Merry Christmas!

We hope you all had a wonderful Christmas! We missed our family and friends at home terribly, but we're thankful to have made friends here in Korea that we could spend the holiday with. Since all of the teachers here are in the same boat, spending it together made it a little easier and we actually really enjoyed ourselves!
Christmas Eve:
We spent Christmas Eve at our friend Sally's apartment for a White Elephant gift exchange. She invited a ton of people, but it turned out that Frank was the only guy that showed up with 10 girls! The gift exchange turned out to be hilarious!

We got a small Christmas tree for our gift.

Jen (Canada), Janna (Canada), and Kat (England)

Our co-worker Josephine got a tacky Christmas decoration.

Kat got the gift of the night...12 fake mustaches!!!

Mr. and Mr. Casale

Eliza (Canada) and Sally (Texas)

Eliza...aka John Lennon

The Hitler girls

Christmas Day

Christmas Day was a lot of fun, too. We woke up early and went to Josephine's apartment, which is 2 buildings over from ours. She surprised us by making scrambled eggs, bacon, and bagels for breakfast! After that, we took a bus to Busan to go on a bay cruise and have lunch. Once again, it was 5 girls and Frank.

Waiting for the bus with Josephine and Jen

Haeundae Cruise

We arrived in Busan just in time to take the 1 hour boat ride at 1:10. The cruise began at Haeundae Beach and took us out to Oryuk-do islands, which is a combination of 6 rock islands, 5 of which can be seen from the shore.

The boat we took

Kay, Julia, Frank, Jen, and Josephine on the boat

Group shot: Julia, Melissa, Josephine, Kay, Jen, and Frank

A view of Haeundae Beach, which was pretty packed with people dressed in their winter clothes.

We passed the Gwangan Bridge

Frank and Kay with Kay's heart-shaped crackers

Kay loved her crackers!

Our first glimpse at the Oryuk-do islands

3 of the 6 islands...we saw a few people fishing on them, but we're not sure how they got out there.

Notice the birds in the background? Tons of them flew next to the boat for almost half an hour wanting food.

A little girl trying to feed the bird on the back of the boat

We also passed a lighthouse

Here's a video of us on the boat

Lunch:

After the boat ride, we were all pretty hungry so we headed to a really nice Thai restaurant called "Hello Thai." The restaurant was beautiful and the food was delicious.

Walking to the restaurant along Haeundae Beach

We passed this bar and thought the people at home would appreciate the name!

Starbucks:

After lunch, our last stop in Busan was Starbucks...which we ended-up staying at for about an hour. This was a perfect ending to our Christmas day in Busan!

Even though this picture is a little blurry, I couldn't resist posting it. This little boy at Starbucks was adorable and kept walking passed our table smiling and waving. It was really hard for me to not snatch him up and bring him home!

In a couple of days, we are going on a trip to Shanghai, China to spend the New Year's holiday with 8 other English teachers. We're so excited to have this opportunity to travel again to China, since we really loved our trip to Beijing in May.

We hope everyone has a happy and healthy new year!

Dinner at TGI Friday's

Last Saturday night, we went to TGI Friday's to celebrate our friend John's 24th birthday. We went with (starting on the front left) Jason, Yumi, Ye Lim, John, Ben, Stephanie, Leon, Mindy, Eliza, Marissa, Stella, and Dan. Even though Fridays is really expensive here and the food's not as good as back home, we still had a really fun time! Here are a few picture from our night.

John gets a cake!

John

John with his girlfriend Ye Lim

Dan with his girlfriend Stella

Jason serenades the table

Field Trip to Tongdo Fantasia Amusement Park

Last Saturday, we went with 15 of our students on a field trip to an amusement park called Tongdo Fantasia, followed by dinner at Outback Steakhouse. We were worried about the cold November weather, but it turned out to be a beautiful day!
Omni bus:
It took about an hour to get there, but having a TV and DVD player on our new Omni bus made it a breeze. The kids got to watch "The Incredibles" on the way there and "Ratatouille" on the way back.

Frank and Henry on the bus

Melissa and Josephine (the other foreign teacher we work with)
Tongdo Fantasia:
The amusement park was pretty nice, in a remote town surrounded by mountains. It had standard rides, like a big roller coaster, bumper cars, Ferris wheel, the viking, etc. It also had a petting zoo and 3-D movie which was our nap time since it was all in Korean. The roller coater was by far the most popular ride for most of the kids. Some of the kids rode it about 12 times continuously! Thankfully, the park was empty so we didn't have to wait in any lines.

A view from the Ferris wheel

Frank with some fourth graders

Minnie (the new Korean teacher), Ally, and Melissa

Jessica, Lily, Wan, and Henry eating burgers for lunch

Willie, a first grader

This goose was hilarious and kept yelling at the kids to give it food!

Some students and Jessie on the hot air balloon ride

The petting zoo was kind of odd...who has ever heard of dogs in a zoo? I guess considering they eat dogs here, it makes a little sense.

In the center of the park was a castle that really resembled the Magic Kingdom.

Another Disney resemblance...a blonde Snow White with a risque top!

Frank and Martin

Dinner at Outback Steakhouse
After spending about 4 hours at the amusement park, we headed to Outback for dinner. We had a private room in the back of the restaurant with 2 long tables, which worked out really well. One of our student's was celebrating his 10th birthday, so his mom called ahead of time and had the servers sing to him and bring out ice cream for all of us, which was really thoughtful.

The servers singing...but not in English.

Happy Birthday, June!

Happy Halloween!

Our students had a blast celebrating Halloween by carving a pumpkin and some of them dressed up in costumes. We had fun too, but were pretty exhausted after spending two days of games, carving, and trying to control kids on a sugar-high! For almost all of the kids, this was their first time carving a pumpkin since Halloween is not celebrated in Korea. It was hilarious to see their reactions when they first saw and touched the inside of the pumpkin! Some loved it, some were grossed out, and a couple were actually scared! Since most have lived abroad in the USA or Canada, they were familiar with the holiday and wore their costumes that they had from Halloween there. It's good they held on to those costumes since we didn't see any costumes for sale here.

second graders: Rachel, Jenny, Ally, Crystal, Louis, and William

third graders: Jessica, David, Nick, Dennis, and Sally

Lots of screams and laughs from this class!

third graders: Harry 1, June, Harry 2, and Cindy

It was hilarious how it took the boys in this class about 10 minutes to get over their fear of putting their hands in the pumpkin...Cindy, however, dove right in!

Harry 2, Cindy, June, and Harry 1 were so proud of their first pumpkin carving!

Here we are with Helen, the receptionist, showing off the first of many pumpkins to be carved over the next couple of days.

fourth graders: Lily, Tony, Alex, Robin and Regina

fifth graders: John, Lauren, Christy, Helen, Andrew, and Eric.

fourth graders: Jina, Luna, Dina, Tina, Alex, and Henry

fourth graders: Jessica, Robin, Wan, Harry, and Conan

All our pumpkins on display