Tuesday, May 11, 2010

Spring Activities

I have turned into a bad blogger over the last few months.  My blogging entries are starting to grow farther and farther apart!  About a month ago the cherry blossoms were in full bloom.  Not knowing anything about these trees besides seeing them all over Seoul, a group of us went to the cherry blossom festival in Yeouido (right across the river from me). This area is the financial district of Seoul.  The streets around this area were lined with many cherry blossom trees.  Apparently these trees are only in full bloom for 1-2 weeks each year. I think this year they were a few weeks behind schedule because it took a little longer to warm up.  We went to the festival/park on a lazy Sunday afternoon and hung around the area for a few hours.  This area was FULL of people.  Well, most places here are so it was nothing new to me! We walked around for a bit, tried some really good street food, and camped out in the park for a bit and people watched. 


Me taking a picture of a Korean couple!


A weird police woman thing?
Over the past two months my kindergarten class has adapted well to the new school. Everyone in my class was new to Poly School.  They all attended Pre-K somewhere else.  It was nice to have a brand new class to the school.  This is mainly because they haven't had a previous teacher at the school.  When I came in September my kinder class already had their own collective character.  Crazy, wild, yet very smart.  I feel that I didn't change much for my previous kinder class because they had another teacher for the longest time.  Everything we were "learning" they already knew very well.

The students in my new class (the tigers) have all grown a lot in the past few months. They are wild at times but nothing compared to the craziness of my old class.  I've got children of all ability levels.  I will end up being with my new kinder class for 6 months.  It has been very gratifying to teach these new students because I feel that I am teaching them so much more than my previous class.   They have done a great job so far and I'm excited to see the progress that they will continue to make!

We have gone on a couple field trips in April and May.  We have gone to two different parks.  The last one we went to was to celebrate Children's Day.  This is a special day to celebrate the children.  How come this isn't celebrated in America?? Children's Day was last Wednesday.  Nearly everyone in the country has the day off to celebrate with their children, take them somewhere, buy them gifts, etc.   We celebrated with the children last Tuesday by taking them to a park across the river from where I live (Mapo). While there we rode bicycles with the kids, played games, and ate lunch.  It was a great way to spend the morning. 

Lunch time

Throwin' up the peace sign (from L to R: Justin, Henry, Angelina, Julie, Ryan)

With the weather finally warming up we have started to go to some Korean baseball games.  Since I got here in September last year I wasn't able to go to any games because it was around the time the playoffs started.  I'm only able to go to games on the weekends because games during the week start at 6:30 and I don't get off until 7:30.  The Korean Baseball League (KBO) has 8 teams.  5 out of the 8 teams are in Seoul and the other 3 are in other major cities.  We have been going to Mokdong Stadium (Emily and her co-workers live very close) to watch the Nexen Heroes.  The team has a man from the USA.  His Name is Doug Clark.  He played in a few games in the MLB and spent a lot of time in the minors before deciding to come play in Korea two years ago.  So far we have been to two games and plan on going to many more.  The games are a ton of fun.  The stadium is nearly split in half with the home team fans all sitting on their site and the visiting teams fans' on their side.  Both sides sing songs through out the game and there are cheerleaders on top of the dugouts.  You can also bring in WHATEVER you want into the stadium.  Water, pop, beer, fried chicken, you name it and you can bring it in!  Needless to say the games are quite different from what you would experience in America, but they are a lot of fun.  When we went to the game last weekend Emily got a foul ball coincidently enough from the American player on the team we were rooting for!  It's quite funny to think about considering the odds of that are pretty slim.  I see many more games in the future since the weather has gotten much nicer recently.  




Finally, this past weekend I woke up and turned on the TV.  Flipping through channels I saw that there was a triathlon on.  I didn't know if it was live or not so I looked it up on the internet.  It was going on live just across the river from where I live. The tri was a men's and women's professional race.  Seoul was just one of the stops of about 10 international cities in the circuit.  I have heard/seen a few of the American athletes from the Hy-Vee Triathlon.  Seeing that it was live I headed 1 subway stop away and watched the men's race for a few hours.  It was a very nice day outside and a good chance to see something I have become interested in.  

Start of the race (in the dirty Han River!)

Bikers leaving the first transition

background


2 comments:

  1. Oh wow. Swimming in the Han River? That's pretty hardcore. Lol, have you seen the movie The Host? If the Han River can make that monster I wouldn't want to be swimming in it...
    --Mark teacher

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  2. No I haven't seen the movie but I remember you talking about it. From hearing how dirty the Han is I definitely wouldn't want to swim in it! There most likely are monsters in the river haha.

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