New Years Eve!

Happy New Years everyone!!! For New Years this year I had intended to go to Seoul to meet up with a friend from another town, but plans fell through at the last minute so I stayed in Sangju. Turns out that some other peoples plans had fallen through as well so we had a nice little outing here in town. I was able to meet up with Scott and Sarah who live right across the street from me but I somehow never seem to see. We went out for a nice sushi dinner and had about five different kinds of tuna along with miso soup, and a lovely corn relish, and some salads and different side dishes... a very good dinner and shockingly my first time out for sushi since I arrived in Korea! Then, after dinner, we walked over to a nearby bar and grill and met up with Jessica, Julian, and Simon and had some kiwi Soju punch while they finished their dinner. Their friend Ray who teaches in the TALK program here (similar to EPIK that I teach for, but aimed at undergrads and people who have only 2 years of college... they teach part time for 6 months to a year before returning to their universities) joined us as well and we all decided to turn the evening into a pub crawl through Sangju to ring in the New Year! A very fun night :) I didn't take any pictures, but will pass some along as others post theirs. Hope everyone had a fun New Year's Eve! And I've finally gotten my webcam to work, so anyone who has skype can find me at liss.dyer :D

Seong Dong winter camp

This week was my first week of teaching camps here in Korea. I have 4 weeks of camp straight through the winter break and then about a week or so before classes start back up again. (For 2 weeks, and then we have another week off for 'spring break'... in February!!!) This first week was great! It's the only week that I'll be teaching at my main school with my kids that I teach all the time, so it was nice being able to have them in classes that were a little more fun than their everyday schoolwork. We had a few classes that actually taught language and parts of speech and such, but then the rest were just fun classes taught in English to give them an immersion style language experience. We were able to do some hip hop dancing to learn directions and parts of the body, create and draw our own inventions, make s'mores and sing a campfire song, and even play a little with some trick photography- which I think was my favorite :) I had two days of classes with my 4th graders (about 15 of them) which went far better than I'd anticipated- I was a little nervous about having them for such a long stretch at a time- and then two days with my 5th graders (about 20 of them) who were a little slower to start than I would have guessed, but got into things by the end. Because of the timing of the school years here I wasn't able to do anything with my 6th graders, they'll be moving on to middle school now... new school year starts late February/early March following the Lunar New Year. I hope they all had as much fun this week as I had teaching them... wish I could do things like that with them more often :)

Christmas- part 2

A number of us were debating whether or not to really celebrate Christmas this year being so far away from home... just didn't seem the same without family and friends, Christmas decorations, songs playing on the radio and such. So I have to admit, I did just stay home for the weekend. And enjoyed every minute of it! We were off school Friday for Christmas day and I got to sleep in, open my Christmas presents, and watch the movie Jen gave me while snuggled up in bed :) As cold as it's been here, it's fantastic to have whole days when you don't have to get out of jammies or bed and can just be warm!!! Saturday I went out for a little while, just around Sangju, prepared for camp lessons, and was also able to talk to a lot of people back home via facebook... nice catching up & feeling a part of the holidays at home! Then on Sunday, Jessica and Julian invited everyone over for a post boxing day dinner at their apartment which was lovely. Jessica and her friend Bianca that was in town for the weekend made mulled wine, pasta, salad and a nice butternut curry soup that I think would have made Grandma Lee laugh. Turns out she had meant to defrost a few bags of butternut soup that she had made and frozen, but accidentally mixed in some chicken curry that was next to it and unlabelled... reminded me of Grandma's turkey/lemon gravy :) But it was a happy accident, I think, because the soup was very tasty and different! Then for dessert she made homemade mince pies- I think my first time ever having a mince pie- and ice cream with hot fudge... yum :) After dinner we all bundled up and walked down to our favorite coffee shop here in town where they were having a concert that evening by a local Korean folk group. A very very small coffee shop packed full of people and band equipment, but good music and a fun time. A mellow and very nice holiday weekend. :)
And then on Monday I got the best surprise of all in the mail! A book that Deb made with letters and pictures from you all back home... thank you so much! It really made my week to hear from everyone and see what you're all up to. And it's now taken up residence displayed on my table for everyone to see :)

Muju

The second weekend in December I got to go to Muju Ski Resort with some friends from here in Sangju. It was a lot of fun but sooo very cold! (The resort thermometer said -8C, but I think it may have been colder still... we'd been getting down to -10C here in Sangju that week.. or maybe it just felt colder since we were rolling around in the snow!)Jessica and Julian organized the trip for us, Dan and his friend Lina from a nearby town came, and Simon who had only been in Korea about a week or so at the time came along as well (he just started teaching at one of the Hagwons in Sangju.) Jessica managed to rent a van for us to drive over in- no small feat with the language barriers and such here- which saved us from having to take like 3 buses and a ton of time to get to the resort. And the van having the built in GPS that all the cars here seem to have gave us step by step instructions on how to get to our destination, warned us of upcoming tolls, and yelled at us (in German no less!) anytime our speed got above limit or we'd somehow veered off course! Amazing stuff this technology! We were able to rent ski clothes and equipment from a little shop once we got near the resort. Lina is from Oregon and used to teach snowboarding lessons there, so Dan, Simon, and I all decided that instead of learning to ski we would let her show us how to snowboard. I had been snowboarding once before about 5 years ago and done fairly well, but I think my beginner's luck has worn off! It was a very fun day, but I don't think you could call what I did snowboarding so much as falling down a snow covered mountain repeatedly with a snowboard strapped to my feet :) The guys did much better than I and were making full runs by the end of the day. We stayed for the night skiing session as well which was beautiful being out there in the dark with all the stars... but by the end of our 8 hours that first day I was definitely ready for a rest! We all had rooms next to each other in a hotel right there at the resort which was very nice. We were going to try to go to the outdoor hot springs that they have at the hotel, but unfortunately by the time we finished night skiing we were too late to make it there, so we just hung out in one of the rooms for a while before crashing for the night. An authentic Korean experience- our neighbors were barbecuing inside a room down the hall from us! As a result, the hallway and our rooms were all a little smoky and smelled of pork :) There were no beds in the hotel just a blanket to lay down on the floor so between that and my day of, umm tumbling, I was pretty sore by the next morning. Everyone else wanted to ski a second day but I decided to play photographer and enjoy some nice sightseeing and lodge time instead :) I was able to get a ticket to ride the enclosed gondola to the top of the mountain, see the other part of the resort and have lunch with my friends before they made their last run down the mountain. I don't think they really intended it to be their last run so early, but a bit of a blizzard hit as they were going down and you could hardly see 2' in front of your face. I was definitely glad not to be struggling along with them then! So we all bundled up back in the van and made it back to Sangju in time for an early night before teaching the next day... and only a little sore :)