Home for Christmas!

I guess by now most people know that we are indeed home in America for Christmas!  We arrived early Saturday morning and have been staying busy seeing people, getting ready for Christmas, and going down our list of must eat restaurants these first couple days.  We had been planning the trip home during our winter vacation for a couple months but had decided to try and keep it a secret in order to surprise some people.  It was a big Christmas surprise to my mom and grandma at least!  We are so excited to get to spend Christmas here with all of our family and friends.  We will be heading back to Korea on the 31st so it has to be a short visit but definitely a great one!  It's felt a little bit strange being back after being gone for almost ten months.  There's not a language barrier when we want to go to the store or a restaurant and I haven't noticed anyone staring at me much.  We still remember how to drive too so that's good!  I will post more about our trip to America after we return to Korea on the first!

Christmas Party

We had a Christmas party for the kindergarten students today.  Well I don't know if it was much of a party since there was no food, but Santa Claus came!  And he brought presents!  Basically the parents were told ahead of time to bring a present without their child knowing and then the PE teacher dressed up like Santa Claus and gave each kid their present.  I'm pretty sure all the kids knew right away that it wasn't the real Santa Claus, but I think some of them were at least convinced he was bringing presents for the real Santa.  The kids, of course, had a blast getting, opening and playing with their presents and it was fun to watch.  I also learned that the best way to get a ton of work accomplished with 2-5 year olds is to tell them that Santa Claus will only come to school if they get all their work finished before lunch.  I only had to say it once and I think we got more learning accomplished today than we ever have!  Even Tommy, who lately has been complaining (instead of working) that I spend too much time sitting by Jayden and not enough time sitting by him anymore, did his writing in record time today.

 Baby Anthony with Santa

 Eric's student, Tony with Santa

In other news, the presidential election happened yesterday and South Korea elected its first female president with Pak Geun Hye.  We didn't follow the election very closely and don't know much about either candidate but we do know it was an interesting election for the country.  Pak appealed more to the older generation, while the other candidate appealed to the younger generation.  They were saying all along that it would be a tight race and would likely depend solely on which group of people had the most voters.  There are a few reasons why we think the older generation turned out with more voters.  The older people in Korea are more likely to vote anyway, as many of them remember when they didn't even have the opportunity to vote.  Also, there is starting to be more older people in the country (Korea is very concerned about how low their birth rate is and has been for many years).  Lastly, it is final exam time at the universities.  That means that not only are many younger people too consumed with studying to focus on the election, but if they are from the countryside and currently studying somewhere like Seoul or Busan, they would have had to make the trip back to their hometown in order to cast their vote.  According to polls reported on the news, South Korea's economy was the top priority for voters this election.  We heard on the news last night that the country is expected to make only a three percent economic growth this year, a steady decline over the past few years, and a deep concern to the people and politicians.  The interesting thing is, many western countries have been posting negative numbers for a while now and would probably love to see three percent growth!  The South Korean people also want to see more effective talks between the South Korean president and the leaders up North in Pyongyang.  We're curious to see what they think of a woman president and if they get anywhere with talks between a new female president and a young, still fairly new, communist leader.

One more thing (because no post is complete without a weather update!)... It's still clear and sunny and freezing cold.  We will never be fans of what feels like extreme temperatures to us.  For those of you who know just how much Eric hates the heat with a passion, especially the heat we had here this past summer, here's something that will describe just how cold it has been over the last 2 months from what he said to me the other day: "I almost prefer summer over this cold winter... almost."  :)

Christmas Time in Seoul

The weekend ended up getting away from us much too quickly and we ended up not having a chance to go find some Christmas lights.  But we did find some after work on Monday.  We went to City Hall where they had a large tree with lights and an ice skating rink.  It wasn't much and we decided it was too cold to go ice skating, but it was still nice to see something Christmasy!

Tomorrow is election day in Korea, a national holiday, which means we don't have to go in to work until our afternoon classes start.  Technically we should be given the whole day off but since we are working tomorrow afternoon we will get to have our afternoon classes cancelled on Monday, Christmas Eve, so I guess that is okay.  That means we only have two more full days or work and two half days before our winter vacation week!

