No Rest for the Weary

Camp finished this week!!!!!!! Woohooooooooooooo!


Too bad school starts again today. Boooooooooooo.

I also had a bottle of makgeolli (Korean rice wine) tumble out of my fridge and break, so my apartment smells kind of nice but also it's really sticky no matter how much I wash the spot. Sigh.



Anyway, it was a fairly eventful week for my kidlets as camp came to a close. We had our cooking day, which was super fun but also drove me and So Jung nuts trying to prepare for.

We made the wonkiest quesadillas this side of the world, but it was fun!

The process: put tomato sauce on tortilla. So Jung and I didn't feel like cutting up a million tomatoes for the kids to use, so we used tomato sauce.

Put mozzarella cheese on tortilla. Mozzarella cheese for a quesadilla because Korea. When we were ordering stuff online from the place we got approved by the school to buy from, this was the only kind of cheese they had in a manageable quantity for our budget. So far, it was like making pizza.

Put ham, corn, and onions on one half of the tortilla. These were "Mexican" quesadillas sooooo whatever. Now our classroom smells like onions.

Now we get to cook them. Put one quesadilla in the frying pan, supervised by the teacher. Then when the cheese gets melty, fold it in half, again supervised by the teachers.

Take out of pan. Enjoy!

So Jung said it worked infinitely better than the ice cream they tried to make during summer camp, and it was actually fairly easy to clean up. The kids had to bring their own plates and utensils, and I provided the frying pans (thanks, Lauren and Tina for lending me your pans!!) but since we were just browning tortillas there wasn't much to clean up. We used disposable bowls for the ingredients, and it worked out quite well.

The first three days of the week tried my patience, but the cooking day and final day made me remember why I love these little nuggets.

My fifth grade girls graciously helped the third graders, who were very happy to work with their eonnis (older sister if you're a girl)

my other mix of third and 5th grade angel nuggets

I took care of the girl groups and So Jung worked with the boys. Matthew and Max in the front of the picture were particularly fond of the food.

My older boys. They kept eating the sauce and asked us where we got it. Apparently they really liked it.

Again, my girls were adorable. 

Can't even stop chowing down for a picture.

Again So Jung worked with more of the boys while I handled the other groups.

Me and my girls.

Me and my boys.

trying to stretch the cheese

Small Korean Harry Potter was good at it.

Sauce all over the face. Satisfaction.

On Friday we had market day where the kids traded in the stickers they earned (for coming each day, doing a worksheet, group winning something, etc.) for "money" to buy prizes.

The watches were really popular.

Stuff for everyone!

So many cute things.

YOU WERE SO CLOSE, ENGLISH NOTEBOOK.

Camp finally came to a close, and while some of it was difficult, it was a little bit of fun and we got some good reviews. Sometimes they're a lot to handle, but man do I love my kids. It was really nice to have So Jung back to teach with too. We just work really well together, probably because we know each other's styles by now and we like working with one another. It was tough, but we managed. All's well that ends well.



Over the weekend I finally got to hang out with some of my friends from my intake. Since we all had different camps, everyone was on vacations at all different times and it's hard to plan around that.

On Friday we hung out at my friend Christian's apartment, which is incidentally right below Tina's. I found out he lived there when he posted a picture of his apartment and I texted him "Hey where do you live? The layout is really similar to my sister's" to which he replied "I live below your sister!" Small world syndrome at it's finest.

So a bunch of us grabbed dinner in Hongdae and headed over. We played games, I dominated in Cards Against Humanity (not sure what that says about me) and found out it's oddly American-specific. I've never played with Aussies, Canadians, Americans, and Koreans before, so it was funny to see which cards tripped people up. It was a lot of fun to just hang out and chill, but everyone had to leave kind of early because they live on the other side of Seoul.

On Saturday Tina and I had a lazy day of watching a new show, Hyde, Jekyll, Me, which is a Kdrama employing Dissociative Identity Disorder as a main plot point. It tries to turn the traditional Jekyll and Hyde story around by having the mean personality in control, so it seems. I don't buy it for a second. His inner personality "Robin," has so far literally just saved people and been really nice, but everyone freaks out if he's mentioned, busts out tasers, he can do wildly inhuman acrobatics, and he was born out of the main characters guilt about an as-of-yet unrevealed incident. Sounds suspicious to me.

The one with the glasses is the main guy, the one on the left is his other personality.

It looks to be a highly entertaining drama.

We went to Hongdae for some errands before making our way across town to Gangnam to hang out with the internationals again. People brought snacks from their home countires: Tim-Tams and vegemite from Australia, Ketchup and "All Dressed" chips from Canada, brownies and doughnuts as American cuisine, and various other snacks. It was fun! It's always nice to be around a group of foreigners and share our experiences and food before returning to Korean schools and classes and whatnot. It was the Hongdae crowd's turn to leave early since we live on the opposite side of the city, and for the first time ever I had someone literally fall onto the floor/my leg on the subway. It was amusing. We got home safe and cuddled up.

The next day was Sunday so we lazed around, got some thai food for lunch, then prepared for the next day by doing absolutely nothing.

All in all, not a bad way to end camp and start school again.

Since our lesson for 6th grade is stupid "What do you know about Tom Sawyer?" My coteacher and I altered our lesson to be more accessible by basically changing it to "What do you know about Super Junior?" or "What do you know about Kim Woo Bin?" since our students know that I love SuJu and So Jung loves Woo-binnie.

What do I know about Kim Woo Bin? Far less than I would like to. Like how his eyebrow game is so strong.

This way, we can use it as a gateway for them to talk about other things they would know. What do you know about EXO? What do you know about Harry Potter? What do you think about Guardians of the Galaxy?

We don't want to scare them off with Tom Sawyer, who I can't even tell you a ton about. Instead we will scare them with my obsession with SuJu.

So as a throwback to my favorite group, here's Mamacita, which I am compelled to listen to every time it comes on my ipod:

Mamacita is one of the best songs on the best albums ever. 

For other music this week, I have been playing the same Beast songs from my previous blogs, plus a couple of extras.

2PM's "Go Crazy" is so much fun. Their fandom name is "Hottest" and I thought it was because, like Beast, 2PM just assembled the hottest humans on the planet to form a band. I was recently informed that fans of 2PM are called Hottest because 2PM is the hottest part of the day.

And "Trap" by Henry from Super Junior M (the SuJu subgroup) featuring Kyuhyun (also from SuJu) and Taemin (from SHINee). Henry is Canadian and awesome at violin and such, and Kyuhyun and Taemin are some of my favorite SM artists. I'm not gonna lie, part of me loves this song because Kyuhyun doing hop-hoppy things instead of ballads really gets me.


Back to the grind of school, but this weekend I'm going to see the Mr. Show again with So Jung and Su Hyeon, and it's only 19 days until I'm in Japan! Things are looking bright on this side of the world! Stay warm, friends!