Vacation Part 1!

Changnyeong, Gyeongju 경주시, Changnyeong English Village

Valerie and Don arrived late Thursday night. Their plane was one of the last to land before the airport closed. As they went to the restroom before our long journey to CEV we were approached by a taxi driver asking if we needed his services. I have learned the hard way that if they are asking DON'T GO. We tried to ignore him because his asking price was too high. I haggled with him and he wouldn't budge so I bluntly told him we would find someone else to give us a ride. He followed us pointing to his taxi "come on this way" I told him we would go for 90,000 won (He wanted 100,000 won) He said fine, so we followed him to his car. The whole way home he would come up with funny ways to tell me that he wanted 100,000 won instead of the 90,000 we agreed on. I was getting annoyed, Don and Valerie were laughing really hard. 

Friday we rested and wandered around our little area.

Rice!

They couldn't get over how beautiful it is here!

On Saturday we attended a taekwondo competition and exhibition and watched our friends compete. Most of them did well.

 My Korean sister, Yu Jin

 A student I had during Summer intensive program, Tom

Performing a poomsae on the right is another one of my students Jay.

 Some girls from Summer Intensive and Cyber School

 MONKEY FACE!!!!! With Sohee, Master Park's Daughter.

 Sohee took pictures of "Mother" and "Father"

Our Taekwondo show group performed for the Governor and other visitors.

Right after the show was over we took pictures with the Governor and other important people, sorry no pictures of that yet. Then Richard and Suzi took us to Gyeongju to show Mom and Don some beautiful historic sites.

First stop was the Bulguksa Temple.

Second stop was a Buddha carved into a cave on top of a mountain. You were not allowed to take pictures of him but the area is beautiful.

Third stop was dinner because we were starving. Richard and Suzi took us to their favorite local restaurant and we ate like Kings and Queens.

Suzi taught me how to pick out the bones and cut up this AMAZING dish. The Kalbi (beef) was Delicious! 

Fourth and Final place was the Anapji pond. It was sardine-can packed full of people.

We got home around 11 :30 PM and went straight to sleep!

Sunday our school opened for 2 hours to give a tour to a group of taekwondo students from China. We were excited to see that our taekwondo friends came also.  Mom and Don got to see our school and help out in the fun-educational learning. 

 The group that came.

 Don, Valerie, Master Park (Taekwondo teacher) His wife Jung Mi, Lauren, Nick, and Sohee

Nick, Don, Valerie, Richard, Lady from China, Suzi, Principal from China, Lauren, Owner of taekwondo gyms here and in China.

Mom and Don receiving a gift from China. They were so surprised!

 Nick's activity in Camp Mart.

 Lauren's activity in Airport and Hotel.

Mom made a Chinese friend "Vivian"

We had such a great time the last few days hanging out around our area. Next stop is Andong and Seoul. Can't wait to share more picture. Please leave comments!

Summer Intensive Program

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!!!

Nick's Hidden Talent

Here recently we have been visiting our beautiful swimming hole. We have gotten a lot of rain so it has been very very full. We have been on morning schedule (8:30-5) so we attend taekwondo in the evening with a group of amazing kids. Nick has discovered some confidence in his tumbling abilities.

At first I freaked out, because we are getting old and I didn't want him to end up like me, a gimp. Then I realized we are still young. Nick is so fit right now.... Now is the time for him to flip and do whatever he wants within reason.

Other than Nick's awesome flips we went to Seoul again a couple of weekends ago for our routine Temple trip, but this time we were able to meet up with a friend. Although I had never met Dorthy Stott before, I knew both of her parents from Church in Alabama. Her mother told me that she loved Korea. Last summer when she came for a few weeks we tried to meet up but I got sick and we missed each other. We kept in touch and this year we finally met up and man am I glad we did.  She showed us some great places and things to eat not far from the temple, too bad we didn't discover them earlier!

Nick and I at the Seoul Temple of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.

First time we tried Soldiers Stew: Raman, hot dogs, bean sprouts, macaroni, spam, random meat, cheese, rice cakes and more. When you started running low on raman and rice you can add more at no extra cost. It was delicious and spicy.

