October Happenings

How is it November already? Only 38 more days until Christmas, a.k.a. 38 days until I leave for vacation in Thailand! It will be my first vacation of life where I'm not running around trying to see and do as much as humanly possibly!

I arrived here in July, in the midst of literally unceasing heat and now the weather brings to mind the fact that I absolutely hate being cold and the only reasons I tolerate winter is because snow is beautiful and Christmas is the best time of year, ever– but it doesn’t snow much in Korea, and Christmas is the opposite of popular here. What am I going to do??

Anyway, the true purpose of this blog is to recap the busyness of October. (Please note that this will be largely a photo-blog, mostly because this should have been written weeks ago, and I've finally found the slightest inspiration to finish this thing thanks too my procrastination impulses- I have kindergarten reports due tomorrow, so let's see if I can bang this thing out before I lose it again. . .)

October 9th was Sports Day for SLP kindergarten. This day was begrudged by many teachers, but not myself, because, hey! I had enjoyed playing games as a camp counsellor and we were getting paid for it, so how bad could it be? Also, I ran in the relay race in front of all my students, their parents, my co-workers, and my bosses, and didn’t fall on my face! Of course my team won, largely due to my participation, and having nothing to do with the fact that we had a pro-baseball playing father on our team.

I wore this and posed willingly. I was in the midst of being over-fed with pizza, chicken, and donuts, so of course I was so happy I would've done almost anything!

Don't worry, if he does this in class, he gets in trouble. I'm a good teacher.

October 17th was a belated Thanksgiving celebration. We had everything a Thanksgiving dinner needs, courtesy of Costco, except it was chicken instead of turkey.

Our school let us foreign teachers use the school roof for our dinner and even decorated the table and gave us wine!

Mmmmm.... (Sorry, I didn't know what else to say. I mostly added this photo because I know some people would prefer to see photos with me in them. You're welcome.)

One Friday, Sonya and I took our kids to the park, which isn't all that noteworthy, but I want to show off how cute my kids are:

I'm biased, but they're adorable!



Gets me every time- SO CUTE! She's the baby of the class, turning 5 on December 26th. She was also the only student in the class who knew why camels have humps. I would steal this one.

So serious looking here, but he's got the most charming little grin which will likely never be captured on film because Koreans usually try their best to look serious for cameras.

October 23rd saw me committed to a 12 km hike up and down Songnisan Mountain with Heather’s fellowship group. Why?????

Of course, we don't look miserable here -there's nothing excrutiating about posing for picture.

I learned a few things that day. First, I enjoy hiking flat trails. Mountains make hiking not fun. Second, the best part of hiking a mountain is before. Third, apparently I suffer from memory blocks when it comes to physical pain, case in point being the very next weekend, when I voluntarily hiked Gyeryongsan mountain.

The crew of SLPers who didn't back out the night before (the rest of you know who you are. . . shame, shame).

Then there was Halloween. . .

I don't want to overload you with pictures of my kinders, because I know I'm biased about their cuteness, but I just had to share this. Yi An was so serious about this one, and it was all I could do not to laugh!

Sonya was a ghost, or a zombie, or a zombie ghost?

The SLP foreign teachers were invited to (crashed?) a party at KAIST.

There's a story behind that "tatoo" entitled "Lost in Translation". Certain people find it funnier than others.

And that was October.