Weekly Roundup

Wednesday

Friday

I started getting really tired of constantly confiscating toys and cell phones from my littlest ones (the ones that I'm certain are the cause of my newfound grey hairs). This week, I walked into the classroom everyday, arms outstretched, yelling (imperative) "cell phones! toys! cell phones! toys!". I actually think they like giving me all their crap. Its like show and tell or something. I'll keep this going.

Present

For the last month, I've been tutoring a 12 year old boy named Yeron. My job has been to prepare him for a VERY strict english camp by teaching him debate. This is funny because I don't know anything about debate. I did my research and tried my best to drop some knowledge, but in the end we ended up reading news articles, Yeron educating me about Korean real estate and baseball, and then us "debating" about Myth Busters topics. Friday was our last day together, so Yeron gave me a thank you gift. A box of juice!

Monsoon Style

It's monsoon season in Korea, which means hot and rainy. It also means sometimes you arrive at school looking like this. Somedays (everyday), getting dressed seems impossible.

Sharing an umbrella doesn't help our cause.

It's time to take a cue from our students. These girls know whats up. Emily is rockin a yellow dress, a broken arm, red rain boots and matching candy.

Eileen: Rain boots - check. Proper umbrella - check. Red striped shorts with bows - check.

Mud Fest

Last weekend, we headed to Boryeong for the infamous Mud Festival. I don't have any good pictures because we left our cameras in the safe mud-free hotel. This was after our first stop, just before the actual festival, for some mud army training.

Muddy People

We didn't get as muddy as I had imagined and the festival was smaller than we thought. Sure, people were throwing mud and they had big blow-up slides but the lines were ridiculous. We went swimming and got sandy instead. Sand on my eyelids!

Remember when I said that people always have the craziest stories on Adventure Korea trips? We finally got some of our own. I won't go into detail, but let's just say that Heather and Jason didn't bring either of these sandals to Mudfest, but this is what they left with. Can you see the bandages on Heather's feet?

Alright, Jason got lost Saturday night, wandered 40 minutes from the festival in the wrong direction, ended up in a fishing village, came upon an Italian villa-style hotel nestled in the beach cliffs, and slept in their conference room. I had to tell you.

Heather Gets a Perm

A few weeks ago, Heather (with my heavy encouragement) decided to get a perm. These are the stylists. I'd say there was maybe 4 to 5 different girls working on her head at any given time. I wondered in and out of the salon, as they estimated it would take about 2 hours.

Somewhere around hour 3

Getting hooked up to the medusa device. Cool as a cucumber.

First Look (what we thought the perm may or may not look like forever). You never really know whats going on in Korea.

Post Perm (four hours later)

A total success!

ECC Campout

We arrived at school on Saturday around 1pm to set up for the big "Campout". We expected about 60 kids, so we cleared out some classrooms and tried to psych ourselves up. This is my team (and future winners!!)

Team Name: The Crazy Robots

For one challenge, I had to memorize this list of Korean words. Piece of cake.

Starting with a spread out newspaper, one teacher and 3 students had to balance. Progressively, the paper gets folded smaller and smaller, until...one child on my back, one in each arm, and one foot on the paper. Piece of cake.

Balloon dodgeball - a game my kids made up during free-time. Possibly the dumbest game ever.

There were some more competitions, games, and a talent show. The Crazy Robots came in FIRST place!

Bed Time! The initial plan was for the teachers to sleep in the rooms with the kids. When our boss realized none of us brought mats (because we don't even own them), he suggested we just share with the kids. "Hey Cindy! you know that cushy mat your parents sent you with? Mind if I cozy up and share?" We opted to hang in the staff room and our boss, feeling bad, let us leave for the night.

The next morning, after taking 60 hungry, sleepy kids to the park in the rain, we came back to school for breakfast (fried rice, kimchi, soup, and egg sandwiches). Around 9:30, all the kids were picked and we were free. It was a good time.

Little Olly (not Holly, Olly)