Teaching In Korea Has Ended

Well I'm officially finished teaching in Korea for now. I just arrived home in Canada yesterday evening...Boy am I ever feeling jet leg. I was up at 4 this morning and couldn't get back to sleep. I went to bed around 12 in the morning...that's not a lot of sleep. Oh well, I'm sure I'll catch up on it later.
Since my teaching time has finished in Korea, you can now read about my adventures in Canada by visiting my other web site.
http://rosaleeadventure.spaces.live.com
I won't be writing anything more on this site, so you will have to catch up on my life on the above site. Enjoy!

Sangju Beach

For my last free weekend in Korea, I went to the beach with a bunch of friends. It was nice to get away from things and since it's been stinkin' hot here, it was nice to go somewhere to cool off. I didn't want to go to a really busy beach so my Korean friends said we should go to Sangju Beach. It was to be a 2 hour bus ride from Jinju, but that was okay. I had made arrangements to meet another friend, Sonja, another foreigner from Masan, at the beach. So we set off on an adventure of getting to the beach on the bus. It was pretty crowded and Soa and I ended up sitting on the floor of the bus.
Anyways, we got to the beach and ate some lunch. After lunch we went to the beach and stayed there until about 6.
This is me and the sign going toward the beach.
It was a very nice beach, not too many people, but not too few. We wanted to rent an umbrella, but there weren't any available.
The sand was nice and soft, but crazy hot.
Here's me at the beach.
After going swimming for a little bit I decided it was time to rent an inner tube to float around on. For $5 you can rent an inner tube for the day. It is great. Finally Sonja arrived with one of her friends. His name is Mostaffa and he's from Iran. He's been living in Korea for 7 years.
So we swam, floated, and had fun for the day at the beach.
On the left is everyone, accept Mostaffa.
On the right is Soa, me, and Sonja. Funny story about this picture...Every time Mostaffa tried to take the picture a wave would come and carry my tube toward the shore causing Soa and Sonja to loose balance. It was so funny that we couldn't take a real serious picture.
After we finished at the beach, Mostaffa was nice enough to offer us a ride back to Jinju. On the way home we stopped for dinner at Lotteria.
On the left is the group of us chowing down at Lotteria.
Also on the way home we were able to capture the sun setting over the water and the mountains. It was very beautiful!
On the right is the beautiful sunset. We took it while driving in the car. Turned out really good for a moving picture.
So that was my trip to the beach...My final trip while here in Korea.

Last English Worship Service

This post is a little late in being posted, but I have some spare time before I leave Korea for good. About 3 weeks ago I had my last English worship service at the church. It was difficult to be there and know that it was the last time I would be doing the service.
Anyways, the service went well. We did some worship songs.
Here we are singing. Me, Johnny, and Soa. Yes, I'm actually singing in front of people into a mic. But don't get any ideas, I won't be doing that when I get back to Canada.
We also did a quiz game with the youth. It's almost like Taboo, the same sort of idea.
Here we are playing the quiz show. The winning team got some snacks to eat.
After that we had the service and the pastor spoke. Of course it wasn't in English.
This is the youth pastor giving his message.
After the sermon and some talking about announcemnets they gave me a present for helping, sang the blessing song, and then prayed over me. It was very nice of them.
Here the youth are singing the blessing song for me.
The gift that they gave to me was a fairly big ceramic piece. It's of a man and a woman, dressed in traditional Korean clothes, and there's a heart between them with Korean writing on it. I will have someone translate it for me.

The End is Near

Wow, time has been flying by lately. I can't believe I have only about 12 days left here in Korea. It's been a long journey. Now that the end of my time here is near, I'm feeling a mixture of happiness and sadness. I'm happy to go home, back to friends and family, but I'm sad to leave all the people that I've met along the way while being here.
There is lots to do in the next week or so...Packing, cleaning, saying goodbye, making sure all bills are paid, and dealing with the unknown of going back to a life I left over a year and a half ago.

Rain...Rain...and More Rain

Well it's at least day 5 of rainy days...I'm sick of it. It's the monsoon season here in Korea and ever since about 2 weeks ago it's been rainy. We, however, did have 2 days of sunny, hot, and humid weather last week, but then it got rainy again. It's not fun at all. I hate it being rainy all the time. It's so depressing.
So what do you do on all these rainy days? Absolutely nothing. There's nothing to do. It's not like it's nice weather to go outside. The thing that really gets me is that there's nothing on tv these days either. I can't wait until it stops and there's sun again.

