Letter from my pre-school teacher

I just found a letter from my teacher:

"Dear Carissa,

Its been a pleasure having you in class. You are a wonderful, bright and conscientious student. You're also a charming sweet little girl who's eager to learn and to share her knowledge with her friends. At times you are quite shy and reluctant to change. However don't ever let that make you lose confidence in yourself. You are a bright little girl and you have so much to offer. Always remember you can do it sweetie. And knowing you, I know you can do it very well too. Underneath that shy exterior is a sweet intelligent Carissa ready to accomplish anything and everything she sets her mind to. I know you'll do fine in kindergarten and throughout your formal education.

You've made teaching enjoyable and rewarding. Thank you for sharing your love and super hugs with me. Have a wonderful summer and a great school year. You'll always be my Carissa-Bissa.

Love,

Mrs. Solomon."

I know some of it is probably the same that she wrote to other students, but I hope that I have met her expectations. I hope that I have gained confidence in myself and shown a stronger acceptance of change. I think that I have accomplished most my goals (though I admit I try to keep them low to make sure I can) and I really hope I can continue to do so.

Wow, who would have thought a letter from a teacher who knew me from for a brief year (when I was 4-5 years old) would inspire me to keep trying to be the best I can be.

Last Lunch with Teachers and Principal

My Principal and I


Where did this delicous rice soupy thing come from?


Well you only use some of your rice. The rest you keep in this lovely wood boxy thing. Then you put the lid on and let it "steam" itself. To get ricey gruely soupy thing. As I am not very fond of rice I was not exactly enamoured with it but the process was fun!


Cheers with the music teacher and science teacher!


FOOD

Hello New Teachers!!!

So after graduation we had a week break and then new teachers showed up. This was a dinner we had at a traditional Korean house.

A few of my teachers

The new teachers are cutting the ribbon to enter (the one on the far right iss the music teacher, black jacket is science tecaher, my two new office mates)

The principal's speaking...he's allegedly good...I don't understand much

NOREBANG (kareoke)! Luckily the songs were only in hangul(the Korean alphabet) so I was able to not sing

How to eat duck in Korea

Step 1: Hot grill

Step 2: Add duck

Step 3: Prepare Sesame leaf

Step 4: Add veggie and meat goodness and ENJOY

The most random uncultural blog EVER

Sooo...

My friend I usually send daily pointless e-mails is out of town, so rather than send an e-mail to not be read for a few weeks, I am writing my usual pointlessness in blog form.

First off, todays class was ok...except I forgot to remind them to bring jump ropes in so we couldn't do that part which is a fun part :-(

Lunch I have with the teachers, which is nice. Turns out one of the teachers speaks WAY more English than I thought, he's just uber shy. But since it was just me him and another teacher he felt he had to talk. Really his English is AWESOME! So its nice to know I have someone I can go to other than the three friends I have at school that speak English.

So I stopped by my new little grocery store (just veggies and fruits) they rebuilt after the fire. The dude there's English ROCKS! I am totally shopping there all the time. He teaches me the names of veggies in korean and tells me my Korean rocks..which it doesn't, but I am sooo going to pretend he's right :-)

Finally, I was just looking at my fridge deciding what to drink, this is my thought process, "Cheap wine, expensive wine...macoli, guiness....cheap wine, expensive wine, macoli, guiness...hmmmm..."

ahh yes mystery option I had COMPLETELY forgotten about..."Box 'o wine" ohhhhh yeah :-)

TWISTER

OK...so I hate Thursdays BUSIEST day. AND I have teachers yuck

Today was the best teacher's lesson ever. We played Twister :-)

Woot

They learned

Red
Green
Blue
Yellow

Foot
Hand
Right
Left

and I added

On

woot

Field Trip...kinda

OK, so yesterday was like a teacher's field trip.

We went to the Inchon 22nd Annual Ceramic Festival. It was fun (granted after the tea bowl festival it was kinda a de-ja-vue). But I got to have dinner with the teachers which was entertaining.

I learned dhow to say blood pee (yes I am immature)

Pi-ga-na-da means bleeding.

koh-pi isnose bleed

da means its a verb(usually). See, I am getting better :-)

Korean Wedding

My office-mate (teacher I share an office with) picked me up at 10:40 and I headed to the wedding (luckily I went to an 80s party the night before so the overdone 80's makeup and hair had calmed to a subtle wedding look in my sleep. It worked nicely)

It is held at a wedding hall. Everyone waits around in the lobby. The groom stands near the gift table usually and the bride has her own room. She has this big chair and people go in to say hello and take their picture with her. She looked SOOOOO pretty! I know I've said before that I don't want a fancy wedding dress...but I've changed my mind. I want to sparkle. I want to be a pretty pretty princess.

Anyways so you go take picture yay. Then you go to the gifts table take an envelope put 30-50 bucks in (Everyone told me 30 or 50 so I figured 40...THANK GOODNESS I talked to my Korean friend Shannon. Turns out it is good luck to give odd numbers (30, 50, 70) not even) So I gave them 50,000 won (50 bucks).

Then you go into the "wedding hall" its like...a large room, small hall. Maybe as big as my classroom. And everyone stand around (or sits) and talks and waits for it to start. Or so I THOUGHT.

The ceremony starts, but no one stops talking. It reminds me of my class sometimes! SOO FRUSTRATING!! The teacher inside me had to bite my tongue.

