Modeling and kats...

"The secret to modeling is not being perfect.  What one needs is a face that people can identify in a second."

-Karl Lagerfeld

     Last weekend Lindsey and I decided to visit Yongma Land.  Yongma Land opened in 1980 and was a small amusement park.  Unfortunately  in 1989, the larger more impressive Lotte World opened and Yongma land had to close.  Now the draw is the fact that the park is "abandoned." Abandoned is in quotes because while the rides no longer run and the whole park is dilapidated, every weekend the park is crawling with people taking photos.  Before we went, I thought our day would be spent taking photos of the dilapidated rides.  Instead most of the people used the rides as a photo shoot back drop.  I am not a natural model in any way.  I find it extremely weird to do anything except stand there and smile in photos.  Thankfully Lindsey was more into being the model so I got to play photographer.  They even sold balloon bouquets at the entrance to use as an adorable photo prop. 

We asked some girls to take photos of us and in the middle of the photo, one of our balloons popped.

There were two official photo shoots going on while we were there.  The strange thing was there was one model and 10 photographers for each of them.  I am very confused why you would want 10 photographers all taking the same photo.  It seems like a waste of the photographers time and money.

It was very cool to see all the behind the scenes stuff.  It was also very unsafe and would never be allowed in the US.

My favorite things were the giant colorful light bulbs.  This park had the weirdest things just sitting everywhere.  Why wouldn't an amusement park need a wheelchair? 

I am also very confused why the park would not have tried to sell off all of these things once the park closed.  The girl on the right was fully dressed as Jasmine and had her boyfriend following her around taking photos.  Korea is weird.

While most of the park was fun and whimsical, some parts were darn right creepy such as this guy.

This was hands down my favorite part of the park.

We were watching how everyone else posed and used the props and then we copied them.  This little taxi turned out to be the cutest prop.

Creepy dragon graveyard.

 See in this photo you can see 4 of the 10 photographers taking the same photo of that model standing between the white columns.

Apparently Danish cookies are also necessary at an amusement park.  We tried for at least 20 minutes to get a photo of us on the ride on the right.  We set my camera timer and hoped for the best.  What we were not counting on was that the ride would still move.  Every time Lindsey would run to jump in the photo, I would swing around out of the shot.

 Then we gave up on the blue car and moved to the yellow one, which didn't move anymore.

It was a very weird and fun way to spend a Saturday afternoon.  Sunday we kept up with the fun and visited two cafes in Seoul.  The first cafe we went to was a meerkat cafe!  Yes as in the little animal named Timon from Lion King.  We didn't come at the greatest time.  Most of the meerkats were taking their afternoon naps.   

These little guys were super "cheeky" as Beth likes to say.  They were in love with buttons, strings, and the hole in my sock.  

Beth and Lindsey were in love with the raccoon that was also running around the cafe.  I am smarter however and know how evil raccoons are.  While we were there one of the workers tried to pickup the raccoon to move him and the guy ended up with scratches that might have needed stitches.  

After the meerkats, we continued with our cat theme and went to a Hello Kitty Cafe.  The pink was blinding. 

Seriously so much pink.

What would a Hello Kitty Cafe be without kitty themed drinks and cakes?

Or carrots and cheese in the shape of a kitty?

There was even a second floor with more glaring pinkness!

 Complete with a Hello Kitty bedroom

Lindsey is always ready to ruin a good photo.

We then spent way too much money on a hello kitty photo booth.  Instead of the normal photo print out this photo booth printed out a weird Hello Kitty credit card.  What am I supposed to do with this?

We started a new school year in February and I think things are finally starting to settle down.  I have 10 students this year and they are at a lower level of English than my last class.  This year we are the Sea Lion class.  8 of my students attended the school last year and were in Gabby's class.  In her last week in Korea, it was so nice to have her art talents to help decorate my classroom.  

I'm quite excited by how well my classroom decorations turned out.  

One of the required things in our classroom is having the big bulletin board decorated with our class animal and students.  Last year the teacher who had the sea lion class had put his kids heads on sea lion bodies, it was very creepy.  So this year I decided to have my kids be onlookers, instead of actual sea lions. 

So I would like to formally introduce the 2017 Sea Lions.  From top left to bottom right: Liana, Theo, Yu Jin, Gloria, Ji Ho, Chenny, Chloe, Julia, and Jenny.  They are all 5 years old.  Because they are a lot lower level than my previous class, it is so rewarding to see how fast this class progresses.  I've only taught them for three weeks and I have already seen huge improvement in their writing and reading.   

I know you are not supposed to have favorites but every teacher does.  So far the front runner is Chenny.  She brought me a bouquet of flowers the first day of school and needs to wave hi and hold my hand every time she sees me.  

This weekend is a weekend to just relax.  Friday night I was Lindsey's responsible adult to bring her home after her Lasek surgery.  It was so cool, I got to sit outside the operating room and watch the surgery on a monitor.  Today we went back for a follow-up appointment and then I got a hair cut.  The two women in the salon were mesmerized by my hair.  The just kept saying, "no perm?" and then staring at me incredulously.  Then the woman who cut my hair spent 20 minutes on her phone researching how to cut my hair.  In the end this was a much more successful hair cut than the first one I got in Korea.  The best part was the updo the woman did at the end of the haircut so I didn't walk out with a fro.