First Tropical Storm of the Summer

As some of you know, Korea had a tropical storm that passed through here yesterday. There had been talk of a typhoon earlier in the week coming toward Japan, but it turned toward Korea and became a tropical storm.
I woke up early Monday morning to the sound of pouring rain. I went back to sleep, seeing as though I had a couple of hours before I had to get up and get ready for the day. When I woke up, the weather was the same, sometimes the rain came harder than others, but I had no problem with that because I was in my house. I got ready for the day. Around lunch time the wind started to pick up, but it wasn't anything too bad, as I was still in my house. As time got closer to when I was to go to work, I got a phone call saying that work was closed for the day because of the weather. I thought this was nice because then I didn't have to go out of the house, as the weather was still pretty bad, lots of rain and wind.
So I stayed in the house all day with nothing to do. It was nice to have the day off, but I had absolutely nothing to do and no one to talk to. There was also nothing on TV. The wind calmed down and the rain stopped around mid-afternoon. It was nice to have things quiet again, as the rain was really noisy. I ventured outside for a breif time. The wind was a little strong, but nothing that I haven't felt before on a windy day here. There was a crazy amount of humidity and the air was surprisingly warm.
That was the tropical storm. It really wasn't of any worry to me. In my first 6 months of being in Korea the first time I experienced part of a typhoon and that was crazier than this tropical storm. So for all of those who were worried about me, everything is good, no worries. :)

A Week With Char

So after a long weekend in Seoul, Char came home with me to Jinju. We spent the first 3 days going out for lunch/dinner, seeing Jinju, and going to my classes. Monday morning we pretty much just rested because of the crazy weekend. We went out for lunch, Char had sushi and I had a chicken cutlet. Monday night I had invited a bunch of my Korean friends to join us for dinner after I finished work. We went to have some Korean food. It was a dish of bones (with meat on them), noodles, vegetables, and rice cakes in a soupy sauce. It was good, but a little too spicy for me.
On the left is the dinner that we ate. It looks worse than it actually tastes.
After dinner we went out for coffee/dessert at a coffee house. It was nice to just relax and enjoy everyone's company. Char and I shared an ice/milk/fruit/ice cream dessert. It was nice, but they put the red beans in it and weren't supposed to.
On the right is the group of us enjoying our dessert.
On Tuesday morning I took Char to the Jinju Castle with Soa, my co-worker. We walked around the Castle and went to the museum.
Here is Char and I at the Castle with a cannon.
After the Castle we went out for lunch together. We at galbi and sum-gulp-sol. It was very nice.
Wednesday we went downtown Jinju to look around and ate soup for lunch. It's called beef bone soup. It has noodles, rice, beef, and spring onions. It's so nice.
Here is Char with her soup.
Classes for Char and I were a question answer session for the most part. The week before Char came I had the students think up some questions to ask Char. I didn't tell them anything about her, so they had to make up all the questions to find out about her. So when Char came into class I had all the questions typed up and they were to choose 4-5 questions that they wanted to ask her. After the students asked Char questions, it was time for Char to ask them 2-3 questions. I think it was a really good experience for the students.
On Thursday and Friday Char and I went to Busan, as I had those two days off of work. We stayed at a hotel for the night so we didn't have to travel back and forth to Busan. Thursday after arriving at the hotel, we went out for lunch. We were going to go to TGI Friday's, but for some reason we were ignored in the waiting list, so we went to Bennighan's instead. It was nice. After that we went to the beach. It was the perfect beach day. Not a lot of people, sun shinning, and cool water. The sea was actually a little cold at first, but once you were in it was good.
On the left is me.
On the right is Char testing the water...It's just a little cold!
As I was walking in the water I saw 3 jellyfish. One almost touched me, but I don't think I would have been stung by them because they were just little. After a little fun in the water, we sun bathed for a while. It was nice to get out in the sun. It was my first time really being out in the sun.
After sun bathing, we went back to the hotel to wash off the salt water and change. Then we went to the aquarium. It was nice.
On the left is Char and a huge fish that was just sitting there.
On the right is me and a shark.
After the aquarium we went back to the hotel room to rest for a while after getting Starbucks. After resting we went out shopping for a while. It was nice to just look around. I bought a pair of running shoes for really cheap.
after returning to the hotel, we went to use the free internet.
The next day we checked out of the hotel and went for lunch at TGI Friday's. Then took the subway to the shopping area of Busan. We put our stuff in a locker and went shopping and looking around. It was nice. I bought a watch, 2 pairs of sandels, and a shirt. After a couple of hours it was time to leave. We took the subway to the bus station and were on our way home to Jinju. It was nice to be back home again.
Saturday we were up early to take the bus to Seoul. We missed the 9:00 bus by like 2 minutes and had to wait for the 9:20 bus. Once in Seoul we had a hard time finding the airport limo and by the time we found it, it was time for Char to get going. What a rushed day. I elft for Jinju right after Char left for the airport.
All in all, it was nice to have someone around for the week. I hope that Char had as good of a time as I did.

