Headed Home

Well sometimes things do not work out the way you planned. I have learned that is ok and sometimes wonderful things happen when you least expect it. My time teaching in Korea is now over and am headed home. I will miss my Kinder Kids and my great friends-new and old In Korea but am so excited about heading home.
I can not wait to see my dear, nephew who does not know I am coming home and hopefully will be very surprised when I show up to the busstop on Friday.
I still very blessed to have had time in Korea and teach there-albeit brief. The three little girls I taught Kinder to will always have a very special place in my heart and I will always think fondly of them. We laughed,smiled,learned alot and had a blast doing it.
No words can ever express what it meant to recconect with my friend Trina. Friends are a true treasure and so glad I got to spend so much quality time with Trina the last few months.
To my new friend Maria-you are such an amazing person and friend and I feel honored to have met you and plan to see you again.
I met so many,nice, friendly,helpful people along the way on my journey of Korea including the very sweet,man who has climbed mountains all over the world-that I will always remember.
I will never forget those weeks in July where I only worked half days and then explored all over Daejeon and saw so much and during that time truely fell in love with the city of Daejeon,it:s culture,history,people and the country of Korea too.
I spent this last weekend enjoying the beauty of Daegu and Busan. Busan is a truely,beautiful,special, amazing place I hope I get to visit again someday.
I did not cry after hugging Trina at he bus to depart to airport or while the plane pulled away from Seoul but as I write this I am now fighting back the tears a bit.
Thank you Korea for a chance to learn more about another culture and for giving me some beautiful,memories that will last a lifetime.
TTFN

Amazing Weekend with an Amazing Friend

My friend Trina and I had an Awesome Weekend together which we both needed.We stayed at a fantastic 4 star Hotel in Daegu(my bday gift to her). I got a great deal on the hotel as booked through Expedia and used my US debit card. The current exchange rate of USD to Korean Won is Fantastic but exhanging KRW into USD currently is awful-which is not good.We did not leave the hotel Saturday except to go get dinner at TGI Friday's-Yummy and take a nice walk. We enjoyed the huge, flat screen tv in the room, taking bubble baths-Hooray. Most people in Korean do not have bath tubs or even real showers. So it was lovely to have a real bath. We also enjoyed the view of the city of Daegu from our Hotel and room service for lunch-French Onion soup-another treat.
Sunday morning we headed to the nearby KTX train station and caught a train to Busan. Busan is on the Ocean and the 2nd largest city in Korea. Busan was just breath-taking and I got some great pictures I will be sharing soon. We got to visit the Aquarium and take a glass-bottom boat ride and feed sharks. We took a walk on the beach, visited a fresh fish market, did some shopping and just had an amzing time.
We had a very interesting taxi ride back to the train station which I will share later. Some of you know I somehow seem to attract strange, creepy, taxi cab drivers-well obivously it followed me to Korea-LOL!!!!
TTFN

Goldilocks is not cute!!!!!

The theme for October is Fairy Tales and Nursery Rhymes. This week's story was Goldilocks and the 3 Bears. Each day we have a daily sentence the kids practice reading and writing that has to do with our theme. Yesterday the sentence was Goldilocks is cute. Well later in the day the kids made a Goldilocks and 3 Bears Mini-Book. The quality of the copies was really poor. They looked like they were a reprint of a reprint and there were also rough and badly draw, simple illustrations. Well my kids took one look at the pictures and said Teacher-Goldilocks is not cute!!! I said ofcourse she is. They said look at this picture-she is so not cute-she is ugly. I am like oh-that's not nice-we do not call anyone ugly. So they said well she is ugly but since you said that is not nice-she is really not cute at all. I could not help it at this point-I broke into hysterical laughter and so did the kids. Kids can be so cute and funny!!!!!!
TTFN

