Brown paper packages tied up with string...

Girls in white dresses with blue satin sashes, snowflakes that stay on my nose and eyelashes, silver white winters that melt into spring, these are a few of my favorite things.

- Sound of Music

     Christmas time is my favorite time of the year.  I love the snow, decorations, hot drinks, and lingering.  As my sister and I have grown older Christmas has lost some of the magic.  This year celebrating with my kindergartners brought all of that magic back.  We celebrated Christmas with the Kindergarten on Wednesday.  Our school does not celebrate Halloween, so Christmas they are encouraged to wear costumes.  My 7 girls came in their princess finery and Jun, my only boy, came dressed as Rudolph.   

These are my girls shoes.  They are 6 and already wearing heels.  You see those gold shoes in the middle? Those have an inch heel and look like shoes ready for a tango.

Before they went on stage, they got to walk down the "runway" to show off their costumes.

This looks simple but honestly you have no idea how much work teaching them a simple song is.

 

The cutest performance was the Koalas class.  Its a class of 8, 5 year old girls.  The thought Santa Baby was about Santa as a baby.

The school had a puppet troupe come to perform at the school.  The show was completely in Korean so I really have no idea what the play was about but the children enjoyed it.

He doesn't look impressed but he loved his Rudolph costume.

The parents sent gifts in so that Santa could give them out.  My kids are getting to smart for their own good and only a few were really impressed with Santa.  However the younger kids were shaking they were so excited!

My favorite part of the day was the last 15 minutes.  Every part of our kindergartner's days are scheduled.  For the last 15 minutes of Wednesday they were allowed to relax on the floor and watch Christmas cartoons.  That also allowed me to just snuggle and hug them.  We all learned a very important lesson: Erin teacher's lap is not big enough to fit 8, 6 year olds.

During our Thanksgiving party I painted the kid's hands and put them on an ornament.  They completely forgot about them until I surprised them as a Christmas present.

Here are two of my Korean co-workers.  Aimee is on the left and Paula, the owner and principal, on the right.

Two weeks ago was also my birthday.  On the Saturday following my friends and I spent the day eating amazing food, cake, and trying an escape room.

We failed to escape in the hour, there was to much math involved.

None of my students remembered my birthday, but one of the other 6 year olds did.  She even had her mom call the school to ask how to spell my name.

Gifts from kindergartners are very interesting.  This is from my student Eloise.  The card says: Dear Erin Teacher.  I love to learn with you.  What do you do at night? Love, Eloise.  

Then the bag says: I love your plan because it is fun.  

She knows about my secret moonlighting as a superhero obviously.

The best parts of their presents though are the little treasures that are obviously so important to them.  These things came in Eloise's package.  She even gave me instructions of what to do with the shiny paper.  I am supposed to cut a shape out and then use it as a sticker.

During our December birthday party, the Korean staff also got a cake for me.

Two of my coworkers and I visited Lotte World.  It is a knock-off Disney World.  The beauty of Disney is that every detail has been thought of, not so much at Lotte World.  Its also very strange because 90% of the park is inside this huge building.

There is even a princess castle outside.

Friday we had the Christmas party with the elementary aged kids.  I thought teaching the kindergartners a song was difficult, but teaching the elementary kids a song and dance was like pulling teeth.  

This is my favorite class to teach and my favorite song that my classes sung.  Daniel, the boy, was really excited and found the a capella Pentatonix version online.  He really wanted to sing the full version with him singing dum, dum, da-dum but unfortunately the Korean teacher cut that part at the last minute.  

I only teach this class once a week so I cannot claim that I had anything to do with this song.  Its just so amazing that I had to share.

These are my oldest students and they fought me the hardest on learning the song and dance.  Thankfully they pulled it off.

I was supposed to fly out to Bali at 9:00 but my flight has been delayed until 11:00.  So now I am wasting time until I have to leave.  Just one more day and I will be on a tropical island!  Merry Christmas everyone!

The amazingly strange...

“Some are born weird, some achieve it, others have weirdness thrust upon them.” 

― Dick Francis, To the Hilt

Let me just start by saying Korea is a weird place.  Most of the time this weirdness is endearing.  On Saturday; Beth, Alex, and I had the epitome of a weird Korea experience.  Which was perfect as it was our send off to Alex.  My group of 6 is now down to 2.5.  I give Sally a .5 since she is unfortunately very very busy with her work.  Its sad but I'm hopefully building a new group with my new coworkers.  Anyway back to the weirdness of Korea.  Weeks ago Alex asked if Beth and I would like to go on a hike with him his last weekend here.  Since it was his last weekend I could hardly say no.  

The hike was lovely until halfway up the mountain it began to snow.  It was beautiful but I was terrified of falling and the snow kept sticking to my hair, melting, and dripping down my face.  

Is it sacrilegious to imitate the pose of your zodiac animal? 

The snow was beautiful and actually warmed up the temperature so the hike was quite pleasant!

This mountain is known for having the longest suspension bridge in Korea.  

Alex actually enjoys hiking and takes a picture with the height marker of every mountain he hikes.

I stole these last two pictures of the mountain from Beth.  I only had my phone to take pictures.  She brought her nice camera and got some beautiful shots. 

And now we get to the amazing weirdness.  After the hike we went to Herb Island.  There are not words to describe this place.  The first building we went into was pretty normal it sold candles, herbs, soap, and tea.  But right outside the weirdness began, with a creepy Cinderella and pumpkin carriage.  

Who thought this was a good enough statue to put up? SO CREEPY!

Why just why?

We went through this maze of a greenhouse and emerged in Santa land.

Why must Santa statues be so creepy?

Is this a normal shed used for storing gardening tools?

Oh no of course not, it is part of a nativity.  Hopefully they add the rest of the members before Christmas. 

Then suddenly there was light!

And weird Tinker Bell statues.

These beautiful multicolored rows are the remnants of the islands lavender plants.

Again why must Santa statues be so creepy?

Then we came across the weird workshop photo booths.  The first one was a seamstress workshop.  I'm not really sure why there was a dinosaur in this workshop.

Then we had a garden shop and woodworking shop.  Unfortunately all the tools in these shops were glued down.

Why was this the only place to not have the props glued down? These are things you can actually hurt yourself with! Also why do you need a lighter in a jewelry shop?

Beth wanted to recreate the pottery scene from "Ghost"

Then we came across a safari/farm animal garden.

 You could buy carrots to feed to the donkeys.  It was so weird seeing the kids stab a carrot with the stick then stand 5 feet away from the fence waiting for the donkey to bit the carrot off the stick.

I usually don't feel bad for farm animals but these poor babies and mama were shaking in the cold.

Who doesn't love a wizard with sunglasses?

And a mini Venice?

Complete with gondolas!

and pirates?

Who doesn't need a Trevi fountain replica?

Then we came to the best part of the entire day, a dinosaur garden. This part had animatronic dinosaurs that moved and growled.

 These were ride-able dinosaurs!!!! How cool is that?

This is what Alex and I imagined what we would look like hatching from eggs.

 The next photo opportunity came in the form of army jackets, helmets, and bedding.  It makes perfect sense to glue down the backpacks but allow you to use the mattress and blankets.

This is Korea so of course there were millions of couples.  Beth and I decided to get in on the action.

What better way for Alex to end his last Korean adventure than to take a photo in a Chinese take-out photo booth?