Seoul Weekend

Wow, it's been a really long time since I updated this...Sorry for all of you who look forward to reading about my many adventures.
Well about 2 weeks ago I made a trip to Seoul to meet up with Amanda and Char, 2 of my college graduates. Amanda teaches English in Pyougteak in Korea and Char teaches English in Taiwan. Char came over to Korea for a nice little break and visit time. So I took the bus up to Seoul with Attack. Then convinced him that he should stay because he was going off to the army in a couple of days.
Before meeting up with Char and Amanda I met up with Attack's sister and we took the subway to Insa-dong. This is a Korean cultural shopping area. It was very nice and this is where we had lunch. After lunch we looked around for a littl while. There was a performance going on of a traditional wedding so we stopped to watch and so I could take a couple of pictures. On the left is a picture of the groom and on the right is a picture of the bride.
At this time Attack's sister left to meet some of her friends and we went to the river to walk a little. When we got to the river we saw all kinds of children playing in the water trying to get a little cooler, as it was a pretty hot day.
After walking along the river a little it was time to go and meet Amanda and Char. So Attack and I took the subway to the place where we were going to meet. After meeting Char and Amanda we went in search for the hotel that Amanda had found that we would stay at. We got Attack to ask some people where the hotel was and they pointed us in the direction of what they thought was the hotel. After walking for about 10 minutes, we figured that someone was wrong and that we needed to call the hotel to find out exactly where it was.
This picture is our 'Where's the hotel?' picture of me and Char.
So after calling the hotel, we found out that we were directed in the wrong direction and needed to go back to where we started. So when we finally got to the hotel we found out that there was no room.
At this time we were hot and tired. We all had stuff with us and poor Char had everything with her for the week. She had taken the train and subway with her bag. Mind you the subway has many numberous stairs to go up and down. So we checked my travel book to find another hotel that would be simular to the hotel we wanted.
We found one in a different area and after calling to find out if there was room, set off on the subway again.
We got to the hotel, checked in for a really good price $30 each, and put our stuff in the room. After getting cleaned up a little we set out to find a place to tour around. We decided to go and check out a palace that was located close to the City Hall. So we set off again on the subway to go check out the palace. We arrived to find that they were just closing the palace. Big disappointment. So we decided to walk around, take some pictures, and find a Starbucks. At this point it was about dinner time also. Attack had called a friend, who was going to meet us in the area to go for dinner. We decided on Outback Steakhouse for our dinner. While we waited we took some fun pictures.
The picture on the left is of City Hall.
The picture on the right is of Char, Amanda and Attack in a phone booth.
Finally it was time to meet Attack's friend. We met and headed to the Outback. It was nice to eat at a nice Western restaurant agian.
The picture on the left shows all of us enjoying our food at Outback. We had a great waitress who spoke English really well. She even gave us free dessert of frozen yogurt with fruit. It was so delicious!
After eating it was time to meet another one of Attack's friends. We met him and headed off to Insa-Dong agian, where we would meet Attack's sister. We took the subway again. In Insa-Dong we did a little shopping in a store. It was nice. From there we decided to go to Seoul Tower, which wasn't too far away. We took a taxi to the Seoul Tower. We then took a cable car up to the Tower. It was a nice ride up, but very crowded. We wanted to go up the Tower, but found out that it was too late to get tickets to go up. So we just took pictures around the bottom of the Tower.
Here on the right is Amanda at the bottom of Seoul Tower.
On the left is Attack's sister singing an opera song for us. She is studying opera at university. She sings amazingly!
On the right is a picture of the group of us at the Seoul Tower.
By he time we took pictures and got into the line up to take the cable car down, it was around 12am. We headed off to our hotel by taxi and the Koreans went to a jjimjabong (a sort of spa/sleeping place). We would meet them in the morning to go to church. By the time we got to the hotel and ready for bed it was about 2am.
The next morning we headed off on the subway to where we would go to an English service. We were to meet the boys at the subway station there.
Here are Char and Amanda looking for the boys to arrive.
However, the boys got up a little late and so they were late meeting us, which made us too late for the service we wanted to go to. We decided on going to the biggest church in the world, the Yoido Full Gospel Church. We took the subway and then a taxi to get to the church. For some reason I didn't expect to see so many people, but there had to be thousands of people in the entrance to go in. It was crazy. We were directed to the place where we could listen to the service in English through headphones.
Here is a picture showing people filing in for the service. The church was massive!
It was nice to be able to listen to a translation of a service without having to worry about inturruping the people around me.
After the service, the boys left for Jinju and us girls went out for lunch. After lunch we went for a boat ride. It was nice to just relax and take a rest while seeing Seoul from the river.
Me on the boat ride.
After the boat ride we found a subway station and took the subway to the bus station. We said our goodbyes to Amanda and parted ways. It was a very busy weekend, but fun also.

