Korean Students Have Strange Reactions to Eggs

First let me say I don't mean allergic reactions :)
 In all my classes this week we dyed Easter eggs (Not the Kindergarten class though of course because that would have been disastrous).


Do you know the first thing Korean kids do when you hand them an egg?

They spin it on the table to see if it's completely boiled.
Second, they ask you if they can eat it. I had already told them we would be coloring them with crayons and dye. How does that mean you can eat it as soon as I give it to you.

The dye went over well with all the classes but one of my second graders didn't even make it that far. She drew on hers a little with crayons and then started to eat it.
Whatever, I was aready busy enough with the other 10 kids.
With the fourth grade there was one boy who cracked his egg after leaving my classroom, but there were no other casualties until that first/second grade class. I told all the classes that if they insisted on eating the eggs they had to do it after they left my classroom, because I can't bear to see Easter eggs being eaten (it just seems wrong to me).
First and Second grade class though..... only one out of all the 11 eggs didn't get broken either on purpose or accident.
Wow, it was...... stressful and hilarious all at the same time. My kids are all camera shy except for the first/second graders so I snapped away like crazy with them today. I hope you enjoy looking at their eggs more than they seemed to.

 These are the only photos I got of the sixth graders before they started hiding.

 Karen and Megan. To the right is Mari with her egg that never got dyed.





Betty and Drew.
Ace, Joe and Rob.
The lower three photos are Karen, Henry and Matt.

The actual dying process. Because we used brown eggs we left them in the dye for a long time to get darker.

Matt, Betty, Karen, Joe, Megan and Drew with their eggs

Megan peeling her egg. Oh, the humanity!!!

Last Sunday I went with Sab and his friend Sunni to Tapsa (temple) and the Maison (horse ear) mountains. It was lots of fun hiking and seeing the temple. We ate kim bap under a tree and got ice cream.

 On the hike up to the temple, I didn't expect the first thing I'd see to be this. Neither did Sab and Sunni. It was........ weird.
 Below is our kim bap lunch.

 Sunni and me in front of the shrines

 This white statue to the right is the monk who built all of the stacked stone shrines which Tapsa is famous for.

 It was so crowded because everyone was there to see the cherry blossoms. The flowers weren't actually bloomed this day. I think this weekend will be better. All the paper lanterns everywhere are for Bhudda's birthday which is in another week or so.

 On the right is a backpack tag I saw. It's one of Tom's favorite anime characters. I saw a lot of this.

 The cherry blossoms were in full bloom at Duckchi school though. When Sab took this photo, he said that it looked like he was in a foreign country because I was there. Ha..Ha..Ha. Cuz I don't get enough foreigner jokes already.

Sending packages thru the mail

My mom sent me a package from home. She sent it the 31st of March and it arrived the 5th of April. I was so happy to get chocolate bars, taco seasoning, mac and cheese mix, chocolate pudding mix, jello mix, Easter stickers, a fitted sheet, Airborn tablets,  chocolate chips and more. I had a blast opening it while talking to my mom on skype.
Wednesday was my day off so I took all my present for home and sent them from the post office. The box I got there cost 450W about 45 cents. I sent the package on the 6th and just learned that it arrived now on the 8th. I'm so excited for my family to get home so they can open it with me. Yay for express mail!
~Lisa

A Gunsan Birthday and a Daejon shopping trip

  Friday after school, my co-teacher dropped me off at the bus station to go to Gunsan. It was Becky's birthday party. The bus ride is about an hour. Becky sushi at first but the suchi place was full of GIs so we went for Chinese.There were seven of us: Kat, Amy, Jane, Chenny, Lindsey, Becky and I. Chenny and Jane (on the right) had a lot of fun reading the menu for us and picking out dishes. We ended up getting a family feast which is eight different dishes so we got to try a lot of different things. I found that I don't mind eating shrimp and jelly fish, but the octopus tentacles were a little too chewy for me.
(I had spent Thursday night making chocolate chip cookies in my toaster oven, which can only fit three cookies on a sheet. I also made Becky a beaded bracelet during my free time on Wednesday. She was quite happy to receive both.)
After the restaurant, we went to The Rock which is a popular bar for foreigners. Lindsey and I had just been talking about how we miss nachos earlier in the week, so we were so happy that the bar gives nachos as bar snacks. Lindsey and I ordered coladas together. Mine was pina and hers was strawberry. In other photo below is a pic of me with Becky, the birthday girl.

