Parting is such sweet sorrow...

I am in the Seoul airport now waiting to board my plane. I have 30 minutes. Saying goodbye today was really sad and hard. We made some good friends from Missouri. Jeju was really fun even though it was really sad not being with Ian on our anniversary. We ended up going to this crazy night club.. It was huge and had this crazy stage with hydrolics. There were performers and they would be lowered down from above and dance and stuff. At one point the entire ceiling opened up to the night sky and they shot out bubble foam.
We had a couple nights in Seoul and it was awesome because they finally just let us go off on our own and have free time for real. A bunch of girls and I went shopping almost the entire day. You guys would have been really proud of me because I was able to navigate the subway system and was reading maps and showing them how to get places. I amaze myself sometimes. We did inevitably get on the train going to wrong direction a couple times though. hehe. The night before we went to the jim-jo-bong spa place. It was called Dragon Hill and is the biggest one in Seoul. It cost $12 to go in, they give you a key chain and a cotton outfit. Then the women and the men go to different floors since everyone is naked. At first it was really weird to be naked around each other but the Koreans do it all the time so we got over it pretty quickly. We joked that we would all imagine each other in purple sweaters. Inside it had all these different pools, they were all different temperatures so we started in the cooler one and then moved to the hotter ones. Some of them had bubble jets and some had water currant streams you could float around on. We went over to the body scrub area and for 20,000 won (~$20) I got a body scrub. An older lady in her panties and underwear used this mitt thing and scrubbed every single dead skin cell off my entire body. And I do mean everywhere. I am still soft. After that we wandered around. There are lots of different services you can get there like any spa but Aly and I ended up getting dressed and going down to the communal sauna room. They were amazing. We started in the hot one that looked like a big brick igloo. After that there were 5 more that all varied in temperactures. One of them was tiled completely in jade and shaped like a pyramid. Another was completely made out of salt. On the ground were salt rocks and canvas blankets on the ground. You lay on the blankets and put your head on a wooden log slice. It was so beautiful and calming. Afterwards we took a shower and did mud masks. The women there were all sitting in a train and scrubbing each other. It is amazing how well they take care of their skin. They were doing everything from clipping toenails to shaving, anything beauty related. Another interesting thing is that even at 1am the place was packed and it was not uncommon to see a very small child with her family. People were still coming in at 2am when we left. Before we left we got a chair massage and then almost all of us fell asleep in the taxi back to the hotel. It was so relaxing.
We have so many good memories and so many new friends. I hope we can meet up with our Missou buddies very soon! I keep thinking I am going to hear Linzay or Jessica or Danette's voice, it is sad when I realize everytime that I won't see them until they come visit us in Jan. (except Linzay who is a fellow Portlander)
See you all back in the USA. Thanks for being my Korea followers. I will try and post pics soon so you can check back if you like!

On tour

Well, I don't have much computer time so I won't be able to write eveything I've been doing or post pictures but I can highlight a few things I've done over the past couple days...
After camp got over we packed up our bags and headed to Youngam camp..which was really nice in comparison to all the other ones. We all got dressed up and went to a fancyish dinner with the governor of the Jeoalloanamdo province. We listed to some speeches (Gene came along to pass on some words of wisdom) and took pictures. It was great being re-united with everyone and listening to stories (some of them horror stories) about the other camps. After talking to several people Christine and I felt really thankful that we were in Mokpo! Dinner was fun and then we hung out with Korean Ian and made him laugh. He is so funny. The next morning we woke up bright and early to eat hamburgers and go to the ferry boat in Wando.
I slept through most of the ferry ride to Jeju but then I realized at the end how much cooler the upper deck was and hung out up there watching the jellyfish swim around under the water. Jeju island is about an hour or two ferry ride from Wando. This is the vacation "honeymooner" destination of Korea. It is sorta tropical and has beaches and casinos and other fun things to do. Today we went on a long tour of the island. I felt very touristy. We only had like 20-30min at each destination so we were constantly in a rush to see everything and make it to the gift shop. The last person on the bus had to sing a song. At the folk village today we outright sprinted back. Luckily Aly was a couple minutes behind us and had to sing Twinkle, Twinkle. All in all we saw a waterfall, folk villiage, this fancy resort garden, 2 restaurants, and this big cave. It was sweet. I would have liked to slow down however. Today is my 1 year wedding anniversary with Ian :( I miss him a lot and can't wait to see him in 3 days. I can't believe it has been 5 weeks already...yet at the same time so much has happened sometimes it feels longer. At dinner tonight they announced it was my anniversary and Joe sang me the Michelle song. It was sweet. Anyway, gotta go, will post pics and more details later!

