us by that point. The Wall had left us pretty cold and a little sore. We ended the day with a quick visit to the Olympic Village to see the Bird's Nest. There was an optional Kung Fu show that night that I skipped in favor of soaking out my aches in our hotel hot tub. I regret nothing.

Monday we headed to Tianamen Square and the Forbidden City. The place is huge. And crowded. I think every tour group in Beijing was there at the same time as we were. In the afternoon, we hit up a tea ceremony and the Temple of Heaven. China has some of the most beautiful buildings I have ever seen.

After some shopping on Tuesday, it was back to Busan. Everyone was exhausted all week... which was unfortunate because it was the beginning of crunch time before...

KINDERGARTEN GRADUATION. What a crazy, four hour long experience. Each class has been working on a performance for over two months now. Lemon class showed off their dancing and wikipedia reciting skills in "This is It! A Loving Tribute to Michael Jackson. I can't even begin to explain to you this show. Given the material, they did amazingly well. The danced their sequined adorned butts off and only stumbled over a few lines in a twenty-minute play. I was pretty proud of them. The actual graduation ceremony was only about half an hour. The kids that were graduating were all given awards. Some of them made sense (Grace, for being warm hearted... no one in my class for the Cooperation award), some seemed like ironic jabs at our troublemakers (Toby, for being a good leader. He is a big bully) and some were given just so kids didn't go home empty handed (Julia, for painting. ECC does not, nor has it ever, had painting at school. Plus, Julia hates art). At the end of the show, Grace's mom gave me a really heartfelt thank-you for teaching her daughter. It was pretty sweet. The school took the teachers out for dinner after everything was finished. We had barbeque (surprise! not) and too much soju (there was a lot to toast to).

Now I am kindergarten free until Thursday when the new school year starts. I am going to miss Lemon class and their moodiness, but rumor has it I am teaching them their Ivy Masters classes on MWF. No official word on who my new kindie class will be, but after some covert ops snooping in the teacher's room on Friday night after everyone important had left, I think I am teaching the new Banana class. They're first year kindergarteners and six years old (five in western years). This means I will get some of the kids I taught Kindergarten Warm Up to this month, which is awesome because they are adorable.

The Olympics are ending this weekend. I've been following along on CBC's website and watching what I can on TV. All they seem to air is skating. I did get to watch Kim Yu-Na win gold in women's figure skating. She is a national hero in Korea and time pretty much stopped during her skate. Teachers at school were crying while they watched. I kept my Canadian bronze medal excitement to myself.

Enjoying my three day weekend for the March 1st Movement Day celebrating South Korea's independence.

Bring On February

Do you ever have those moments where you suddenly realize a good chunk of time has passed without you realizing it? I had one of those last night. I was heading home, tired, and realized it was Friday. Then I realized it was the end of January. How did that happen? For a month where days seemed to drag on, it flew.

Intensives are over, at last. I am back to my beautiful, relaxed schedule complete with a 3PM start time on Mondays. Nothing has really changed from my December schedule, with one notable exception. I am now teaching a Kinder Warm Up class on Thursdays. This class is for kids starting our kindergarten program in March. I am excited/nervous. For the last little while I have been thinking that I want to teach our Apple class once the new session starts (Kindergarten runs from March-February and my class is graduating). Apple class is the youngest class (5 years old in Korean years, 4 in Western years), and brand new to school. I just like the idea of starting fresh with classroom routines and the little ones are super cute. That being said, they speak no English. My kindies now are one of my most fluent classes - I often find myself having more engaging conversations with them than my oldest students... even if it mostly about stickers or someone's pencil case. Anyways, this Warm Up class will be full of non-English speakers, so it will be good practice for March. They are giving me a textbook, but I feel like I will mostly ignore it in favor of my own lessons. I am slowly realizing many of the books we are given are useless.

In other news, I joined the gym down the street from my apartment. I'd been feeling really anxious and restless for a few weeks and figured it was the best way to channel my energy. I'm aiming for 4 times a week and (after one week) seem to be able to pull it off. Of course, I woke up with a cold today, so ask me again Monday night if it's still working out (geddit? working out? oh, shut up). I am also starting my Spec Ed Part 1 AQ course on Monday. I'm excited to do it - I actually miss school.

China in two weeks!

January: Simultaneously Busy and Boring

We're right in the middle of intensives at school. Korean kids get two months off a year - January and August. Naturally they use this vacation from school to... attend more school. Our hagwon offers winter intensive classes during these months. Basically, kids come in for three forty minute classes back to back in the mornings or afternoons. These classes are during the day, so they overlap with the kindergarten schedule. Teachers have one of these intensive classes added to our schedules and they rearrange our kindergarten classes to accommodate them. In other words, I now start work earlier everyday, but still finish at the same time. It's been tiring - I am at school at least 10 hours a day - one day a week I am there 12 hours. I have a decent amount of breaks, but they are filled by prep and lesson planning. It is for this reason that my month has been less than exciting - not much free time during the week and weekends are spent resting and recovering. Hence - busy, but boring.

On the bright side, I must be doing something right. We have new Korean teachers that are in training coming to observe a few classes this week and I was one of three teachers chosen for them to watch. Not a huge deal, but a big compliment given that I have only been here about two months. It's the most positive response I've had in the land of no feedback. Unless they picked me as an example of what NOT to do...

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year's everyone. It is just past 2PM here in Korea on New Year's Day - midnight New Year's Eve back at home. I just watched the ball drop in New York thanks to live streaming on the internet. I cannot say enough how wonderful technology is. New Year's has never been a big holiday for me. I tend to think of it as overhyped and often a let down. That's why I opted for a quite night in watching the Gossip Girl marathon on OnStyle instead. I binged on junk food with a vow to eat less of it (but not none of it, because - seriously? never going to happen) in the new year.

I definitely do not regret my decision, given that I was able to get up this morning before 9AM, hang over free. I even got in a small work out!

The whole idea of New Year's has not been entirely lost on me, however. I have caught myself thinking about the past year and the future a few times over the last few days. It is still a bit incredible to me that this time last year I had not even considered Korea as an option, yet alone planned to be here. I was working at Chapters with no plans beyond heading to camp that summer. Now I'm on the other side of the world, having a great time and wondering why I didn't decide to do this two years ago.

I'm not making resolutions... I never keep them. I am, however, going to try and continue this little mission to better myself this year. It shouldn't be too difficult; most of the things I want to try and do are things I have been missing anyway. This means getting more active again, cutting back on the comfort food, eating more vegetables, etc. I am also going to take an AQ course in Special Education from Queen's so I can have a foot in the door when I apply for teaching jobs back home. I started most of these things in the last week or so, so I am allowed to say they aren't resolutions.

Not much exciting on tap for this week. I finally get a bank account and, more importantly, a pay cheque to put in it mid-week. Katie and I are going to see Avatar in 3D on a little play date, and I am going to sort out my expenses so I can start saving for China, paying off my student debt and possibly saving for a trip to Thailand before I head back to Canada. Hope your holidays were great and have a Happy New Year.