Dorthy brought us to an AMAZING dessert place. We had the tallest oreo bing su (like shaved ice) and Nutella pancakes SUPER DELICIOUS!!!

BRAIN FREEZE!!

Just a fun picture! We had a great night!

Mud Festival

This past weekend we went to the Mud Festival in Boreyong, South Korea. 

Our group went with Enjoy Korea. The mudfest was over-crowded with a disappointingly small amount of mud. If you didn't pay the extra 10,000 Won you didn't get to play on the seven inflatables covered in mud. We all thought, because of pictures we saw, that there would be pools of mud outside of the fence. There were three buckets and they were completely empty, thus left us desperate to cover ourselves in non-existent mud. We took water from our bottles and dumped it on the clay mirrors and scrapped up what we could while those of us with less shame (ehem*Nick*cough) scrapped the sediment that had settled off the concrete. I would say we did pretty well.

New teachers Josh and Whitney!

our attempts got get our hands on some mud.

 I guess i'm a bit of a handsy girl since I managed to get my hands on almost everybody! Top is Nick and Manda

After all of the fun we jumped into the ocean and washed off. Later we enjoyed some delicious, although expensive, festival food!

In other news, my arm is healing fine. I'm finally out of my splint. I use a brace during Taekwondo and when I'm in large crowds even though my bosses and my husband think I should wear it more often.  Meh, I'm a rebel.  I wanted to show you what medicine "bottles" looked like here in Korea!  You get an individual bag for each dose of medication.  They had me taking two sets of pills up to three times a day for four weeks, that equals a lot of little bags!

I will leave you with this awesome photo of Nick and I dancing at Club Frog in Daegu!

Surgery in a Foreign Country

Saturday May 24th I was at a barbeque with all of my church friends. The hamburger and hotdogs were amazing. I was getting bored so I decided to get on the trampoline with the young girls. We were playing a game where you had to copy the trick the previous person did, so when it was my turn I was a little nervous but I went for the tricks so that I wouldn’t be out. I jumped really high, then landed on my knees, and finished with a head stand. I landed on my right arm funny and I heard three distinct pops. My arm went limp, so I got off the trampoline and acted like I was fine. As time passed the pain increased, I put some ice on it and held it across my chest. I could no longer move or bump it without a shooting pain up my arm.

         Our friends, the Wood Family, took us to their home and then drove Nick to Changnyeong to get my insurance card. When they got back we ate dinner and then went to the Emergency Room at Fatima Hospital.

         In the ER they gave me some pain medication and then x-rayed my arm. Come to find out I had two fractures one on the radial head, and one on the coronoid process and possibly a third one on the humerus. They mentioned that I may need surgery, and that I needed to see their specialist but he is only there Tuesdays and Thursdays. They wanted to admit me into the hospital, but I didn't want to stay. They wrapped my arm in a splint, gave me some pain medications and sent me on my way with a Tuesday appointment.
         Richard and Suzie were super kind to drive me to the hospital Tuesday morning. I brought some things with me just in case I had to stay. We met with the Doctor and he said I needed surgery on the radial head. He would use two screws to put it back into place. He could do the surgery Wednesday, so they went ahead and admitted me to the hospital. They told me I would recover in the hospital for six days after my surgery. Richard and Suzie were a lot of help. They got me set up in a cheaper room with Koreans and Korean meals.  If I wanted an international room and American food it would cost more money.  I was a little nervous at first because Richard told all of the ladies, ajimas, in my room that I don’t speak Korean well but I do understand it. I got settled into my little place and they left.

I felt so loved! You will find my name in Hangul on line E.

Some students made these get well posters for me. 

Nick spent as much time as he could with me but he had to leave either at 10am or 2pm to get to work. Then Mr. Ha would drop him off at the bus station right after work at 9 pm. I didn't see Nick until 10:30 and we would talk about our day and sometimes we would walk around the hospital. We usually passed out around midnight wake up at 5 or 6, breakfast at 7 and another was gone. It seemed like Nick was never there when I really needed him to be and that made me sad.