"At first it was strange meeting you but now we are friendly..."

Wow, camp is officially over, the kids said goodbye and we are packing up and leaving Mokpo for youngam camp in a few minutes. Camp idol was amazing last night, my kids (and ALL of the kids) worked so hard on their performances. They are so wonderful and awesome and generous and loving and I can't say enough about how great this whole experience was. At the closing ceremonies today all of the teachers lined up in a row and all of the students had to walk by and shake our hands and say goodbye. They were playing the New Years eve song which instantly made almost all of the students start crying. It was so hard and sad seeing all of their tears and knowing that we will probably never see them again. My students who had the hardest time getting along this week and speaking English were the ones who were crying the hardest and had the hardest time saying goodbye. One girl, who I named Hanna, had to walk through the line twice and give me more hugs. It was soo sad. We watched a slideshow of all the cool things we did this week and then it was time to get our bags and get out. Gene made Christine get up and sing the girl scouts song about "A circle is round, it has no end, that's how long I want to be your friend." It was hard saying goodbye to my co-teacher, Ji Hye also. She was so great. Yeah, this blog is really mushy. I am so thankful that I came and had this experience. Ian's (Korean Ian) quote is the best: "Men don't appear the tears, only mind cry." He told us that when we asked him if he would cry when he leaves us tonight. So great.

Almost finishee

Today is the last day I have to teach the hospital booth...I am currently teaching it for the 11th time (but I have a 20 min break right now). Needless to say it feels pretty redundant and boring at this point. I have Christine's class right now and they are great, just a little quiet. It is amazing to see the kids progress this week. At the very beginning I had to talk extremely slow and clear but I am now able to speed up and they understand almost everything (I think). We've been having a lot of fun here in Mokpo, I love being near a city (sorry people in Wando) because we get to go out and explore a little (With our chaperone/guardian/translator/bouncer Ian in tow). Two nights ago we went to a little music bar down the beach and hung out in big chairs listening to the saxaphone. The saxaphone player wore a bowlers hat and a little polka-dotted bow tie, he came and took pictures with us. I learned the word for beer in Korean: mak-ju and when you mix beer and soju it is called Su-mac.
Yesterday was a very long day, we are all exhausted and teaching the same thing over and over is very wearing. At lunch time my co-teacher, Ji Hye (Sophie) told me that the girls in my class were all very angry with another girl because she made our team lose the jump-roping challenge the night before. I guess she had been crying all night and was sitting by herself. We decided that we needed to have a class meeting during our camp idol practice. I had no idea it would turn into such a nightmare...to make a long story short I had a total of 4 girls crying and yelling (all in Korean) but it really came down to 2 of them that had the issue with each other. It ended up lasting the entire hour and a half we had allotted for practice so we are completely unprepared. They continued fighting once we got to the cafeteria to eat dinner and I saw them later on with the head teacher at the camp STILL fighting and crying. It just re-affirmed what I already knew about middle school girls. I miss 2nd graders. Tonight we have to perform something too (the native English teachers I mean), this guy here is really set on doing this Korean pop song called Nobody. We barely practiced and it is really going to suck. I don't want to. Tomorrow all we have is a scavenger hunt and the kids go home after lunch. Then we pack up our things and go to have dinner with the governor of the province. I can't wait to be re-united with all our other swine flu quarantine buddies! Saturday we head to Jeju island for a few days and then we spend a couple days in Seoul before we go home. I leave one week from today! I can't wait to see all of you!

