Make Your Own Sports Team!

For class this week (the ones that aren't still taking the speaking tests), I have been teaching the kids a little about American sports. One of the tasks for the higher level students was to invent their own sport. The lowest level was responsible for picking a sport and creating their own team. Here are some of the more creative results (click on the picture to get a bigger view):

Survivor ball
Players are have to hit the another players with the baseball.
Championship game: battle royal

Insect fight
Insect avoid obstacles and fight each other. 

War with Ball
Equipment: mask, ten volleyball, ten soccer ball, five basketball, +chair & desk, twenty baseball, fifty tennis ball, and one golf ball
Put on mask and throw ball to each other; who give-up that team is lose.
Championship game: money or die

Hit Frank with bat! (side note: "Frank" was one of the members in the group)
Equipment: bat, Frank
Hit Frank far away.

What does MLB mean?
"Major League Baseful"

"Daegu Snakes.
Our team is great but."
Please note the shoes.

"Daegu Stars
Our team is the shine and best."

"Daegu Human
Our team is ball SPEED is very goob but bat Hit is bad."

Happy Halloweenday!

Happy Halloween! or as they say in some places in Korea... Happy Halloweenday!

Like I previously mentioned, I kicked off Halloween week with a plethora of holiday themed lessons. "This is Halloween, this is Halloween, Halloween, Halloween!" Not only did that song get stuck in my head for DAYS, I also got it stuck in the heads of the kids (muhahaha if I have to suffer, they have to suffer with me!) I was playing the song on Friday for my last class, meaning almost every other student in the school had gone through my Halloween lecture already. After class, one of the math teachers said the students in her class could hear the song from across the hall and were singing along haha. Uh oh, I feel as though I may be hearing this song for many weeks to come....

I don't know if I've mentioned yet, but every Friday I have Korean language lessons, put on for free by the District Metropolitan Office of Education. (Let's be real... I have only been to 2 classes out of 7. Not completely my fault though. I joined the 5th week.) I can now read kind of, even though I may not know the meaning of what I'm reading. So, I went to Korean class on Friday. I get to leave about 45 mins early from school so that I can make it to class by 4:30. We got filmed by some random people for a promo thing, talked about ordering in a restaurant , and then class was over at 6pm. Some of us then went to dinner downtown at a Korean BBQ place. So delicious....

After dinner, we headed to our favorite bar, Thursday Party. Somewhere along the line, we picked up our friends from out of town (Hannes, David, Tim, Malcolm). We had drinks and fun, as always with this crowd. We are lucky that all of the cities in Daegu are close enough that we can hang out almost every weekend if we want to (which is what has been happening)!

Patrick, Malcolm, Shelley, David, Hannes

Jose and I playing with our food (salty, dry spaghetti noodle type things?)

The next day, we all met up for lunch at a place called The Holy Grill. Think all of the comfort foods you are used to eating from home. I ordered a delicious (yet still not like Cali) breakfast burrito. Little fact: people not from America do not know what a breakfast burrito is. How bizzare!! Other foods around the table were steak sandwiches, nachos, western style breakfasts, hamburgers, and more. After we did a little more costume shopping. For the record, there are hardly ANY costume shops in Daegu. We found one in the subway shops near the Lotte store. But, besides belly dancing shops (apparently it's a big fad here) and wig shops (every corner), there was next to nothing. Time to get creative.

Once night rolled around, we met back at Thursday Party. There was a giant Halloween pub/bar crawl in the downtown area, but we chose to make our own route. We hung out for awhile, saw friends, roamed around to a few different bars, and somehow ended up at a norebang by the end of the night! Plenty of foreigners and even Korean with amazing and creative costumes! All in all, excellent Halloween (but still nothing that even compares to Isla Vista!)

Erin, David, Ross, Bridgette (loved the costume! crazy cat lady), Me

Minnie! Had to make my own shirt. Do you know how hard it is to find a tank top in Korea!? And then, find one in red??

Bah bah black sheep (Stole this from Roberta)

 

"Where the F*ck am I?!" (Roberta too)

Stole this from someone but thought it was awesome... Lego man

Jose as a very convincing Ajumma

Best costume: Edward Scissorhands, with Shelley and I

Late night norebang!

And apparently someone at VAVi decided to put me on the Halloween posters/tickets for the Halloween party at Typhoon. I'm famous in San Diego and I didn't even know it! I all of a sudden started hearing from friends that I was all over SD. Thanks guys..... haha :)

My Week in Pictures (Oct 25)

Ok, so this one isn't a picture but I thought you would all enjoy
the bell at my school that signals the start of class.
I get to hear it 8 joyous times a day.

As you may remember, each kid got to pick their English name.
Robert's name tag has picked up some additions in the past few weeks.
Notice "I want Bear" next to the picture of a beer.
He is only 13.

Hello Kitty store downtown. Pink galore.

Daegu FC, 2nd to last game of the season.
As you can tell by the stands, Daegu is really supportive of their team.

This also isn't a picture, but I liked it and know most of you will enjoy it too. The Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear occurred in Washington D.C. on October 30, put on by Comedy Central's Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert. Sorry if any of the signs offend anybody but I thought the majority were very clever and funny!

