Work..Snow..& St. Patty's Day!

The World is a book, and those who do not travel read only a page!





Peach! Shes in my morning Kinder class. Isnt her name absolutely fitting? She's SO smart :) I love when she say's 'Katie Teacher' because she kind of has a lisp that melts your heart!







My AM class that I have from 9:20am-1:40pm LONG day and I still have 3 more classes after this!!! There names are, Faith, Mickael, Peach, Jinny, Vicky and Jennifer! I love them...the 1st day they had no idea what I was saying and I've been with them since the beg of March and it's only been 3 weeks and they have learned SO SO SO much! Faiths mom told me that he has all the songs we do in class memorized and that because of me he speaks a lot of English at home! It makes me feel like I'm really making a difference! Arent they cute?! ;)





Me with MY little kinder kiddies! Mickael, Vicky and Peach :)




Playing in the play room...my FAVORITE 20 minutes..and theirs too!!! :)




Our snowy walk to school! It takes us about 25minutes to walk there both ways...up hill! haha.






SNOW! In March! I love this picture though, I took it right outside our apartment when we got home St. Patty's day night!





<3 Loved this!




In Seoul for the St. Patty's celebration! We loved her costume! It was so windy out though!




St. Patty's day crew! :)




Korean band playing Irish songs for St. Patty's Day! They were actually really good!






March 19th 2010:

It’s currently 5:17pm on FRIDAY and all I can say is TGIF!! My kiddies just left and I have an hour until I’m off work so I thought I’d catch up on some blogging while ‘youtubing’ random music. 2 weeks ago Bri, Tia and I joined a gym at one of our Korean friends apartment for 60,000 won for 3 months…pretty good deal considering I was paying about $60 a month at my gym back home in Sammamish! This gym is nothing special but it does the job. I think I got spoiled with the gym at WSU…nothing compares! (Except maybe that new gym in Bellevue, but I havent been in there). At this gym in Korea theres this machine where you stand with a belt around you and when you turn it on it vibrates your muscles so intensly! I call it, ‘The Wiggle Machine’, it’s supposed to wiggle and jiggle your fat off haha, I’ll let you know how it works! I’ve been running and doing the ‘wiggle’ machine plus some arms…I really want to get my arms into rockin shape, and according to ‘Shape’ magazine your arms are the easiest musicle to mold…we’ll see! I have about 3 months before we take our summer vacation to Guam, sooo I need to get serious about my swimsuit bod haha!

We get two 1 week vacations this year. One in the summer and one in the winter. We’re thinking Guam this summer, a little island in-between Asia and Australia. Tia has a friend who works at a resort there and loves (well who wouldn’t?? It’s paradise times a million!!) and hopefully he can help set us up with a good deal! Then we’re thinking about going to Thailand this winter, and I absolutely can’t wait to ride on the elephants!!!! My little Allie is there right now until May and her pictures are so awesome. I have heard such good things about Thailand and I cant wait to experience it for myself!!!

These past few weeks have been really stressful with our new contracts. Switching from ‘Brown’ school to ‘LCI’ has been quite dramatic and draining. Things that were in our original contract have been taken out and new clauses have been added. It’s been frustrating because our director hasn’t been great with the communication so we have all been a little annoyed on top of being extremely tired which isnt the best combo! But I’m meeting with Jade today to go over a revised contract and hopefully it goes smooth, I’m crossing my fingers!!



March 22, 2010:

My meeting went smooth with Jade and I’m going to sign the revised contract today after work.

