HALLELUJAH

---

These past few weeks have been beyond crazy. With wrapping up school, making sure the Christmas Concert didn’t end up disastrous, and packing up our classrooms for supposed renovations over the holidays, are we ever glad we made it through alive. I decided to start this blog with a few stories...

So as you know from previous blogs, the funniest things always happen on the subways, or at least at the stops. We’ve been stopped by countless JW Koreans trying to witness to us in broken English, had our pictures taken, and who can forget the never ending stare down. One Sunday we were taking the subway and this girl and guy get on. She keeps looking over at us like she wants to talk to us. Finally I guess she gets the courage up, walks over, asks if we can help her and we say sure! As it turns out, she’s a university student studying English. She had a presentation the next day in English and a script she had to memorize. We thought she just needed us to read it to her, or help her with words... nope. She wanted to record us reading it. Haha. So, here we are on the subway, with a Korean girl holding her MP3 up to our mouths to record us reading her script. The hilarious part was the script - it was a dialogue between a guy and a girl - Mike and Alice. We told her it was close to our names and she just couldn’t believe it. Then the whole script was like “What do you do to exercise Mike?” “Well, I go to the fitness center 3 times a week. What do you do to keep healthy?” It just seemed so weird to be doing this on the subway. As if we don’t get enough stares already. Then she thanks us profusely and sits back in her seat. She starts rummaging through her purse and right away I know what she’s doing. Any time you help a Korean they feel the intense need to give you something for your trouble. Usually it’s something they randomly can find in their purse or car. Yup, so this girl pulls out a tiny little bottle of liquid and comes over and gives it to us to thank us. She explains it’s this oil you put on sore muscles. You know it’s just the first thing she came across in her purse that seemed even remotely suitable. So random and hilarious.

Mike has these grade 6 parents that call themselves “the dream team”. It’s a group of 6 or 7 moms that want to help with pretty much everything... anyways, one of the moms helped with our Christmas concert. She was in Mike’s classroom and another teacher tells the mom how remember this plant she gave her, well it died in the summer and the janitor overwatered it but then it suddenly had a come back this fall and it’s now on Mike’s desk. Well somehow this mom interpreted it to be that Mike LOVES plants and has a green thumb (I love how with the language barrier so many things get lost in translation). So the next day, 4 poinsettia plants get delivered to the school for a Mr. Mike Cumiskey. Following that one, he got another plant for his desk. We’re just waiting to see how many plants Mr. “green thumb” gets... and I thought for sure all he was going to get from parents for Christmas was plants 

