Kids essays - Part 8 - Christmas card edition

Most of these have already been put up on facebook, but I will share them here as well. The last week of fall semester was hard. Everyone was tired, we had finals to write, grade, redo. The kids were all ready to be done too. One "bad" part of my job is that I don't really get to do fun stuff with my kids. Sometimes this is awesome - I actually teach them instead of watching Mr. Bean. Sometimes this sucks because hey, who doesn't love Mr. Bean? The last 2 days of class, I let the kids "play". We didn't actually play anything fun, but instead of doing real lessons, I let them make Christmas cards. Some kids got into it. Others, not so much. It didn't really help that Caroline was also doing basically the same thing in her classes. Here are some of the results:

This one is really only cute because of the misspelling of Merry, which she fixed.

Their original assignment (before they could make cards) was to write about another  holiday in a different country. Alice wrote about Halloween, which of course is never complete without Abraham Lincoln (aka Lincan) wearing jeans and sporting a sweet Korean style bowl cut.

Andy did not really want to draw a Christmas card. This is actually his second drawing.  But when he showed me the final product, this side was shown first. I really like his reindeer.

This is the original drawing. It started with the tree with knives and a skull on top. This just shows that some stereotypes are true - boys like guns etc. regardless of nationality.

This is one of the older boys. I did not give him a present.

This was a nice card done by Jane. Her older brother Jason also goes to my school. She likes to describe him as fat, even though he isn't.

I really don't know why I can't rotate pictures here. Ryan drew a picture of Jinju castle, then got bored and decided to reenact the battle using Mario and Luigi. You know, the historic version.

This is from Julie. They call me L/S teacher. The older kids usually call me Ryan, but all the younger ones call me Teacher and if there are 2 of us, they designate by which classes we teach.

Again with the vertical! This is Mack's drawing. My favorite part is the kid sleeping next to the tree. Although the reindeer is pretty cool. Reminds me a little of Max from "How the Grinch Stole Christmas"

Mary made a book

I think I'd like blue Cristmas, even though Elvis didn't.

Yellow Critmas has a lot going for it, but green shows patriotism...tough call.

She got new pens earlier that day - thus the colorful Christmas

This is the card Mary made for me at home. She was shy when she gave it to me and apologized for printing things off the internet instead of drawing them herself.

Damn straight I'm lovely

This is Olivia's drawing. I enjoy the festive air with "have a good time", but my favorite feature is the "fire" label.

This is the front of Optimus's card. He is one of my older boys and has corrupted some of the others by showing them videos from Lonely Island. Now they sing inappropriate songs.

The inside of his card - To Santa and reindeers. You didn't give me present last year. Screw you guys!

This is how easy it is to impress children. They thought my Rudolph was awesome.

Santa got compliments too. I seriously need to work on my beards.

This was homework that Alice did. They were supposed to write and draw about exercise. It says, "Playing runing mushine is healthy!" It means running on a treadmill is healthy.

The outside of Steve's card. He is in one of the youngest levels and is 10 I think.

The inside of the card. He thought it was hilarious when I opened it.

This is some of Hannah's homework. There is nothing really funny about any of this. I just think it's cute.

 This next card deserves more than just a caption. This is Tommy's class project. He chose this instead of a Christmas card. He was supposed to pick a country and write about a famous person, landmark and holiday. Here's what he wrote in the top: USA is great country continent is North Americans language is English important day is Thanksgiving important person is Lincoln favorite city is New York it is stateue of liberty USA help 6-25

You have to give him props for capital letters, but the boy can't use a period to save his life. He also holds his pencil in a fist which helps to account for the awful handwriting. So he drew the flag, wrote this, drew the Statue of Liberty (which by the way is holding a book labeled "book"), then started drawing tanks on the bottom to show how we helped South Korean during the war (they often call it the 6-25 war). So he then turned the tank into a robot tank and set the North Koreans on fire. Then he drew Mario and Luigi. For some reason Luigi is a South Korean and Mario is a North Korean. Luigi cut Mario in half with a chainsaw and he became an angel. So now that you have the background, here's the picture:

After Christmas card class, we were finished with school for the next few days. We obviously had Christmas Eve off (since it was Saturday), but we also had Monday and Tuesday off as well. Friday night I decided to decorate a bit and made a card wall. That night Liezle came over after work and we just sat and chatted for awhile then went to bed because we were both really tired.