Best Rally Signs

Busan International Fireworks Festival

Sorry for the lack of postings, yet AGAIN. I am still trying to get used to being busy. Pre-Korea I was sitting on my ass most of the time at home, So, this late sleeping, nap taking couch potato isn't quite used to the early hours of a full time job. Plus, it seems that at least 3 days out of the week I am doing something directly after school or lesson planning (procrastination=lesson planning outside of the normal work hours). Then, the weekends are dedicated to socializing and traveling, of course

The weekend of October 22, I went to the Busan Fireworks Festival. The actual festival took place over 3 days, but I only saw 2 days worth of fireworks. Shelley and I took the KTX to Busan that Friday (which took about one hour). We went straight to Gwangali beach. We got there about an hour before the fireworks were supposed to start and got a decent spot, right before you hit the actual sand. That day was the international fireworks. Unfortunately for us, this "decent spot" turned into the worst sardine can-like experience EVER.

Two things you should know: space is limited in Korea so it isn't uncommon to get an elbow to the ribs or have someone shoulder you and not receive an "I'm sorry" or "Excuse me." Second, ajummas and ajeossi (elder women and men) rule the world... or Korea at least. What I mean by this is, if an ajumma/ajeossi pushes you, you don't push back. If they yell at you, you don't yell back. You get the picture. It has to do with this whole hierarchy of age and respect.

Ok, back to the story. We were minding our own business for about half an hour- a little cramped but still some breathing room. All of a sudden a few ajummas start to push us in order to get to the front/to the beach. Ok, not too bad, we weren't allowed to complain anyway. Gradually more and more old people try to push their way to the beach. This was clearly NOT an option due to the thousands of people who had already claimed their spots on the beach early that afternoon. At one point, Shelley and I were separated by a sea of people trying to get to or away from the beach. Luckily an older man was nice enough to let her reclaim her spot. People were getting cranky, we were standing sideways (being supported by other people), ajeossis in the crowd were yelling at other old people who were being rude and pushing, and a man was spooning my back with his camera resting on my head (I seriously doubt this is ok in any country... hello, personal space?). Once the fireworks started, everyone settled down and we got to see an amazing show.

People as far as the eye can see

We then headed to a Mexican (yes, mexican!) food place called Hello Kimchi with Shelley's friends. Their friends were having an a capella group performance at the restaurant. I ordered a beef burrito, which turned out to be the size of my hand, and then ordered a tostada. Definitely wasn't too bad for Korean Mexican food, but it was no San Diego Mexican food. It was also exciting to have REAL cheese (hard to get a hold of here).

Someone at the restaurant had the cutest puppy!

Tostada

The next day we met up with our friends Andre and Carel for some lunch. I got to experience my first Indian meal, which was delicious!

We then taxied back to Gwangali Beach to meet up with more people. We grabbed some makkoli (Korean rice wine), bought a blanket, and headed to the sand. We got there around 3:30pm and it wasn't too busy yet. After a few hours though, the majority of the sand could no longer be seen. People literally took up every inch of sand, even the spots so tiny we only joked that they would be taken. We also adopted a Korean family sitting next to us... or they adopted us. The mother could speak pretty decent English and the daughter was fascinated by us. The mother began to talk to us and soon offered us oranges and bread chips. A little while later, when Andre and Shelley attempted to lay down in our small spot, the ajummas who had shimmied their way into the small spot behind us offered their blankets and bags as pillows.

This isn't even the half of it...

New Korean family! 

Giant balls!

Ajummas giving pillows to Andre and Shelley

During our wait, there was a live show (which could be seen by large screens on the water), random girls (working for the festival) dancing in costumes in front of us, random ajummas dancing (not working for the festival), and large plastic balls being bounced around the audience. Finally, the show started at 8pm. It was worth the wait. This fireworks show was the largest, most incredible I have ever seen in my life. Millions of dollars were spent putting on this fireworks show and it showed.

This video is a little taste of what the fireworks were like... this wasn't even the finale.


And then on the way home, we couldn't find any tickets for the KTX so we took the other train home... standing only. The people who get standing tickets usually find somewhere else to sit, which was the diner cart for us. We squeezed our way in between some ajummas, ajeossis, and young girls. The old people attempted to talk to us in English (not really. a lot of hand gestures and broken konglish). One drunk old man in particular kept annoying us with the only words in English he knew: "Thank you" and "I love you." Maybe charming at first, but just wait half an hour and see how old that gets. He also apparently wanted our numbers according to his hand gestures. He eventually wrote down his own and gave it to Shelley. Sure, mister... she'll call right away. Any time we tried the ignore tactic, he would poke us. Poor Shelley got the majority of the finger abuse. This old couple behind us got a little fed up by this man's loud annoyingness and the husband yelled at him. The entire car was looking our way at one point. The annoying old man was quiet for a little but then went back to his ways. We guessed that the young girls knew at least a little English, as do most young people these days, so we wrote them a note asking them to tell the old man to stop yelling and poking us. They were nice enough to do it and the old man settled down. Our stop was a few minutes after that, so we ran off the train as fast as possible. I guess we learn from our mistakes!!