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!