4 day Weekend

Due to Chuseok-The Korean Thanksgiving or Harvest Festival I don't have to go back to work until Tuesday. I heard the grocery store would be crazy so I decided to head out early Friday morning right after it opened. It was not too crowded and I quickly got what I needed and headed home. Friday I also met my friend Maria for coffee and then we came back to my apartment and watched a move and got some Korean Soju/wine like liquor and enjoyed that.
Maria even brought me a gift for Chuseok-some traditional Korean Rice Cakes-Songypeon-and some huge,mammoth grapes. That was so very sweet of her-she is a nice, sweet, dear friend.
I was also able to catch up with family and friends by phone,im, etc like I do every weekend. I was also able to catch up on the literally insane amount of paperwork from September. Since we had a 4 day weekend my boss allowed us to have the weekend to finish paperwork-thank goodness.
It is currently Sunday so I still have today and tomorrow left of my 4 day weekend and am working on getting some writing down on my Children's Picture Story Book and Children's Poetry Book.
It has been a nice, relaxing, needed break. Hope everyone is having a Great Weekend!!!!
TTFN

Friends

I have some amazing and wonderful friends both here in Korea and back home in the states. I may not have a millon friends but the wonderful friends I do have are worth far more than a millon. I have been blessed to make friends with caring, warm, smart, amazing people who become like family.My friend Trina (she is currently teaching in Korea also) and I have been friends for like 24 years but had not seen eachother in 10 years when I came to Korea.
It was like we had seen eachother yesterday and am so blessed to have her here in Korea and so blessed to have her in my life. It is nice to have someone to call in the same timezone and laugh about funny things that happened when we were kids etc. She is a great listener, very creative and caring and such a amazing,special person.
Yesterday I spent the day with my Korean friend Maria. She is much younger and cooler than me so I am amazed that she wants to spend time with me. We have so much fun when we are together whether it is shopping, having lunch, going to the movies, having coffee in a cafe, having a Korean lesson, just talking etc. She is so sweet and willingly to help me in any way. She offers to make phone calls for me or go somewhere and transalate and when I thank her profusely-she always tells me to stop-because that is what friends do.
I miss my amazing friends at home(who I call, im, email, skype with etc.) but am so blessed to have wonderful, special friends here in Korea as well.
To all the special, amazing people in my life back home-I love and miss you all and so blessed to have you all in my life-Christie,Jessi,Allison, Marci,Katie, Kevin, Tam, Jace,Jen and anyone I forgot I am so sorry but I love you too.
Ehugs and love from Korea

Another Busy Week

I have not been good about blogging lately as September has been jam-packed with paperwork etc. I teach all day and then stay after school or come home and work on paperwork for several hours and then have been falling asleep while till work or with the tv on when I stop to take a break for a few minutes. My Elementary Class took their End of the Month test on Friday-so I spent Friday night grading it. The kids did pretty good on it. The paperwork has seemed as if it would never end this month from the test, to progress reports, lesson plans etc. I will be glad to see September go and get to start October off with a 4 day weekend-Hooray!!!!!!!!!!!!

Paperwork

Last week was a verybusy week at school and with being sick I was exhauted everynight. September has been crazy busy and I have a mountain of paperwork to do-lesson plans for October, Endof the Month Test for Elementary (which consists of 100questions). Pictionary and Daily Sentence for Elementary Class for October.Weekly Kinder lesson plans, Quarterly Reports on all students and First Month Reports on students new to my class.
I can't believe it is almost October and I get a 4 day weekend off to recharge-get Friday October 2nd-6th.
Since it is Chueseok-Korean Thanksgiving and they presell Train tickets etc. I will be staying put and not going anywhere. Plan on getting some reading done, resting, maybe going to see some movies-like Fame (which I am so excited about)!!!! I also plan on spending some time writing -currently have several book ideas I am working on.
I spent this past weekend working on my End of the Month Test-so glad to have it finished and out of the way-now to get the rest of my paperwork done.
I am looking forward to the end of the September and the beginning of October and a few extra days off.
TTFN