I don't know what they were saying, but the ceremony was pretty much guessable. Oh and they used a LOT of smoke.

Traditions:

The mothers walk down the aisle and light candles. The groom walks down the aisle followed by two girls with swords. Then the bride walks down people clap, take pictures(I didn't bring my camera because I thought it would be rude, I was wrong), but I figureed it out), still talk!!!

They do the talky thing (I understood, Juseyo(like I want), Kamsamneeda(thank you), and keesah (kiss).

They kiss. (smoke)

They thank the parents (I think) by bowing (the bride bows from the hips, and the groom actually gets on his knees and bows down)

They do strength test where the groom holds the bride and does three squats.

The groom kareoke'd to his bride. (smoke)

They did the cake thing (but with a sword) (smoke)

They poured champagne in a champagne tower. (smoke)

The did some yelling thing??? I don't know what they were saying.

Then to the buffet. It was like Todai!!! Quite yummy. Its like an open bar (but not) each table had a pile of drinks (it was about 2 beers, one bottle of soju, 2 pepsis, two sprites and two apple juices) and you just divide them up.

Lots of my students were there so I got a lot of HELLO TEECHA!

Random things that irritate me but shouldn't

So...I was walking home yesterday and my neighborish teacher invited me to go home with her...well travel home with her...which I figured meant walk...nope, her husband drove us home :-( I LIKE to walk. Its the only friggin' cardio I get people!!!


Same thing this morning. Walking to school and the vice principal pulls over and practically pulls me into the car. I mean...I get they're being nice. And in the winter when I am freezing I am sure I will be BEGGING for rides. But right now the weather is pretty and I enjoy walking..


Other odd bugs me thing:

So we have the news coming today. Yeah yeah I've done news before whatever no biggie (there's that communications background too so I'll be fine) But we had to like COMPLETELY revamp our lesson plan to make it look like we had a more active class.

If the news wants to see an active class they should come when we HAVE an active class...like third grade, or my discussions but nope, they only wanted to come at this time. FINE but don't make ME rearrange MY schedule just so the school looks good on TV

I never liked made to order news.

In other news. I am currently planning the summer camp. I am thinking the first 10-20 minutes watching part of a movie. Then discussing what happened doing an activity on whatever I decide to do (like if its a scene with lots of emotion an emotion project if its raining weather, making food its not peanut butter and jelly its MAGICAL peanut butter in jelly) I am thinking of having the third and fourth get subtitles in Korean and the 5th and 6th get subtitles in English...

Its about four hours a day for five days...I am torn between sword and the stone...and jungle book...I kinda want to do an older Disney they haven't seen...but I need to make sure i can buy it with Korean subtitles

Still looking into this

Also...we're supposed to plan an "English fair" for September...a WHAT??? With like skits and stuff?? Erm...clueless

Absolutely clueless

Weekend

So Thursday a co-worker invited me over. I had cucumber kimchi (which I think is officially my favorite) bulgogi (like a meat) rice, and some other stuff. I joke that a Korean meal is kind of like spain because you get all of these side dishes (which remind me of tapas).

Friday I went to school then straight from school to meet up with Gaeul in Seoul. We had some noodley stuff, Korean BBQ and walked around planning the next day (they have a beer they are promoting on the streets so we took a few free samples, its basically beer with lemon...quite tasty)

Saturday we went to a palace saw the changing of the guards, had some Korean sushi, Korean ramen, and...erm..some kind of meat. Then we walked down the stream (they had a friendship fair so lots of differen countries had booths and were selling stuff I almost bought stuff for people but it seemed kinda silly to get Argentinian souveniers when I am in Korea. Then we chillaxed on the river with street food. Kimchi-jon which is like a dumpling meets a pancake as far as I am converned. Its like...dumpling mix (you know flour and cood stuff) but instead of dumplingizing it you mix the stuf youd put inside with it and roll it out like a pancake DELICOUS and some kind of stuff intestines...thank GOD I was raised eating Mexican food so I am used to things most Americans cringe at. We met up with some friends at the hard rock danced a little (I know I only seem to dance in Asia...deal with it) and then went to KFC to eat and catch the subway to Gaeuls.

Sunday I did the jim-jil-ban again with Mel, Cherese, and Amy. I LOVE that sana-ey place. Then we went out for dinner and trivia night at an English pub where we lost our thus undefeated status.

Monday (Buddah's birthday) walked to a temple got some free grub, prayed, caught up with friends for lunch had...erm...cheese donkette ok I am kinda making stuff up but like chicken cordon bleu except with pork and cheddar...DELICOUS with some cold noodle soup and OF COURSE kimchi :-)

Came home worked on lesson plans stayed up late to call mommy and wish her happy mothers day (I was a day late but you know its hard to coordinate schedules from over here)

Yep, that's about it :-)

Luvya'll

:-)

Carissa

Boring stuff

Well I paid my first gas bill :-)

Gas, electricty, water $140 or maybe less...I dont really remember right now

My bank is all in Korean :-(

So I am confuzzled

but Ji-Yeon helps me out :-)

Taught my first "teachers" class

NO ME GUSTA

I like to teach KIDS not ADULTS

but it's only an hour and a half a month (30 minutes every week except the third week) so...I suppose I'll survive