This blog is dedicated to things that Valerie and Don could NOT get over while they were here for two weeks. These things aren't in any particular order.
#1 How small the cars were:
#2 Delivery EVERYTHING:
Not pictured: McDelivery, Delivery King (Burger King), Grocery Delivery, and Laundry Pickup and Delivery Services
#3 What's in the grocery stores:
Magnetic shopping cart escalators
Spam and oil in a gift set
NOODLES!!!
HOT Pepper paste
Soy Sauce
#4 The cool statues that are EVERYWHERE
Pinky Promise
Statues with peculiar anatomy
This guy made out of tires.
#5 The children!
Valerie kept trying to secretly take her picture (that's why it's blurry).
She wasn't camera shy.
Neither was she, Love Sohee!
Of course the babies on the boat.
Valerie and Don loved Korea and loved how cute everything was here, including the water bottles. It was fun watching them and remembering what it was like our first few months here.
Upon our arrival to Jeju-do we took two different buses and then a taxi to our hotel in Seogwipo. We were all starving so we went out for some korean style pizza and to explore the town a little. The next morning we got up and went to the famous waterfalls in our area. Cheonjiyeon Falls (천지연 폭포) was the first waterfall we visited and it was really beautiful.
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Once a boy scout always a boy scout... Nick getting trash out of the water.
The Second waterfall we went to was the Jeongbang Falls (정방폭포)
We went down a lot of stairs knowing that we had to come back up them but it was worth it.
Nick and I climbed on the rocks to get an awesome picture and these two Koreans were clueless. However, we are in every one of their pictures making funny faces. Just so everyone knows the selfie phone holder has gone viral here in Korea...... Crazy!
After photo bombing the guys this happened.......
Our next stop was the beach. We took a taxi to the nearest beach.. name was Jungmun beach. Not even five minutes after we had gotten out of the taxi Mom fell and we went straight to the ER. Turns out she fractured her radial head. They put her in a splint and sling and sent us on our way. We relaxed for the remainder of the day. We attempted the beach again the following day.
We went back to the beach the following day to photograph the culprit, these rocks! her flip flop clipped a rock that was sticking up more and SPLAT!
As we were walking down to the beach everyone was walking up. Turns out that you can't swim in the ocean past a certain time, who knew?
The next day Nick and I went on a submarine ride!! It was very exciting although the waves were ginormous and people got sea sick. We started out on a boat that took us out to the submarine.
We were the first ones on and we got the to sit right next to the captain.
We had a small monitor in front of us so we could see what was happening topside.
Such a cool experience!
Our last stop on Jeju was the Manjanggul lava cave. The cave is claimed to be the longest lava tube in the world, but that isn't the case, and it isn't even close! This cave is different from the ones we have back in Alabama because the stone making up the interior is much harder than the limestone that make up the caves there. The stalactite and stalagmite formations in the cave were created by the intense heat and natural cooling processes of the lava that flowed through it thousands of years ago. All in all my general impression of the cave is that it was wet. The cave has a constant rain due to the many tiny stalactite formations on the ceiling, the coolness of the cave and the humidity in the air. All in all it was a very cool experience.
We had a great time on Jeju island even though Mom really hurt herself. A quick update on her. She is recovering from surgery well. Turns out she had a piece of bone that chipped off, they had to remove it and take out some dead bone. Then they covered her radial head with a titanium cap. So now she has a little more in common with Wolverine. Hope she will recover fully!
Last summer I was stuck in Cyber School, so I wasn't able to teach in a classroom with the same students for two weeks. This year things were different. The teachers worked hard on their topic and made pages to go along with it. Everyone's pages were put together to form our book. In the past a teacher had the same class and had to teach the other topics. This time we changed it and each teacher got to teach their topic to each class. Each week we taught our theme for two days and then had two fun days. Our fun days included: Talent show, Art day, Golden Bell Quiz, Movie Day, and Field Day. We had a lot of fun.
My class:
Girls from left to right: Annie, Emily, and Julie
Boys from left to right: Tom, Hulk(Killer), Spider-man, and Wolverine (And yes their personalities matched their names)
Awesome Gif! I loved my class so much. They were all in 4th grade and their English skills were the lowest out of the other 30 something children that interviewed for the program. My group had so much energy and for the most part they were well behaved.
I taught a camping theme for my class. The kids seemed to enjoy it. We put up a tent and ate S'mores, what's not to enjoy?
Our talent show turned out awesome. Lauren Hand and I did a taekwondo comedy routine that everyone loved.
Our last teaching day was field day. It turned out to be more like a carnival because of the rain. Each teacher picked an activity to do in their classroom and the students went around in a rotation to visit each class. At the end we played Hide and Go Seek and Sardines. It was AWESOME! As the students left to go home for the last time they were surprised at how much we loved them... HAHA Watch the video!
Hope you liked the water balloon video! We had such a great three weeks with our students. Its sad to think that this is our last summer intensive. Time is going by so fast. Now summer vacation is upon us and my Mom and Step-dad have arrived. Vacation blog next!!!
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