An Sunday Outing With Our Students

Cold Stone
A Cold Stone ice cream shop recently opened down the street from our apartment! We were really excited about it, so we invited our 4th grade class to meet us there today. It turned out to be so fun that we're thinking we'll plan an outing with a different class each month.

Martin, Harry, Regina, Ally, and Henry

Martin and Harry enjoying their ice cream

The kids entertained themselves by taking pictures of Frank with their cell phones and putting funny graphics on it.

Martin after he added graphics to Frank's picture!

Ulsan University

After Cold Stone, we took the kids down the street to play at Ulsan University. I'm sure it was quite a sight seeing us walk down the street with 5 little Korean kids! We got a lot more stares than normal. The kids are all really well-behaved...thankfully!

The soccer fields were being used, so we decided to have races around the track.

Regina trying her hardest to beat Frank

Ally is actually in 2nd grade, but her brother Harry is in the class we invited, so she came too.

Ally and Regina walking across the rock foot therapy path

Frank and Henry

Changing Schools from ELC to Omni

Goodbye ELC
We stopped working at ELC in May because we switched English schools. Here are some pictures of Melissa with her favorite class on our last day at ELC.

Melissa with Handsome Boy, Lina, Grace, Julia, Lisa, and Jane

Melissa's favorite student Grace!

The students get to choose their English name and this boy decided to go with "Handsome Boy." Most kids choose normal names, but some choose names like Snowman, Dragon, Obama, and Mr. No Name.

They love Melissa's double-jointed arms!!!

Jane

Pretending to be rabbits

Time to study

Let's learn English!

Omni
Our boss from ELC decided to build and open his own English school (only 2 buildings over from ELC) and asked the two of us to work there. The school, Omni, opened on June 1 with 30 students. Now the school has grown to 41 students after being open for 3 weeks. All of the students we teach are completely fluent in English and most have lived abroad in America, Canada, or Australia. We teach 2nd-6th graders and have up to 6 students in a class.

Melissa with some students on the first day of Omni.

Their true colors showing in this one!

Omni is on the second floor of this brand-new building.

Jessie, Chris's wife, sitting in the reception area of Omni.

She teaches grammar to the students.

Jessie

Looking into 2 of the 4 classrooms

Our boss Chris, at his desk

Frank in front of the parent-conference room

The first day

Melissa teaching the 6th graders on the first day

Jessie with some of our 3rd grade students: Cindy, Harry 1, Harry 2, and Joy...Harry is the most popular boy's name because they all love Harry Potter.

Frank with Harry 1&2, Joy, and June

Harry 2 and June showing off their muscles

5th graders Lucy and Brenda (in the yellow)...We have actually nicknamed her "Momma!"

A few of our 5th grade students: Daniel, Robert, and Alfred

Malaysia: Kuala Lumpur

From Singapore, we took a bus back to Malaysia for our last stop on our 2 week trip, the capital city Kuala Lumpur (otherwise known as KL). The bus took about 6 hours and had really nice views of Malaysia's countryside.

We were surprised to see fields of palm trees that seemed to go on forever.

We also drove past some tree-covered mountains and a lot of undeveloped land.

Kuala Lumpur is such a unique city and had a much different feel than Singapore. Whereas Singapore is very clean, efficient, built up and very oriented towards Westerners, KL is still developing in some parts and has more of a mix of old and new with a strong Muslim influence. Although it's very busy and there's a lot of people hawking their goods, it has a really nice vibe and feels very safe.

Taking in the new sights of KL.

Down the street from our hostel was a river that ran through part of the city.

We loved the multi-colored buildings that lined the streets!

It was such a different experience being in a Muslim country.

The Petronas Twin Towers are the most famous site in Malaysia and are the tallest twin buildings in the world, each having 88 floors. Unfortunately public access to inside the Petronas Towers themselves was very limited, a line forms as early as 6:30am to acquire tickets to the Skybridge - which were still limited to only 30 tickets a day! So we only viewed the towers from the outside.

At the base of the Petronas Towers was a huge high-end mall that we walked around for a while to escape the heat.

We had root beer floats at A&W in the mall...mmmm, so good!

A view of the KL Tower.

The train station that was built in 1892. It had beautiful architecture!

Across the street was another beautiful building.

We also visited the National Mosque. We were actually more impressed with the train station's architecture than the Mosque's.

To go inside the National Mosque, we had to wear robes to cover up!

This is where people pray inside the mosque.

Frank in the mosque.

Melissa inside the mosque's courtyard.

We were surprised how simple it was, with no statues or pictures, etc. We were the only ones at there...kind of weird.

On the basement level of the mosque, was a school. It was so interesting watching these young children who were covered from head to toe.

More cool architecture. Nothing felt Asian at all, which was a nice change.

Merdeka Square

Sultan Abdul Samad Building

Back to Korea

After 2 weeks of traveling throughout Hong Kong, Malaysia, and Singapore, we headed back to South Korea to start a new job. Our trip was amazing and such a learning experience for us!