november was eaten by a lion and an elephant

i have no idea where it went really. november, huh... well.

it.
got.
cold.

don't worry. i'm taking my vitamins and teaching my children too not cough into their desk partners face, but instead at least their hand... only time will tell if they'll ever understand why i'd like them to use their elbows. so never mind learning polite public manners, lets teach kindergarten children about past, present and future tense verbs. sentences please. also could you read that 5 chapter book with them and complete their 2nd grade math books... oh and while you're at that, explain the way the piston in a pneumatic grabbing arm works and how the moon causes the tides, waxes, and wanes...uh, oh yes excuse me, hello there... i'm sorry i didn't realize that when i signed up for this i'd have to teach ALL subjects! couldn't we just color pictures and play with toys? talk about silly kid things...
shit. i hope...! ah nah, of course i can teach it, but what in the world.. what if i wasn't able. i think there'd be some pretty messed up kids out there thinking apples weighed less than strawberries, and 15-9 = 24, pink was green, and the gat kat that sat on the lat ... well, it was really the fat cat sat on the mat... ugh, phonics.
ballz, why didn't i think of teaching them silliness earlier, would have been a good laugh. honestly though, i've been amazed at what these children learn.

i digress.... the cold. it's addled my brains. all scrambled and frozen up. i would mention something here tying it together about the vomit i see while walking through the streets to work, but it'd just be too much to handle through the blog.

there's something about the cold here, that kicks on all survival instincts just by walking outside. everything else evaporates from your mind with a kick in the ass from a bone-dry, ice-cold wind. brrrrrr!
nothin' like the crisp pierce of ice to the brain on a morning walk to work.

november went by in a blur. seems like these months have been doing that, can't say that i mind. i would say cold is fun in small snowy doses, otherwise it can just roil around in siberia. they've been dealing with it ages longer than i have.

november saw:
friends leave, cakes being baked (finally a mini oven), thanksgiving being ate, and a trip to a far off temple (pictures in a separate blog).
enjoy the captures

 the first mess to emerge from the mini oven... halloween hangover pie!

icing

as the night was clearly drawing to a close, david couldn't resist the urge to give terrence one last ice before his time was over. great job!

T.H.A.N.K.S.G.I.V.I.N.G

happy thanksgiving mr. ireland, how's it feel to participate in american tradition. bahahaha.

no mess of eating is complete without cass and soju.

no thanksgiving is complete with out the enjoyment of pumpkin pie, even from costco

the thanksgiving spread. mmmmmhhh

Next stop Haeinsa... ding-ding-ding

oh,... that night

i don't think that chelsea's cocktail hour needs anymore explanation than:
friends
costumes
drinks
salad bowl
...

oh my an ajumma

race horses

couple costumes: dominoes... snaaaaake eyesssss

dos pirates

a mouse-y (oh 'ello there adeline!!)

greece in all it's glory

cRaaaaCk plAYA

uhh my bed somehow turned noraebong

david's nipple. tarzan has nothin

the women of lci? 

over and out. the rest of my night and 6am bus ride is lost to the history books

Thanks Guys. It was a good night.

hell-o hall-o-ween

oh the extravagance! lci couldn't have possibly been more completely covered in the colors orange, black, green and purple. wah!
of course megan led the school in an all out decorating competition. i came no where near what she pulled off (her teacher and mom skills were turned up to the max for this, it's her thing). but i was able to decorate my classroom quite nicely, and my kids got a real kick out of making all sorts of things halloween-ific (as i called it for a sarcastic fun that my kids completely understood as they now add -rific onto everything they think is dumb. haha, oh the things children pick up on.)... we had silly ghosts (these being my favorite part because one child turned his into the ghost of a unicorn, hysterical), dangling spiders, falling leaves and paper chains. i mean... it was near close to a perfectly haunted forest in l-room.
we were informed the we got to rent costumes through the school, which did turn into a big fiasco, but that can come later so as not to get side tracked now from the really good stuff... so we got 30,000w to get whatever we wanted from a korean rental site on the interwebs... (we could pay the difference for something more if we wanted)... glories of all glories though the perfect costume of mine fell far below the limit at a mere 20,000w. how many of you know me well enough that i would be unable to pass up the opportunity of being a fully suited dinosaur, top to bottom. you can't deny it. it's who i am. it was that or a spandex frog suit. bahahaha... me in spandex is just such a funny thought. anyways, theres no wai i was going for the spandex, it's to cold here already and i had, had weekend plans formulating since the first of october here it was just neigh a week and a half into the month though and things were still flying. anyways. dinosaur i was, and it was a painfully happy experience, especially with the kids.
it was a different but fully gratifying halloween. nothing like home, but still it hit the spot and brought a tear to my eye more than once
psht, don't laugh, seeing snickers bars being handed out to children along with peanut m&ms, is enough to make any grown-up cry, never mind the jack-o-lntern carving, haunted playhouse or the quiznos we got catered for lunch... heaven for everyone (tag 'queen' here)
chronicled, recorded and posted. done and done.

there are never many pictures of these boys, but they're an older class of mine... yey they dressed up!!

a dinosaur needs to still grade tests

Bowling in gangdong : a moments respite and a new pair of shoes

i took a moment out of a busy and hectic week to go bowling with some friends.
my neighbor matt introduced me to a great korean girl named boae, a great girl who showed me how to make a mean steamed egg.. yummy!!!! but thats not the end of our adventures. she called us up not to long ago and really wanted to go bowling, what no wai?? i had really been wanting to go since i had been with the lci-ers. we rocked it out. we went out for some pre-bowling bbq and hit the lanes for a few games. bowling is cheaper and just as nice here in korea as it is in the states. 3,000w gets you a round and shoes... it really was quite the experience to bowl along korean ajummas in their sporty mismatched outfits, cheering at nearly every pin they knocked down. we stayed for a few games and ended up bowling near some pretty fun younger gentlemen who cheered for matt every time he striked (it was often, matt... well, he's good/ boae and myself probably wouldnt be able to bowl to save our own lives). it was neat stuff, handshakes, claps and cheers to go around. happy people bowling makes a silly sport fun. there was nothing about it silly as soon as we realized matt was part pro. feeling pretty bad i did attempt my best shot. i think i only got to 100pts maybe once. there's no gift for me there, no matter how hard i try i can't make it happen. but on the up side i left with the shoes, an accident of course. heh. oh well. enjoi the shots.

boae starts us off

the turn of pathetic

probably a strike

winnar!!!! with the majik ball

a little bit of give and take

as part of our deal for chuseok, we, the teachers of lci got our friday off... the one that went with the chuseok vacation. as part of this deal we relinquished one saturday to the school for a field trip. originally it was planned to be a day out in the park having grand games and epic water balloon battles complete with children screaming korean war cries. however, as circumstances go in hagwons we had a change of plans for the outcome of our saturday field trip. they one upped it. we went to a school for making cheese and it's lovely bi-products. with the amazing power of our noraebong and party buses we loaded up all the morning kinder students, teachers, and even our director (who rode on my bus... woot) and headed to the countryside of seoul. where we proceeded to do the following: make pizza and spaghetti, play silly games, feed baby milk cows, feed the hungriest goats and rabbits i've ever seen, pause and wait for picture opps, wash our hands about a million zillion times, eat pizza, and finally after a little more playtime outside make mozzarella cheese, fresh and stretchy.. mmmmMMMHhhhh.