oh yeah

I forgot to mention that Dan saved someone's life last night! He went out with Joe (to light more fireworks of all things) to the beach boardwalk. They found a nice Piano bar and were talking with some Korean people who were playing Rock, paper, scissors. If they lost then they would throw the loser into the ocean. At some point they all started screaming because one of the guys was being carried out to sea and swallowing water. Dan grabbed a rope and swam out to the man and rescued him! I guess the man was vomiting water and getting CPR and then the news came. Wow. Way to go Dan! I learned that he was on the swim team and was a lifeguard for 5 years. I am so amazed by our Mokpo hero!

For the very first time...

Whew, it is now the 5th day of camp and I am exhausted! I can't imagine doing 2 camps back to back! We are working (with breaks for lunch and dinner) from 8am-9pm every day. My group of kids (homeroom) happens to be an extremely hyper group of children who constantly yell and run around. It can be fun during games and things but gets very overwhelming when we are practicing for "Camp idol." We're going to perform the Cupid Shuffle and a Korean pop song called "Sorry, sorry." We have waay too much time allotted for idol practice so it gets really hard to constantly think of way to entertain them. I am officially really bored teaching the Hospital booth, only 5 more times to go, sigh. I am trying to still make it really exciting for the kids though so I hope they are having fun. Yesterday after lunch we got to go on board the ship docked here, it's used for training purposes (the university we are at is called Mokpo Maritime University and trains engineers).
Last night we went to the gym for our final activity and the school principal, Gene, taught us a funny dance, it includes the lightbulb, catching a fly, throwing a lasso and swimming. Then we learned a Folk dance and danced in a big circle to My Girl. After that we played a relay race with balloons. Two people ran down and popped a balloon by sitting on it and then they had to take another balloon and put it between them and hug to pop it. I was trying to sneak away when the discipline teacher, Henry found me and made me do it with Jun, a guy co-teacher. It was kinda embarrasing. Oh well...afterwards he came up to me and said. "That was a very different experience." hehe.
After our games we went to the teacher's lounge where Gene told us a long story about himself. He is 72 years old and says funny things all the time. He is full of funny idioms that he uses as much as possible, last night he told us: "Old soldiers never die, just fade away..." He clears his throat a lot when he speaks and says things very slowly. He also loves to say "For the very first time..." whenever possible. "For the very first time we will do a dance.." "For the very first time I go to the university..." etc. We got our $250 stipend and it was like none of us had ever seen money before. Pretty soon everyone was taking pictures with everyone's money to make it look like we had $1,000,000 won. We fanned it out and tried different poses. One of the ladies here laid down on the floor and spread the money out around her and tried to take sexy pictures. I was laughing hysterically as our (older lady who doesn't say things like that) head teacher told her to "work it." I think the principal was probably thinking we were really weird. This morning I woke up again to the loud obnoxious music that plays at a deafening volume at 7am and took a cold shower. It is rainy here today so they gave us big yellow plastic ponchos. Today we had a semi normal breakfast of toast, eggs, coffee, drinkable yogurt and soup. It was delicious. Have you guys ever seen the website Engrish.com? It is so funny. Great examples of the types of things we see on the signs and stuff in Asia. Anyway, wish me luck tonight as I somehow make it through 2 straight hours of camp idol practice. Maybe I can just wear my earplugs and hide in the corner...

Holy S*&^

ummm....this was one of the quiz questions we were provided for the game tonight (we didn't use it OF COURSE)

AND I QUOTE:

"I don't understand why people call me another Satan.
I tried to build the Garden of Eden on the earth.
I had to pluck the weed out of the garden.
The Jew was the weed.
I send millions of Jew to the gas chambers."


The answer is Hitler obviously. Wow.