November!

Here are some pictures of our most recent Speech Night - the students wrote about an experience in their lives. The experiences ranged from memorable family vacations and receiving their first computers to breaking their arms and seeing a playground ghost. However, our favorite speech came from a student named "Vicky" - she wrote about meeting DaR (Daniel and Rachel) for the first time. Here is the text of her speech, you can click on the picture to enlarge it. We thought it was a really nice speech (even it she calls Daniel a little fat...)



And in the spirit of my blog's name (Small Face, Big Nose), here is the picture to accompany Vicky's speech. If you didn't believe that they actually think my nose is huge...I'm apparently Pinocchio!



Here are a few middle school students preparing for their speeches. These three boys made exciting speeches about their experiences: 1. winning a box of chicken and a pack of Mentos from an online cellphone "Free Zone" game 2. getting hit by a car and being excited because he had no school for 10 days 3. going on a school trip 4. and being the owner of his 4th rabbit (because the other 3 died in a matter of 2 weeks.) He even brought rabbit poo to school and said that we could eat it because of the vitamins.



Mask season begins!



This is the beginning of construction next to our school. Our boss is building a coffee shop (yeah!) and possibly a set of small apartment/condos in the future. Dan took this picture about 2 weeks ago, so now there are walls and flooring. We take these pictures as a tribute to Dan's nephew Bertie - he loves construction diggers, trucks, cranes and other machines that are manly.



A few weeks ago, actually on November 11, 2011, (11.11.11), it was a special day in Korea - Pepero Day! Pepero Day is really just made by the Pepero company. They have smartly and properly marketed and commercialized this one day, (due to the shape of their product looking like a number 1), so thousands of boxes of their chocolate biscuits are purchased. Now, this being 11.11.11 - all number ones... this Pepero Day was the Millennium of Pepero Days! Dan and I did not buy into the commercialization, so we provided a different treat for the students that was much more filling and nutritious - rice cakes! They still said: "Teacher, give me the pepero please." Oh well, can't win them all. Anyway, here is a combination of the gifts that we received from students.

Part 2: Fun in the Fall

As winter approached this past weekend, I would like to tell you about a few fun things that we did in the fall. A few weekends ago, we were fortunate enough to have a visit from our good friend Glenn Carpenter. He is from Australia and was invited to be the referee for the Asian Gaelic Football Games in Suwon. It was great to catch up with him and have some dinner, but even greater seeing him running around the fields in the rain. For all of his hard work, we took him to a delicious Korean meal of galbi (a beef dish that is grilled at the table and eaten with a lettuce leaf). Good times.



Here is a magnificent view of the fall sunset from the apartment. I love when it is like this, and I am pretty sure I've never seen it this good in New Orleans, but I could be wrong.



Dan and I took one weekend to visit the magical and mystical Lotte World! It is one of Korea's main theme parks and kept us entertained for hours. It is actually split into two parts: indoors and outdoors, and is the largest indoor amusement park in the world (Credit: Guinness World Records). There are roller coasters, rides, and an ice rink inside. Very cool. Here we are posing in front of a replica of Cinderella's Castle. A certain princess and her dwarves also featured around the park, but not sure if they were Disney legit or not...



One night, as we were walking to the hotel from a lovely day in Seoul, we noticed some flashing Christmas lights in an upstairs window. Unfortunately there was no Christmas music...but there were these Star Wars masks! I am sure you can appreciate our excitement. This is one of the best pictures we took out of hundreds. Can you tell who's who?



Here is a picture of the first step of making one of our favorite new foods. This is an electric stone grinder that is smashing mung beans into a thick gooey substance (like pancake batter).



The final fried and crispy product: 녹두전! Nok-du jeon (nok-du = mung bean and jeon = pancake). It is extremely delicious and cheap and should only be eaten sparingly, as it is cooked in 2 inches of oil. We love it. The lady in the picture really took a liking to Dan as well. Free chopsticks!

Part 1: It's been a while...

I didn't realize how many months had passed since I wrote the last blog. Naturally, we have lots to tell you and because of the inordinate amount of pictures I would like to share with you, I will break this into two parts. So here is Part 1!

Time really has moved quickly for us here, and we are keeping ourselves busy with Korean lessons (finally!), hot yoga classes (yoga in 38 Celcius/95 Farenheit), and training for a 1/2 marathon. And we do some work occasionally. Recently, we have been enjoying the fall weather and taking advantage of being outside until it starts snowing (hopefully not too soon...) Our school life is going well and we have a number of new students and classes that keep us busy. We started teaching a new graduate student class, which is quite enjoyable as they are fairly fluent in English and can talk about topics other than computer games and Nintendo.

Outside of school news, our boss, Jennifer is taking on a new venture and will be opening up a coffee shop near the school. They are about to start construction on the land, so that will keep us excited and interested over the next few months. As far as Korea goes, our city (Gunsan) is doing really well! Everyday, we see construction on new buildings, restaurants, shops and offices. The rest of the world might be feeling the economic burn, but Gunsan is moving on, baby! Lots of fun new places for us to eat and drink. It feels quite similar to the New Orleans economic peak - during the U.S. recession - from the influx of new jobs and opportunities and rebuilding efforts after dat big ole storm, ya herd. We love it (and we love spending our hard earned money).

On another note, we found Cheerios in the store.

Here are some photos of events from the past 2 months. Sorry it's been so long!


This is an evening out with our Korean friend - Namu. He works at a great samgyeopsal restaurant - this is a type of pork meat that is served raw and cooked on a grill at the table. The lovely thing about Korean eating and restaurant culture is the relaxed atmosphere of the service. Although the restaurant was busy, he was able to sit and have dinner and a few drinks with us while serving other customers. Great guy.


Another photo to prove to you that we talk to people other than just ourselves and that we have Korean friends. We went to dinner one night with Nam-ho and Ji Eun (both are students) and I had a lovely Korean/English palm reading from Nam-ho. Here, he is telling me that I have a long life ahead of me, but I will be struck with a financial downfall. Luckily, Dan's money line was off the charts. (Wink)


Here is Jennifer, Dan and me before the Halloween party - Dan dressed up as a zombie Lee Myung Bak (the current Korean president), and he was a huge hit! I was a black cat, but everyone thought I was a fox. Oh well.


These lovely ladies work at the school with us. Here, they are preparing the sausages and skewers for our long awaited Halloween BBQ (In Korea, we say "sawsageey bahbehcue") Soon after the photo a mangy cat without a tail snuck up on the table and stole one of our sausages.


A photo from the Halloween party eating festival. These are three students - John, Toby and Jack. During the scary movie portion of the party, Toby ate 6 heaping plates of chips (crisps) and crackers. We were impressed and as you can tell, he is really into eating.


This is the newest addition to the BuHyang Hanaro Apartment building #101. On the bottom floor, there is an area that is kind of a mesh of a lobby, bike/motorcycle parking, public toilet, garbage collecting, mail room, dry cleaning walk through room. If you can get a clear picture of that...it's pretty foul. Recently, there was a substantial leak coming through the ceiling tiles in this area. As a fast solution, this was set up. If you cannot see it, I shall explain: it is a series of plastic bags taped to the inside of the tiles to catch the leaking water and form a funnel for transportation down a gray plastic drainage pipe, and finally through a hose that simply poured a steady flow of water right onto the bathroom floor. The bucket is there to support the construction. It's lucky that there are no actual doors or working toilets in that bathroom. Where was the water coming from? I don't want to know.


Some more students enjoying the Halloween food.


Just a view of the front of the school decorations. It was a really fun day!