Card wall over my couch.

On Saturday, I met up with Liezle and Keung He for lunch and coffee at Beans Farm. We split a waffle. Then we ran some errands and went grocery shopping because we had to make food for the church potluck on Sunday. It was a comedy of errors because neither of us are that great at cooking, and we only had Liezle's toaster over to bake in. We decided to make a potato bake using potatoes (duh), mushrooms, onions, bacon and cream. It was good but we had to cook it in tiny batches. We also screwed up the first batch of potatoes and ended up turning them into mashed potatoes. We also decided to make ice cream pies because we didn't know if anyone was going to bring dessert. I crushed peanut butter Oreos with a vodka bottle because neither of us had a rolling pin. We decided to try to decorate them using chocolate syrup. Mistake. It's really hard o draw with that stuff if you don't put it in a piping bag or ziploc bag. They tasted ok, but we forgot to cover them and so I think they were slightly freezer burned. We were also in a rush because there was a candlelight service at church and we wanted to go to that too. It was really fun cooking with Liezle though and while we made a mess, said the word "shit" a dozen times and used our hands as substitutes for just about every utensil (we washed them first), we also laughed and turned out some decent food. 

It's an awful picture of me, but whatever. This showcases the Christmas tree pie. It's also a picture of me wearing pearls from Holly. As she put it, "I know you didn't ask for them and probably don't want them, but I thought you needed them so wear them."

This was my attempt at a snowman. He was ok until I tried the hat and arms. Then he turned into cowboy snowman.

After cooking, we rushed to a cab and went to church. They had it decorated and lit with candles. We each had a dixie cup with a tea light in it as well. We sang carols and read passages about Christmas. I read an excerpt out loud to everyone. After this Liezle and I went to see Sherlock Holmes because we didn't want to go to a bar, but didn't want to go home either. We were really tired at the end of the movie though.

Candles and a star at the front of the church

Next up: Christmas Day.

Leading up to Christmas

Everyone told me not to expect anything for Christmas; that there wouldn't be decorations or lights etc. I think they were wrong (although I've been told that this year was much different from last year). Just about every church had lights up. They make some sort of tree - either on top of the church, or from above the door and down to the ground. Our church had a huge light tree and some other lights. It was really pretty. Christmas music also played in many stores. There were decorations in the movie theaters, in grocery stores and in food places too. It made me feel a little more at home. True, it wasn't as over the top as it is in the States, but that was almost better. Malls etc. at home are totally crowded and sometimes have too much Christmas crap to actually enjoy it. The fact that N'Sync's "Merry Christmas, Happy Holiday" made me tear up in the grocery store meant that I appreciated it more than usual.

Here are some other things that happened before/around Christmas. I will tell you about Christmas Eve/Day in another post.

Christmas tree donut from Dunkin' Donuts. It was not good. They also had a snowman (good) and a stocking (good on authority as I didn't actually try that one)

My decorations. Some card holders (on the ends), a really stupid (so awesome) ornament, and a moose.

Konglish Christmas cards! I sent this to either Ann or Sara. Jealous? You should be.

This one went to the other cousin. This one is great because it makes absolutely no sense at all.

Inside of a card. I don't think I actually sent this one to anybody. So pretend like I sent it to you now.

My church's lights (photo stolen from Ilani's facebook)

Tree in Waining coffee. Seriously, what says "Christmas" more than a  reindeer (? possibly a moose) in a mid-drift top?

Waining's logo. Sort of like Bojangle's but in a Korean accent. Their chai-tea lattes are awesome. Plus we got double card punches for Christmas.

Tree on top of one church that you can see from my bedroom.

This was the best I could get of both trees without leaning out my window. And that wasn't happening.

Cookies for Santa (that I ate in about 20 minutes). The mini pecan pie was from a student. The chocolates were from Caroline. The thumb print cookies were from one of our Korean co-workers, Ha. It was the first time she had ever made cookies. They were really good. Also, don't forget the Cappuccino - it's Denmark's finest.

Donkey from Shrek outside of a bar covered with purple lights. I know this is for Christmas because they usually just have Spiderman above the door. This was new.