It’s snowing right now and I can’t believe it. IT’S MARCH! I’m jealous because I hear the weather has been so nice back at home plus it looks like a lot of people went somewhere hot for spring break…luckkkyyy!! I can’t wait for the weather to clear up..it feels like the longest winter ever! It is pretty though. Last Wednesday was St. Patty’s day and I tried to explain it to my kids but they had no idea what I was talking about and I showed them pictures of leprechauns and 4 leaf clovers and they thought I was nuts! After work on Wednesday we all went out to an Irish pub for some dinner and drinks. We met up with our friends who also live in Dongtan and it was a really good time. I found the pub to be highly entertaining because the décor was Halloween items…I was confused! After dinner we headed home in a snow blizzard! Friday morning during my kindergarten class one of my students asked to go to the bathroom and I told him yes, then he came back moment later with a wet lap. He peed his pants!!! He just laughed and laughed like it was no big deal..I couldn’t believe it haha! Also, Friday Tia, Bri and I walked to a hair salon after work so Bri could get her bangs trimmed and I asked them how much it would be for me to touch up my highlights and they said 40,000 won which seems incredibly cheap and worries me that they didn’t understand what I was trying to say. I’ll have to take one of my Korean teachers with me when I get it done to make sure they know what I want…I don’t want to end up with bright pink hair haha. Then we went and looked in some shops for green attire for Saturdays St. Patty’s celebration. After we shopped around a bit we headed back to our apartments to have a chill night in so we would be energized for Saturday. I ended up just watching season 2 of the OC which I’m currently obsessed with…I know I know, Im like 7 yrs late from when that show was popular haha. On Saturday we woke up and headed to Seoul around 12:30pm to watch a St. Patty’s parade and meet up with Katelan and our other Dongtan friends. We unfortunately are still getting use to the timing of the buses and we missed the parade by like 30min!! But a bunch of people met up at an Irish pub and we all celebrated St. Patty’s! I met some really cool Irish men who gave me half of their Subway sandwich because I told them how much I missed it!! I loved their accents and it was interesting how there were so many people from Ireland in South Korea! The Irish group I met said they had been here for 2 years and loved it! It seems like a lot of people end up staying here longer than a year. After the 1st pub we headed to another pub where there was a Korean music group that sang Irish songs, it was a blast! We got unlimited European style food and drinks for 50,000 won plus the live entertainment. We all had a really great time!

I hope this week flies by and the weather gets nicer! This weekend we are celebrating Ta-leah and Chase’s birthdays which should be fun! My kids are getting smarter by the day and I can’t wait to see how much they have learned and improved by the time my year is done. One of my student’s moms told me that because of me her son is speaking a lot of English now at home and he has the songs memorized that we sing everyday! I love it and it makes me feel like I’m really useful over here and making a small difference for these kids!

Until next time!

<3 Katie Teacher!!!

WE'VE BEEN HERE FOR A MONTH!!

Randy,Charlie, Tyler and Paul on graduation!





Me and my class for Graduation!




Antonio on Graduation, look what they made him wear! My dad would die if that was Eric hahah



The sign outside my classroom!!


My classroom!



Katelan and I tried some wigs on while shopping!..we look good right?? haha ;)


Karaoke on Game Night in Dongtan!



Street waffles!! Honey and whip cream...mmmm!!



The ice-cream cake we got Tanya for her Birthday!! So pretty! xoxo


"Never shall I forget the days I spent with you. Continue to be my friend, as you will always find me yours." **HAPPY 23rd Birthday Tanya!!** I love and miss you forever and always!



Graduation-February 2010

On the day of graduation, the last Wednesday in February, I was so anxious to see the kids recite the speeches that I have been helping them practice. All the speeches, stories and songs were so creative and to hear their little voices describe wishes, superhero powers etc was absolutely darling! The class I have been working with for the past few weeks (Daniel’s old classes) consisted of 4 boys, Charlie, Randy, Tyler and Paul. Charlie’s memorized story was my favorite. He read, ‘I’m going on a bear hunt’ which was one of my favorite books when I was little. It was so cute because he incorporated hand motions and totally acted the whole book out, you couldn’t help but ‘ooo’ and ‘aww’ while completely melting at his little charm! When we first arrived at work we had to go into a room to help the kids get into their graduation attire. The outfits were hilarious, little suits for the older kids and funny bright colored sequin outfits for the younger kids. I couldn’t help but laugh at how adorably funny they looked! When we walked our students out to the stage it was really neat seeing all of the parents there and how excited they were to see their child graduate to the next level of learning English. All of the parents were so proud, and they take schooling VERY seriously here. One of our Korean teachers, Lynn, was telling us that she had to go to a ‘cram’ school where she was literally there from 9am to like midnight and eventually her dad had to call the director to make sure that Lynn got breaks in the day because she was so incredibly stressed out and over worked! I couldn’t even imagine having to do that in the U.S!

After graduation I still had 2 special classes in the afternoon on Thursday and Friday. We had to use our morning breaks to prepare our OWN classrooms! I loved coming up with a theme and buying craft paper to decorate my class. I definitely felt like a real teacher since I got my own classroom (room 205!) My theme is ‘garden’ so I have bumblebees, butterflies and bright colors. On Friday we had to prepare our lesson plans and copy off a ton of worksheets. It was really stressful because we were going to start class on the following Tuesday and we only had Friday and Monday to prepare our Monthly plan…needless to say we pulled some VERY long and unhappy hours. LCI is so new to us so we all were really confused about how to prepare we felt like guinea pigs just being thrown into action. I tried to stay positive but it was hard when we were all so exhausted and stressed about what next week would be like.