My roommates weren't so bad, except for their never ending stinky gas. Ya you heard me GAS!!!! I was the lucky one because Nick slept on the floor next to the queen of flatulence! Nick’s words, one night right before bed she had the longest fart I have ever heard and the worst part was I felt “the wind.”

I have so many stories I could tell, but I will spare you some of them and only tell the most memorable ones.

I ate rice, seaweed soup, some questionable meat, and kimchi for EVERY MEAL!

My Proof:

I would post more pictures of food but they all look the same.

I sucked it up and ate as much as I could for each meal, but honestly who likes cooked cold fish with the scales still on it? Not me!

My room was occupied with two older women who broke their backs, one with two broken arms, one who had knee surgery, and a young girl who broke her leg. All of them turned out to be really sweet. The whole hospital floor was full of gimps that were recovering or getting ready for some kind of bone surgery.

In my room we had four caretakers, two during the day and two at night. The two during the day were curious about me and the English language. They shared all of their snacks with me and I shared mine with them in return. Pretty soon we had our own little way of communicating.  They would come over to me with a cup full of something and say ahhh. I opened my mouth said ahhh and they would just feed me. I never really liked what I was being fed but I figured that it would be rude not to accept.

I had lot of visitors who always seemed to come at the same time. I enjoyed each visit but I especially enjoyed trying to tell everyone who they were after they left. The women in my room would tell me that I was more beautiful than my visitors. They were hilarious!

The Poop story: The night before my surgery a young nurse who didn’t speak much English came to ask me if I had defecated today, I looked at her puzzled and confused and asked what??? She started laughing and just walked out. Another nurse came in with her this time both uncontrollably giggling and asked the same question. I was laughing so hard as they started to act out their question with hands gestures. They still didn’t feel like I understood them so they went and grabbed a Doctor in training. He came in with them and was direct and to the point with the question. They gave me 1 hour to poop or I had to have an enema to make me go.  I had no desire to add that to my list of foreign hospital experiences so I went to the bathroom and pushed extra hard.  When I had done the deed I just walked past the nurses’ station and gave them a thumbs up! We all laughed!

Last funny but serious story:

It happened the morning of my surgery. I was just given some kind of medicine that made me tired so I rolled over and took a nap. While I was sleeping I moved and one of the important tubes of my IV came out and (DON’T READ THIS IF YOU HAVE A WEAK STOMACHE) blood started going everywhere. I screamed for Nick to help and he panicked. He couldn't find the nurse call button. An Ajima (older woman, who was also a caretaker) RAN over and yelled at nick to get some tissue…….WE DIDN'T HAVE TISSUES…. He tried hard to communicate this to her and when she finally understood she grabbed them from her area and held them on my arm, NOT the tube that was squirting blood. Finally a nurse came and stopped it however everything was bloody. They had to change me, my bedding and mop the floor. As the nurse was taking care of me the Ajima was taking care of Nick. She yelled at him for not being prepared with tissues and made him go buy some. He came back with the wrong kind she yelled at him again and again he went out searching for the correct kind of tissues. He was really frazzled that day.

The whole experience was enlightening and educational…… Could you survive one week in a foreign hospital???

Follow up: I had my two week appointment this week and everything is healing really well. I can now take my splint off at home and I'm doing physical therapy on my own five times a day. I started going back to Taekwondo (can't keep me away) don't worry I'm not doing much and I'm being really careful.  

Teacher's Day at CEV

Richard and Suzi really spoiled us this past teacher's day (May 15th) 

We were kid free so they took us to the Upo Wetlands and an African exhibit in Changnyeong. We had fun at both places.

 Just arrived to Upo Wetlands

 Watched a movie about the Wetlands

 Climbed to the observatory

 Beside the observatory was a sign that said to take a picture there, so we did!

 Our group being silly!

 Suzi, Me, and Sohee

 The Guys: Mr. Ha, Nick A, Nick B, Richard, Josh A, and Josh B

 This was suppose to be a girl only picture but Nick couldn't resist the animals.

 The drums were really cool.

And we will leave you with this wonderful picture of Nick and Psy!