The parents of one of Mike’s students invited us out for dinner with them. We thought it was a nice gesture that you just can’t turn down, but it’s a little unnerving to say the least since we didn’t at all know what to expect. She asks us, Chinese, Italian, Korean or Japanese. Since Mike and I haven’t quite gotten used to the food here yet, we thought we’d go safer and say Italian or Chinese. Yup. So she picks us up and takes us to this famous Chinese restaurant. As soon as drove into the parking lot I knew we were in for an experience of a lifetime. She pulls into one of the squares into the middle of the parking lot, gets out, hands her keys to a valet guy, and the guy gets in, drives her car like 4 meters away and parks in a stall. He gets out and hands her back the keys. I’m telling you, this just doesn’t seem very logical to me, but I guess that makes it completely logical in Korea. If we were ever to write a book about our journey here I think I would title it, “Throw all logic out the window, and there you have it... Korea” Anyways, we get taken to this private room in this restaurant and I’m so nervous at this point at how fancy the restaurant is, I’m thinking about every move I make, should I hang up my coat, or put it over my chair, do I put the napkin in my lap or wait... ahhhh. Anyone who knows me knows I am so not classy like this. The courses of food just start coming. And this is not American Chinese. This is Korean Chinese. Totally different. But, we feel like we would be rude if we didn’t try it all, so Mom, you would be proud - I tried most of it. Every time they would bring a new dish we would politely ask what it was and I tried to hide all surprise when things like ‘shark fin’ came out of her mouth. So that night I had the pleasure of trying many new things. Shark fin soup (it’s supposed to be like $100 a bowl, esh, I think I only had a couple bites), avalone or abalone? I don’t know. We ate all kind of vegetables, mushrooms, prawns, jellied duck eggs, huge scallops, sea cucumber (I don’t even know what that looks like), and deep fried, sweet and sour lobster. That was my favourite. It came out and I was like, finally something I recognize! I said to our hostess, Deep fried chicken? And she politely said, no, lobster. Wow, we really were dining with high class that night. Some things were delicious, and some things were an experience. I now can say I’ve tried shark fin. It was lovely company and they took us out to another restaurant for fruit yogurt frappe drinks for dessert.
The students have been a bit crazy the last few weeks, just like in any elementary school. But they aren’t really used to the whole Christmas vacation thing. I know with academies they only get Christmas day off. I guess Christmas isn’t a huge holiday here. I can tell that by trying to shop. So, somehow in the process of being on a Christmas Concert committee I managed to land myself position of being director of the Christmas Concert. I don’t know the first thing about being in charge of a concert, but I figure, what the heck, it’s all in the name of experience anyways. It turned out to be a tonne of work, but really rewarding. Anyways, it was the week of the concert and we needed to get decorations and decorate. Myself and another teacher set out to the department store to find a few essentials. Christmas wrapping paper, candy canes, ball decorations, garland and lights. Wow. Thought it would be an easy one. But I realized quickly that I take for granted the things that are so convenient to get at home. We got some ball decorations and some ribbon for $115. Unbelievable. And there were no candy canes in sight. I’m telling you, as soon as I come home for Christmas I am getting off that plane, kissing my Canadian land, picking up the closest Tim Hortons, and then driving to the nearest wal-mart to buy candy canes. Just because I can. Anyways, we made it through and the decorations didn’t look half bad by the time we were done. The concert was a bit of a gong show in practices, but turned out quite nice on the actual night with only a few glitches. I think it was the world’s shortest Christmas concert at a mere 35 minutes from start to finish. I managed to stand up in front of 65 students and conduct them in ‘Away in a manger’ without tripping in my heels, 65 students managed to crack and make glow stick candles for the finale... and in my grade 4 class’s portion of the play, the students managed to do their snapping, singing, and line dance to the jazz version of ‘Santa Claus is coming to town’ without falling off the stage. A perfect success.

We ended Friday with a flurry of packing up classrooms and trying to send students home with as much as possible. The director of the school decided the three week vacation would be a fantastic time to do some renovations and remodel basically our entire school. Hopefully that means I will get a bigger classroom and my 10 grade 4 students won’t be shoved into a closed sized classroom like sardines... We really have no idea what to expect though. We could come back and walls are ripped down, and the renos aren’t finished... I sure hope not. We’ve seen some pretty crazy things happen in Korea though, like full restaurants getting complete renovations done overnight. So, it’s all a mystery for when we get back! It was a little hectic getting everything taken off our walls, everything packed in boxes and labelled so that in the move nothing gets destroyed or lost. The best part is that we get back Sunday night, jetlagged, just in time to walk into our empty, maybe finished classroom to teach on Monday. Sounds like fun!

Friday night we had our staff party at a place called VIPS. There was a buffet, with all sorts of wonderful things... pasta made fresh for you, salads, ice cream, fruit, breads, drinks, smoked salmon, prawns, and the best ever... tacos. With guacamole. I miss that. It was fabulous. We did a $5 white elephant gift exchange and it turned out to be a very fun night. The director and office staff we supposed to come, but they stopped in only for a drop and run gift giving. Each of us got an incredible gift from our school. I got a very expensive Anne Klein bright pink wallet. Kinda funny because I’m really not a designer kinda girl, or a bright pink kinda girl... but it’s definitely the thought that counts. Mike got a smaller lens for his camera. We were flabbergasted. Actually, we were amazed at how giving the parents were here too. Working at a very prestigious private school, I got some beautiful gifts from parents.

We’re now in relax mode, bombing around Korea a bit more until we get to come home to Canada!!!! I can barely sit still with excitement! I’m excited for so many things, but I am mostly excited to get to see some of you! I hope you are all doing well, getting ready for the Christmas season and enjoying the things that truly matter. We love and miss you all.

---

Photos

not out of the ordinary
In the background of this picture is our friend Ted, getting his picture taken by a Korean university student. She stopped all of us and wanted to take individual pics of us for her project. Her project was on foreigners having homesick so we had to look sad in the pic.