Restless Seoul : So Much to be Thankful for!

This just in: It's cold.

Hello all! Busy weeks lead to late blogs haha.

November is over and now we're into December! It has been an entire month of no days off, so all of us at school are feeling dragged. My students are often restless and noisy, and the cold weather is tough too.

On Wednesday, I got to participate in a program where the school pairs a student in need with a teacher to have some fun and make some things. Usually these kids have behavioral problems or attitude problems, or something is going on at home that really impacts their school life. My student's parents are divorced, so the impact of that has made a difference in his relationship with the other students. I think he is a bit of a teacher's pet, which I now see as an attempt to get some attention that he must not get at home.

Anyway, we made chocolates, decorated cookies, and made soap. It was really fun!

Me and mah boyyy eating chocolate after we finished piping them into the boxes.

I used like all the chocolate haha

I am a cookie genius

I understood most of what the instructor was saying, and even though I was at tables without English speaking teachers, I managed. I had my student, Joon Seo, explain things to me and help me with things that I for sure understood. He must have said "Teacher! Like this!" a million times. He told So Jung later that he helped me a lot and he was dizzy from using English so much. Haha.

After the food, we made soap, which is a lot more intense than I thought it was.

getting our hearts ready

The finished product was pretty nice!

My box of soaps.

The next day I saw Joon Seo and he was very excited to see me and tell me how much fun he had. I asked him if he ate the chocolates and he said yes. He told So Jung in class that he feels closer to me now and he can talk to me better. Excuse me while my heart melts.

I was pretty annoyed to have to do this program, as all the teachers were. But I think it was really good. I wish I had gotten pictures of the teachers interacting with these students. Only 2 from each class could do it, and the ones who got to were so lucky! I think it helped all of us bond.

Thursday was Thanksgiving, so I did what I did last year and brought in pumpkin pie. This year I got two, one for the main office and one for the subject teachers, and whipped cream from Costco. Since I had a lot to carry to school, I tried to take a cab. There is a taxi stand right outside of my apartment, but after standing for 10 minutes and having a taxi drive past me in favor of some Koreans who clearly came after me (and they did nothing to indicate that I was there first, they just got in the taxi, which I understand but was annoying), I hoofed it to school.

I gave the pie to the principal and explained why, and was met with an "okay." Not the reaction I was expecting. Oh well.

When I went up to my office, So Jung was really worried about me since I am never late(r than her) and I hadn't called. I showed her the pie and she was excited, since last year was the first time she had had pumpkin pie. As I took it to the fridge, I ran into literally every other teacher so the surprise for after lunch was ruined. Alas.

At lunch we had the pie and boy did we need it. 6th grade is almost unbearable these days. Sigh. Also we had seaweed soup for lunch. Double sigh.

But I got to give out pie to happy teachers, and show them how to work whipped cream in a can. They couldn't believe how good at it I was, and I explained to them that I used to eat it straight from the can. We all enjoyed the pie and whipped cream, and though it didn't feel like a real Thanksgiving day, it sure felt nice.

Look at that pie. Not enough whipped cream.

Tina and I decided to meet for dinner after some of her plans were mercifully cancelled, because I couldn't bear the thought of not seeing any of my family on Thanksgiving. She still had Korean class, but we still managed to meet and enjoy. We went for the all-american menu of Taco Bell.

Happy Expat Thanksgiving!

After dinner, we did some shopping and bought too many eyeliners and too many clothes, but god was it good. We made a purchase for Sunday's dance class, and then parted ways. It didn't feel like Thanksgiving, but it was nice.

On Friday I realized that at 9AM my time, my family would all be together at my grandma's house for dinner, so I facebook videoed into their dessert time. My 5th grade students came in and freaked out at seeing my family. No one, even So Jung, could believe my grandma is 93. Also 5th graders don't understand time zones so they think America lives 14 hours in the past. I tried to explain that it's simultaneous, but oh well. It was really great to see everyone briefly, and that made my heart ache like it did last year from missing Thanksgiving. Sigh. I felt pretty refreshed from it, like I actually got to spend time with my family, but it made me realize just how long I've been away. 2015 marks the year that I spent the entire year off of US soil, and it is hard to express just how much I miss home but also don't. It's a paradox, for sure.

Anyway, on Friday I also got to judge the 4th grade art contest for making the symbol of Seoul. I was crying from laughing so hard at this one:

I. Seour. U.

It is funny in two ways: one, the r/l mix-up is common and hilarious. Two, Seoul's new official slogan, chosen in a contest in which clearly no English speaker participated, is this: I. Seoul. You.

?????????????

So I, and everyone else, found this picture hilarious. But I was like crying from it. Ah, kids.