Problem Solved

So about 2 weeks ago we had another incidet with the boy in the kindergarten class. He caused a lot of trouble after sticking something into the fan, breaking the blades. After all this his mother was called and told that we couldn't have him at the school any more because he was uncontrollable. So he has stopped coming to our school.
Since he's left, the class has been so much more peaceful and the students have had a better time.

An Experience Not to be Repeated...Hopfully

So this week was a pretty difficult week. See I have the kindergarten class 2 times a week. This is a lot to handle because they are so young and they have no English at all. I'm of course working on my own in this class unless I need help with an activity of sorts and then a Korean teacher will come into the class to help or if a student is telling me something and I don't understand them.
Well this week, on Wednesday, I had a huge situation that I never want to have to repeat again in my whole teaching career. One of the boys, Sang Min, is a very naughty boy at times and doesn't like to listen to what any of the teachers says. Well this day he really wasn't listening so I decided to let him do whatever he wanted as long as he didn't disturb the other students. We sang some of the songs and as I was trying to find one more song when Sang Min decided it would be funny if he pulled the cord for the cassette player. As I was plugging it back in he pulled the whole cassette player on to the floor, not so cool. I told him to sit down. I went on with the lesson and he decided it would be fun to draw on the desk. Min Jae, who was sitting beside Sang Min, told me he was drawing on the desk. I erased the desk and told Sang Min not to draw on the desk.
So I went on to try and teach the students how to write 'Jj' and 'Kk'. As I was doing this Sang Min decided to take Min Jae's books or pencils and throw them across the room. After picking them up, I told Sang Min not to do that. I turned around for one second to look at another student's work and Min Jae was crying. I went to get the Korean teacher, cause I didn't know what happen. She asked what happened and then tried to get Sang Min to do something. He got really angry and started to rip/scrunch up the pages of his student book. The Korean teacher continued to try and find out what was wrong or get Sang Min to do something and he just got more angry. So the Korean teacher tried to take Sang Min out of the room and he didn't want to go. He then decided that he didn't want any of his English stuff and tried to put his books and bag in the garbage. As he walked by the cassette player he threw that on the ground, again. The Korean teacher tried to get him to calm down, but nothing seemed to work. She went out of the class to get her husband, the director, and Sang Min shut the door. He wouldn't move away from the door to let the Korean teacher back in, so I picked him up. As I did this he tried to bite me. All while this was going on Min Jae started to cry again.
The Korean teacher finally took him out of the class. As she did this other students for the next class were surrounding the door trying to see what was going on. One of the students was holding a balloon that one of the kindergarten class students had brought from her school and she started to cry because she thought the other student was stealing her balloon. So now I had 2 students crying. I got the balloon back and one student stopped crying. At this point it was time to finish class. I got the students packed up and tried to calm Min Jae, who was still crying.
I found out later that Sang Min had hit Min Jae with a pencil and that was why he started crying in the first place. I found all this out after class. I was told by the Korean teacher that she couldn't even control Sang Min. This boy always is trouble. I have a feeling that his parents don't discipline him because he never listens to any of the teachers and always does what he wants to do. When he gets angry he throws things, kicks things, and bites or kicks. He's a very distructive child who doesn't know how to handle his anger.
Anyways, what a day! As the class finished all I wanted to do is cry myself. It was so stressful and tiring and I had the rest of my day to make it through, 5 more classes.