Cindy, Liezle and I at Parnell Road coffee. We did a gift exchange/dinner before Cindy went home for Christmas. It was a nice night. Cindy and I gave each other earrings, we both gave Liezle scarves and Liezle gave me wrist warmers and Cindy leg warmers.

Santa coffee from Paris Baguette. Usually the cardboard warmer thing is like a striped French shirt. They also had festive lollipops and cakes. I didn't take pictures of those.

I bought a small stocking at the dollar store to add to my card wall. My boss gave Caroline and I each 50,000 won for Christmas. It was totally unexpected, but appreciated.

Christmas tree and midget Santa inside MBC movie theater.

Tree and snowflakes outside MBC theater. We met up to see Mission Impossible 4. It was pretty good.

Next post: Christmas cards from my kids and Christmas Eve.

Bowling League

Sorry I haven't posted in so long. Basically what had happened was I just didn't. I kept meaning too and then would get distracted by other things, like naps. Also, I tend to post pictures to facebook relatively quickly after an event, and then I forget that I also need to update here. It almost feels like I'm repeating info since most of you can see my facebook stuff. However, it will be one of my New Year's resolutions to post more often. As I've kept the last two (sending birthday cards and flossing, respectively) I feel like I can do this. The flossing thing is a repeat this year too, although Korean floss has somewhat hampered my ability to really get in there.

Anyways, I posted about a month or so ago about going bowling on Thursdays. That has continued for the last 2 months now. It's actually pretty awesome. We don't really have a league, but a group of us go every Thursday around 10-11pm and bowl 3-4 games. Mikey and I are the only 2 who have gone every week, but Liezle and Anna are becoming regulars and a few other people drop in too. I'm getting much better, but still am not good. My best so far has been a 141. My goal is to break 150. That can be another resolution (I'm racking those like pool balls tonight).

My sweet bowling style. I backhand it. It's hard for me to throw another way. I use an 11 lb pink ball every time.

I asked Gareth to take a picture of me and Liezle so that I could show people my short hair. This is what he took. He's an idiot. But I miss him.

I really miss watching Gareth bowl. He went to his knee just about every time. Or he fell over.

Sadly, Gareth left a couple of weeks ago (before Christmas) to go home. He's the one who sort of impromptu started Thursday bowling. His last weekend we went and had drinks, then dinner, then more drinks. He got all depressed that he was leaving, but it was still a fun night.

At the restaurant. It's one where you sit on the floor and this made me laugh because he looked like a giant. You can't really tell from this picture, but you get the idea.

On his last night, the lanes were full so we went to play pool instead. A bunch of people left after a few rounds, but the 4 of us (Gareth, Mikey, Liezle and I) decided to go back and see if we could bowl. This was at 12:30. I'm glad we did because not only did we have lots of fun, but Mikey got 2 turkeys and our over reaction to this was super fun for me. The guy that runs the alley is really nice and lets us stay for pretty much as long as we want to.

Darragh playing pool. There were some issues because Americans and Brits play pool differently, so at the start of each game we had to announce rules. It was still fun though.

Cindy avoiding Gareth's butt

Mikey's first turkey - all in the 10th frame

Gareth picked him up. I told you we got overly excited. This was really funny because Mikey was scared to death (not that I blame him) because Gareth isn't known for his grace. He falls down alot and knocks things over, so being picked up on a slippery bowling lane was a little risky. Especially when Gareth started twirling in a circle.

Bowling cheers

Mikey's second turkey

Gareth left really early the next morning. It's always sad when someone you actually like goes home. A handful of friends have left here and a few more are about to leave soon. New people come in to replace them, and I like some of them, but it's still really sad to see people go home, mainly because you kind of know that you really won't talk to them again.

Last, on a totally different note, here's a picture of some eye glasses at the post office. Korean post office people are really nice. They will pack your boxes for you. They also have complementary tape and markers (and apparently reading glasses). I am pretty sure this one guy there hates me (not really) because I went in like 4 times in the span of 2 weeks and it was always him who ended up helping me and I always had some sort of weird problem (like not knowing my Korean address in English, sending a post card to Switzerland and not knowing the neighborhood of someone in Seoul). He's really nice though and I always say thank you, so I don't think it really bothers him.