 

Another Week

It was another full week at work for us, but as all the weeks seem to do, it went by very quickly!  Even though the school year is almost over (the end of February), parents are still enrolling students in the kindergarten classes.  Eric got one new student last week, Tony, and I got two new students this week.  One of my new ones is only two years old (we call him Baby Yoonho).  He is not completely toilet trained, has trouble feeding himself and puts anything and everything in his mouth.  Fortunately, I have a great Korean co-teacher who is able to watch him the entire time to make sure that crayon (and her cell phone) doesn't go in his mouth again!   My other new student, Sally, seems to fit right in with the other girls in the class.  My only challenge now is that I have four kids that are ready to read books, one kid that's almost ready to read books, and four kids that don't know their ABC's and need constant one-on-one help.  So I am definitely learning how to put differentiated instruction into action everyday!  They can be a challenge and a handful at times, but a good one!  We are looking forward to having a fairly relaxing weekend this time.  We got some rain yesterday which finally helped to get ride of the compact ice that had been covering the street we live on for over a week.  We will attempt to see the Christmas display at Seoul Plaza tonight.  Last weekend we went to a mall that happened to be turning on their Christmas lights for the first time with the help of a celebrity (not Psy), so it was quite packed.  We are hoping the Plaza will not be like that tonight but it is Seoul so you never know!  We only have one more week of work and a half day of work on Christmas Eve before we get a week off which we are definitely looking forward to!

Even from another country, as teachers, the news from Connecticut hits close to home for us.  Our prayers go out to the families and all school personnel.  We will hold our students a little bit tighter on Monday, thankful for the opportunity we have to be their teachers, even on those days that seem the longest.

Snow in Seoul

We got our first glimpse of Seoul snow today!  There was quite a bit too.  It started to come down pretty heavily about noon and didn't let up until almost six o'clock, a good few inches later.  I had a lot I wanted to get done with my kindergarten class today but of course that all went by the wayside the second one of them announced it was snowing.  So I got them bundled up and we spent some time outside, which they all seemed to thoroughly enjoy.  All of our elementary classes were about half the size or smaller since not all of the school buses were running and some parents just didn't want to send their kids.  By evening the temperature had dropped into the low twenties, causing all of the snow to become compacted ice.  That made for an interesting walk home.  All of the main roads are fine but we walk on a less traveled back road to and from work which meant lots of compact snow/ice.  Since it's not supposed to get above freezing anytime soon (maybe March?) I don't think the snow and ice on these back roads will be going anywhere.  Maybe we will even get to have a white Christmas!

I will say that walking home on the ice was quickly forgotten once we started to eat the amazing chicken tacos I had left cooking in the crockpot.  It was the first main dish I have used our new crockpot for and definitely a good choice!  Eric has requested that it become a weekly meal.  Maybe there is hope for my cooking skills as long as I can have a crockpot and Pinterest! 

 Looking out the window was definitely not good enough!

 Jacob showing off his snowball before throwing it at Johnny

 The snow when it was fluffy

The snow when it was ice

December Already

It's hard to believe that it is already into December already!  We have finished an entire nine months of teaching and have officially been in Korea for nine months as of today.  It seems to have gone by so quick, but at the same time when we try to remember what we were thinking and what things were like back in March, it's so hard to remember.  It seems like so long ago but I guess that is because we feel like we have come a pretty long ways since then.  Only three more months and the first year will be over already.

Our weekend was not too exciting this time.  A few errands, house chores, and more crockpot use were about it.  The Christmas decorations around the city will not start appearing for another week or two.  The Christmas season is pretty short compared to America but we will still enjoy it.  We were excited to get some Christmas lights shipped to us from home which we just finished putting up in our living room.  We are already loving that we can sit on the couch with only the Christmas lights on lighting up the living room with some Christmas!

Speaking of the Christmas season being much shorter than home, there is another season that is much shorter here than America too: election season.  The presidential election will take place on December 19th here.  The candidates were only allowed to start campaigning about one week ago.  They get four weeks to do their campaigning.  That's it.  Sure there have been news articles and reports on the candidates trying to win over support but the advertisements and public rallys were not allowed to start until about four weeks before the election.  It could be an interesting time for this country as they have the potential to elect their first female president, who is also the daughter of a former South Korean dictator.  She has come under a lot of criticism because of some things her father did as a leader nearly 40 years ago.  In the Korean culture, if your father was a "bad" person it is automatically assumed that you are a "bad" person and should pay for the sins of your father.  It sounds like it could be an interesting election and the news continues to say it looks like a close race between the two primary candidates.

 

It was starting to snow on our way home tonight.  Snow showers are in the forecast a couple more times this week, not enough to stick yet though.  The weather continues to get colder.  The highs will be in the negatives (Celsius) beginning in the next couple days!  Here are a couple pictures of our Christmas decorations.  We will sure enjoy them!  :)

 

 Not the best pictures but the lights go all the way around our living room!