Children's Day Activity Day - Isaac Toast

So yesterday was our big Children's Day activity day because Friday is a holiday for Children's Day. It was decided that we would have the students make a special kind of toasted sandwich that you can buy at a place called Isaac Toast. We decided to rename the sandwich New World Toast. So to make the toast you need to make an egg patty, which has an egg, shredded carrot and cabbage, a little corn, and a little salt. After cooking that, you need to toast the bread. Then on the bread you put a little salad dressing, then you layer the following things: the egg patty, a slice of ham, a slice of cheese, some pickles, a little ketchup, a little mayonnaise, and then the other slice of bread. It's actually very tastey.
Pretty much all that the students did for making their sandwich was to layer their ingredients. The teachers prepared everything in advance cause it would have taken too long to make everything.
My part in it all was to go over the recipe with the students and then to help make the toasted sandwiches.
Here on the left are Trinity, on the left, and Jin heating up the ham for the sandwiches.
On the right is a picture of Jennifer and me handing out toast for the students. This is is a mixture of three classes.
Here are two of the boys, Nick on the right and Kevin, putting things on their toast. They seem to be enjoying making their food. Nick is a very amusing boy at times.
Here are the students enjoying their toasted sandwiches.
Here is a picture of some of the middle school students enjoying their sandwiches. On the left is Mandy, middle, Ann, and right, Tara. I would say that overall the day was quite a success and the students had fun making their food.

K Class Activities

In the past 2 weeks I have been able to do some fun things with the K class. One of them was egg decorating and the other was making birthday cakes. Just after Easter we made Easter eggs, a little late, but it was enjoyable just the same. The 5 students enjoyed dying and colouring their eggs with markers, crayons, and stickers.
This picture is of the students waiting for their eggs to get coloured. While they waited Jennifer, the director's wife and one of the teachers who was helping me, and I had the children sing the 'Thank You' song. We put actions to it to make it more interesting for the students. It was cute to watch them singing and doing the actions.
This picture is of Jeong In, on the left, and Gyoung Min, drawing pictures on their eggs. We told the students to draw a picture of their mother or father on the egg.
This is Min Jin with her finished decorated egg. She is so cute and shy sometimes, but she has her moments when she speaks out, especially when she knows the answer to something.
The reason for the birthday cake decorating was because it was going to be 2 of the students' birthdays the next day, Min Jae and Gyoung Min. So we got these little cakes from the bakery, put some whipped cream on them, and decorated them with candy, chocolate, and popcorn.
Before decorating the cakes I taught the students the 'Happy Birthday' song. Some of them already knew the English words, but others didn't. I also asked them how old they were. I found out that the youngest was 5 and the oldest was 6.
This picture shows the students putting the whipped cream on their cakes. It was a little difficult, so I had to help them a little to get the cream all over the cake.
This picture shows the students decorating their cakes with the many different things that they could use. They seemed to enjoy eating the things as much as putting them on the cake.
Here is Min Jae, the birthday boy, with his finished cake. He did a very nice job of decorating his cake.
On the left is Gyoung Min, the birthday girl, with her finished cake. She also did a very good job of decorating her cake.

Snowball Pictures

It's been a while since I updated pictures of Snowball. My mom was asking when I would send her some pictures, so here they are for those of you wondering if she looks any better from when I got her hair cut.
The picture on the left is her a couple of weeks ago. She loves to sleep on my pillow, espeically when I'm sitting in front of her.
The picture on the right is of Snowball one week ago after gettting a shower and some pampering. She just loves to pose for pictures.
These are the most recent pictures of her, I have others, but they are before her hair grew in some. Yes, she does have some hair now, it's about one centimeter long.

Activity Day - Decorating Easter Eggs

On Tuesday I was able to do an Easter activity with my classes. My mom had sent me some egg dying kits, chocolate Easter eggs, and Easter candies, so it was a nice little treat for the students. It was supposed to be an all academy activity day, but there was some trouble with the eggs breaking when they were being boiled.
Anyways, I was able to give 4 classes a taste of what children get to do before Easter, decorating Easter eggs. It was a little difficult to explain how to do the egg decorating, but eventually the students got the idea and had fun decorating. Of course there were a couple of students who dropped their eggs and ended up with a cracked/broken egg, but other than that the eggs turned out great.
On the left is a picture of Emma dying her egg all pink.
On the right is a picture of Sam (white jacket), Tom, Iris (stripped shirt), and Maria, dying their eggs. Iris is trying to dye her egg two colours by holding half the egg in one colour and then after letting it dry, putting the other half in a different colour.
On the left is Ted drawing a picture on his egg with the stencils and markers. Joseph is watching him.
On the right is Chris (on the left) and Luke showing off their eggs after finishing their decorating.
On the left is a picture of Jessica (on the left) and Maria showing off their two coloured eggs.
So overall, the day was a success and the students had a great time.