I have Korean class on Fridays so I cobbled together some dinner.

Ham, hard-boiled eggs, and honey mustard sauce that I take from BK every time I eat there.

After class, Tina asked if I wanted to go out with her and her coworkers, who were coming back from their teaching trip. I was like sure, and met several of them (besides Young Ah and Hae In, it was nice to meet more of the coworkers since Tina met so many of mine) and we went to noraebang!

Tina and her Co Seon Gyeong (sp???? Korean names are still hard for me) singing "Love Battery", a trot song

Jammin'

I'd met the male teacher before, and he was an excellent rapper, but it was my first time meeting Kyuhyun (just like SuJu's Kyuhyun, also a good singer) and Seon Gyeong.

It was so fun! I love meeting the people that are important to people, and these teachers are important to Tina and it was super fun. Kyuhyun is moving to America soon and super nervous, so she thanks Tina a lot for all of her help. She told me she loves Christina on more than one occasion haha.

We retired for the evening and prepared for Saturday.

We were finally able to have a proper Thanksgiving meal, so we got together with some friends and headed out to the WinK (When in Korea - a company we've done trips with before) taphouse for their Thanksgiving meal!

All the fixins

It was delicious and fun.

You've probably heard/read me gush about how much I love Grace, but I really do. I like going out with her and her boyfriend, and Namho does too since it takes a lot of the pressure off of the language thing. But we all got to have dinner together and it was awesome.

Grace and her boyfriend

Tina and Grace

Thankful for this guy these days.

Namho was excited to eat Thanksgiving dinner, but I guess I didn't really explain the holiday well enough. He thought he was supposed to buy me a gift to show how thankful he was. And I was like no but damn if that doesn't make sense.

So he spent like 2 hours looking for a gift for me. He is convinced that I don't have any "real winter mufflers" so he bought me a winter scarf.

Isn't it pretty?!?!

Unfortunately I am allergic to it, but I won't tell him that haha. I'll wash it a few times and no one shall be the wiser. But my neck has been itching for days. Sad face.

Anyway, we met up with Grace's friend and went to a board game cafe altogether and played a bunch of games. It was really fun and felt Thanksgiving-y.

This game, Tumblin' Monkeys, is perhaps my favorite of all the games in the cafe.

The guys really liked it haha

After a long day of thanks, we made our ways home. Somehow I slept in til like noon on Sunday, and then I had to prepare for the dance of the week. We're performing this one at a benefit for Dance Joa's 10 year anniversary, so we wanted to do well. but we were wary since it was EXO.

Never fear, our Thanksgiving shopping got us pumped:

PUSHEEN PANTS

We had Pusheen pants, I had a cat shirt, and we had knee pads for all. We were ready to tackle EXO's "Growl," which is the song that made them SUPER famous.

It was honestly one of my favorite dances. Easily the easiest EXO dance we learned (of Call Me Baby, History, Love Me Right, and Growl... We've almost learned all of their dances...), and closer to Rhythm Ta than last week's disastrous "Love Me Right" in execution, it was a really fun class.

Here's the real dance:

I really love this dance, and we were all joking about which member of EXO we would be since there were so many of us in the group.

I would be the maknae (youngest), Sehun, since he's my bias and is known for having like 1 line per song.

He first got me with his rainbow hair:

Anyway we were joking about being Tao (who starts the song), Luhan, or Kris, as they are all the members who left the group. We managed to be serious enough to take a million videos of this dance though.

I really love this dance.

Group A attempt 1

B1 Tina's group

A2

B2

Group Mirror

Group facing camera

And here's the dance again if you want to see what it should look like after watching us botch it repeatedly.

After class, Tina and I kicked it at BK because they have chicken fries.

My first love

They told us it would take 15 minutes for our order, and since we are seasoned BK vets we were like "nothing here takes 15 minutes??" but then when they announced that someone ordered 10 whopper meals we understood.

We happened upon Grace at the subway since we took so long and she and her BF ate at another restaurant, and headed home.

Monday was a lot of drama and stupid little things and then finally some good with hanging out with Namho, and here I am on Tuesday. Poor So Jung had to break up a fight in her home economics class, and she was so stressed about everything that I made all of the activities for 6th grade this week so she can relax a tiny bit. It's aaaaaalmost break time, so hopefully we can make it through.

In other music news, PSY of "Gangnam Style" fame in the USA released a new single:

It's called "Daddy" and features CL of 2ne1, and it is as weird as you would expect. But damn is it catchy.

And BTS released a new video, "Run" which follows along with their other videos "I Need U" and a "Prologue" and has a lot of theories around the storyline.