One more worth mentioning

It's called "Couple Panty". You and your significant other can buy matching unmentionables. These are pajamas, but trust me, they have it all.

Strange but true

Just sharing some very random Korean craziness with you all.

Here are a few wacky flavors of ice cream at Baskin Robbins native only to Korea I'm sure.

They seem to have green tea flavored everything. Even gum.

There it is. Looks tasty, right?

Perhaps this flavor is in honor of the Olympics.
No thank you to the next three.

Okay, so these cakes aren't really weird, but they do look a bit done up. I don't know of any kid who would actually care THIS much about what his ice cream cake looks like


We found this gem on the way to Haeundae Beach a few months ago. Aaron says he wasn't dead, but I don't know, he was out like a light!

Most Koreans hate cats.

Park Ah Ron Teacher

With "intensives" finally over, Katie and I are looking forward to a more relaxed schedule this term. Last week I said good-bye to most of my students. This term it is possible that I could be teaching a few of the same kids, but the majority of them will be new.

Here are a couple more videos I shot of my class that does skits. In this skit, a CEO and the chairman of the board are arguing over whether to hire a woman or a man as vice president. The woman is more qualified, but the director thinks people will be angry if they hire a female. The first video features Daniel and May (seated) and Jenny and Nick as the candidates.



The next video is of Hea Saun and Patrick. As you may gather, Patrick is a bit of a spaz, but hilarious.



Here are a few pictures of an elementary class that I had. In the first picture, Roy is in the middle, flanked by Danny (left) and Andy (right). Danny is quite a little patriot. According to him, everything good originated in Korea. I even had quite an argument with him one day regarding the word "sofa" (Koreans say "sopa"). It was useless to try to explain to him that "sopa" is a Korean corruption of an English word. "Sopa", he was proud to inform me, was, and always has been, a Korean word. Roy is a smart kid and usually a bit quiet, and Andy is the class-clown, always trying to get a laugh.


The next photo is Kevin. Kevin had had some real behavior issues in the previous term, and I was originally a little bummed to see that I had him again. But miraculously he really came around and I ended up having a lot of fun with him.


This is Jenny. She is one of a number of students who call me "Park Ah Ron", after Korean swimmer and gold-medal champion Park Tae Won. She is convinced that I can speak Korean by virtue of my ability to read Korean words and say things like "nay" (yes), "aniyo" (no", and "babo" (crazy). More than once she has asked me, in all sincerity, why it is that I can speak Korean but the other teachers cannot.


Little Jessica was absent from my class for the first few weeks of the term due to her being in the U.S.A.. Chicago, I think. One day she brought a bag of goldfish crackers as a snack and told me they were from America. They must have been, because you can't buy them here.


Near the end of this term, all the teacher were required to hand out evaluations for the students to fill out. I was happy to find that, with very few exceptions, all my kids liked me and wanted to have me again. Here are a few examples:


I knew that my "now" was a little weak, and I will definitely be working harder on it this term. I suspect the student meant that I'm already really good "now"... This next one was pretty honest about what I could do better in the future.


This student clearly liked me, but was not as impressed with my Korean skills as Jenny...


I just thought this one was sweet.


Finally, I thought I'd post one of the few negative ones.


During the last couple of weeks of intensives I made a habit of going downstairs to the 7-11 and picking up a Coke during my brief interval between classes. I think someone was a little jealous.

Five months and then some

It's been awhile since we've given a "life" update on here. We've been in Korea for a little more than five months and sometimes that feels like just a few weeks, and other times it feels like we've been here an eternity. Anyway, I thought I would mention a few new things that have been going on with us. Many of you know that Aaron has for the past 3 weeks been teaching a summer "intensive" class at his school. This is on top of his regular 6 days a week work schedule, so you can imagine how tiring it is for him! Luckily, he gets a new schedule with Saturdays free starting next week. I have also been teaching an extra class for the past few weeks so we haven't really had any time for "blog-worthy" material to post. I guess I should catch everybody up on the fact that I am even teaching at all. The opportunity came up around mid July for me to teach part time at a friend of ours school. I took on that job, and was called a few weeks later and asked to tutor about 28 kids divided up into 7 classes for an hour a week. I'm still volunteering, but with August being THE vacation month of Korea, many of the kids I spend time with are away at camp and visiting family so it's been put on hold until September. So we are just living and working, and anxious for Aaron's new schedule and a chance to leave the city. Oh, and cooler weather, too!

We are hoping for a trip to Seoul to see the DMZ, and do some other sightseeing. We thought we better give Seoul another chance since we didn't really get a good impression of it when we first arrived.

We still attend our little church and love spending time with our friends here.
Just last Sunday we met a new guy at church who is from Colorado Springs! It was the strangest thing to hear him speak because he really sounds like someone from home! Being a native, I have never felt like "we" have and accent, but listening to Andy talk was so familiar compared to the group we usually hang around. I mean we spend so much time around Koreans speaking "Konglish", and we have friends from just about every continent and they all have such different accents.
Anyway, in getting to know Andy he mentioned missing Q'doba and it instantly caused the most frustrating feeling in my stomach :( (Min, I'm still expecting you to have a burrito in hand for me when I step off the plane).

Nancy and Henry are making final preparations for their wedding in September. I'm really looking forward to attending. It's going to be a traditional Korean ceremony! The English foreigners will have to listen to a translator through a headset so we know what's going on. Should be fun!

We really miss everyone back home and really appreciate all the love and prayers.
Oh, and we are keeping up on the Olympics online, and sometimes we catch it on the t.v, but since we're in Korea it's mostly just replays of Park Tae-Hwan winning his gold.
It's OK though, the Koreans are really proud of their athletes, and it's been fun to root for two countries!

Here's a pic of me with Jacqui and Nancy at Nancy's surprise bachelorette party. She really loved the tiara (wink wink).

I'm a Doramong

Obviously, we haven't had time to update the blog for awhile. During the month of August Korean school children are out for summer vacation. However, for most of them this means more time for academies (hagwons). As the result I am teaching extra classes several days each week. Though the craziness won't end for another week and-a-half or so, I did want to share a few small examples of what I spend my time doing these days.

In one of my elementary aged classes I had the kids do a creative writing exercise. They were supposed to fill in the blanks and then rewrite the entire paragraph. Here are a couple of examples:


Doraemon is a Japanese cartoon starring a robotic cat that travels through time. The above example was written by Sarah, who is about eight years old. The example below, by Danny, is a little more coherent:



In one of my other classes, I primarily teach the kids how to take good notes while listening to a lecture given in English. During one part of the class, the kids get to write a skit and then act it out for me and the rest of the class. I videoed a couple of examples from last night's skit. Here's the scenario: A man and a woman are eating at a restaurant. The man likes meat, but the woman is a vegetarian. The woman tells the man he shouldn't eat meat because of the conditions the animals are raised in. The man tells the woman that she will die if she doesn't eat protein.

The kids are pretty much free to do what they want, as long as they stick close to the basic premise. The first video features Hea Seon, Kellie and Sophia.


In the next video, notice that the girls have written "FGI Sunday" on the white board (a parody of "TGI Friday"), and have gone through the trouble of making paper props for the skit (hamburger and salad). Meagan, Jenny and Cara are in this one.