 After the bar we went to norebang. By that time there were 12 of us. I sang so much my voice started to leave again. Lindsey and I sang Thriller and Gives you Hell. We stayed there for two hours. It only cost 15,000 Won an hour ($15).
The book Sean is looking at is a list of the available songs in both English and Korean.

 This is what the wall of the norebang said. Sean, Lindsey and I couldn't figure out why it said, "A Hour Dreams come true". Later with the lights on we saw it said, "All our Dreams come true". We went back to The Rock for a while more and I watched several games of pool.
I spent that night at Kat's place.
The next morning, Monika, Sean, Lindsey, Chenny and I took a bus to Deajon to go to the Costco. We wanted to see what they had for Western food. We ended up going to a department store and a market before ending up at the Costco. I got a shirt for $5 at the underground (literally) market and some cute Disney stickers at the department store. We saw this cute puppy at the market. It loves Pendas!

At the Costco I got wheat bread, cheddar cheese, mastocholi noodles, alfredo sauce, green beans and mac and cheese. We saw this cream soup and tried to figure out was kind of cream it was. Sean decided it was cream of dog soup.
We had quite an adventure getting home. The train to Jeonju was longer and more expensive than taking the bus so we didn't do that. The taxi took us to the wrong bus station. Lindsey was able to get a bus to Kimje from there, but there weren't any to Jeonju or Gunsan. We got a taxi which took us to the correct bus station and had to wait almost an hour for the next bus. We happened to run into a TaLK scholar we knew at  the underground market earlier, in Daejon, and we met another one, Charlotte, at this bus station.
The bus back to Jeonju happened to stop near my house so I didn't have to go all the way to the Jeonju bus station and take a taxi, which meant I saved money. Yay! Unfortunately I had to carry my big box of groceries all around to the previous taxi and bus stations. Now I have some really good meals I can make myself. Hmmm, which to make first?
Hope everyone is having a great a weekend as I am!
~Lisa

Week Three

So it's Monday of week three and when my sixth graders didn't show up.
I went to look for them. They were all sitting in their classroom with their teacher. I asked her if they had English class now. She said, "I thought the schedule was changed."
Sure enough, when I asked my mentor teacher, I learned that my schedule was changed. I got a new printout, and the changes seem okay. For Tuesdays and Wednesdays my thrird and fourth graders are split up. I'm hoping this is a good thing. I had several problem kids in those classes, so this may help with that.
So after learning that the sixth graders weren't coming, I wondered why the fifth graders weren't coming since I now had them on Mondays. I went to ask their teacher and my mentor teacher said, "they aren't coming today, the teacher made a mistake. Just take a break."
Cool! I have nothing to do for 40 minutes until it's time to take the carpool home.
Not a lot has been going on.
I finished the unit on zoo animals with the kids and am starting family members. The 1 and 2 graders were a blast today. We say "Alive, Awake, Alert, Enthusiastic Happy!" Which was so much fun.
At the end I told the story of Herman the worm with motions. The song is a little too complicated for 1 and 2 graders so I just summarized it.
At the end they all said, "Again, again!" So we did it a second time.
It's time to go so I'll put up my photos later.

Hope you're having as great a week as me!
Lisa
(I was not effected by tsunami/earthquakes)

Trick Art

I went with Sabino to the trick art museum yesterday. Then I went out with some friends last night for dinner. We had Vietnamese. Here are a few photos.