We spent the weekend in Peyongtaek where Katelan, Chase and Chris live. They are all friends from WSU (which I have mentioned). It’s really weird that we all are hanging out in KOREA I forget sometimes that we are all the way across the world from WA! We got Monday off of work because it was a holiday, ‘Kids day’ but I went into work anyway with Ta-leah to finish up my lesson plans to make sure I felt more prepared about starting my classes on Tuesday morning.


First Week in March!!!:

Tuesday was really stressful, I felt like a chicken running around with its head cut off!! I have my morning Kindergarten class from 9:20am to 1:40pm with a 40min lunch break at 12:20pm. My Kindergardener’s are so adorable but sometimes I get frustrated because its their first year learning English so half the time they have no idea what I’m saying. I’m basically just focusing the ABC’S, numbers, feelings, weather and days of the week so far with them. I’m actually pleasantly surprised at how much they learned from Tuesday to Friday though which gives me hope that when the year is over I will have really impacted their progress and getting to see them recite speeches at graduation a year from now will be really rewarding to me. Their age is ‘6’ in school but one of them is 4 and I think 2 of them are 5yrs old. They’re names are, Faith (a boy!), Peach, Vicky, Mickael, Jinny and Jennifer! Then at 2:00pm I go across the street to teach 2 classes of 11 7yr olds for 40minutes each. I love these classes and I feel like once it’s 2pm the day flies by! I got to name about 20 kids!! Some of them are: Tanya (for Tanya, Steph (for my mom), Billy (for my dad), Eric (for my brother), Krissy (for my sister), Rose (for my Grandma), Sean and Matt (for my cousins) and then Addy, Britt, Kara, Logan, Evan (for friends back at home!!) It makes it easier to remember their names and its funny seeing their personalities with the names I gave them! Funny story about ‘Addy’: I was given a list of my students with their Korean names so I didn’t see them before I named them and I told my helper teacher to name one Addy so I went to class the next day and had the kids sit in a circle to practice their English names and I hear a little voice go, ‘hello my name is Addy’ annnnnd it was a darling little BOY!!! I couldn’t hold in my laughter, it was too funny and I felt so bad because he had no idea that it was a girls name…so I went back to my helper teacher later that day to have it changed to ‘Eddie’ haha! After my special classes I have a class at 3:40pm til 5:00pm called EC5 which I enjoy because the kids are 8 and 9 and have studied English before so it makes teaching them easier since they can more so understand what I’m saying. LONG DAY RIGHT!? Atleast the kids are cute…

We got paid on Friday and went to Indian food for dinner with our Dongtan girls. I’ve never had Indian food before, and I liked it! But it definitely makes your tummy gurgle :/
After dinner Tia and I did a little shopping with some of the girls and it was really fun going into the boutiques. Things are really cheap. Also, most of the clothes are one size fits all…which is a lie because Asians are so much tinier than me so I got kind of annoyed because some of the really cute things would never fit me, bummer! But I got a few things and they had a lot of really cheap accessories for like 1,000 won which is less than an American dollar! I’M A MILLIONARE…IN WON! Haha!

On Saturday we went to our Friend Alia and Michelle’s apartment for a game night with a bunch of people. We played sherades and other games then headed to a Karaoke bar which was a blast! Us girls sang ‘My heart will go on’ it was pretty funny! I also got to chatting with a whole table of Koreans which was pretty entertaining! Also it was our ONE MONTH anniversary! I cant believe we have been here for a month already, time is flying by! It’s crazy to think that we have 12months to go!

On Sunday, Katelan, Bri, Tia, Chase and I all celebrated Tanya’s 23rd birthday! We went to Baskin Robins and bought the cutest ice cream cake with candles that said, ‘I love you’ and ‘23’. We also bought party hats and wore them around town! We had a chill Sunday and basically just talked about memories of Tanya and honored her life.

Today, Monday March 8, 2010 classes flew by and I’m glad to finally get the hang out it! After school Lynn, one of the Korean teachers, drove us to a gym where we are going to buy a 3 month membership for 60,000 won which is a little less then $60 American dollars, good deal!! I’m excited to work out!!!! :)

Miss everyone/but I love it here!!! <3 Katie Teacher