5 months in

I am so sorry to those of you who read this blog on any sort of regular basis, as I have been completely slacking. That seems to be the story of this year in Korea. The sad thing is, that apart from the occasional trip to Busan or to Hapsongdong to see a movie, we don’t do anything. This weekend though is different. We head out on our honeymoon to Jeju-do on Sunday! We are gone for 4 days, so I will DEFINITELY have something to blog when we get back. And I’ll have lots more time to blog then too, because we’re off for another 4 days after we return.

So, yeah. Sorry to be such a slacker. I promise to document as much of the last have of our Masan life as possible, starting with our honeymoon.

 

xo nicole

Tornadoes can be scary.

So this isn’t really a post about Korea, it’s more about Arkansas. But lately, I’ve been worried for Arkansas, and how bad the weather has become.

Today, while we were teaching, all I could think about was our family in Wynne, and the rest of our friends all over the state of Arkansas. There have been SO many tornadoes this season, it seems like there’s one every day.

And what’s worse, is that Robyn and Kyle are both going down for Colby’s wedding in a couple of weeks. I really don’t want anything to happen to anyone, but especially them!

I just everyone in Arkansas to stay as safe as possible, and we’re thinking about you from Korea.

xo ross and nicole

20 days to go!

Good morning everyone! It’s currently Wednesday, and as of today we have 20 days to go until we leave Korea. It’s getting more and more unreal by the day. We have so much to accomplish before we leave, it’s gonna be really overwhelming. Here’s a short list…

- pack. Decide which of our things we’re going to keep here in boxes and what we’re going to bring back with us.
- clean. We’re not leaving this place as dirty as it was when we got here. (no offence Jillian and Ryan, but it was kinda gross… lol)
- see a couple more things. I don’t think we’ll be able to see the bamboo forest this time around, but we’ll see it next year. This year I want to go to the mountain and see the fall colours, and hang out in dunsan-dong and eunhang-dong again once more.
- say goodbye to friends. This is going to be the hardest part I think, even though we’re coming back we won’t be in Daejeon, so it’ll be hard to see them all the time…

Anyways, just thought I’d write something short, I have to get ready for school. I hope everyone is getting excited for us to come home! I know we are!!!

xoxo nicole

Please don’t kill me….

I haven’t posted in SOOOOOO long. I have been totally slacking on the posts, and for this I’m so sorry! And it’s not like we haven’t been doing stuff that isn’t fun or worth blogging about. After much thought and analyzing of my laziness, I have come up with some reasons (excuses):

1. The heat. It is disgustingly humid here, and our little air conditioner does not cool down our apartment. This makes me very sleepy and lethargic when I get home.

2. Work. It’s not that I don’t like it – quite the opposite. I am just so tired after working hard each day that when I get home I’m ready to pass out.

3. No time. What little time we have that isn’t spent recovering from teaching or trying to survive in the heat is spent doing stuff! Painting nights on Tuesday, last weekend we went to Seoul (which I will blog about once I post some videos and such), etc. We’re busy people.

So, yeah. These are pretty much excuses, because I can take time out to give you updates, right? I’m sorry. I will try better in our last months here.

Which reminds me! As of August 25th, which is only 11 days away, we have been here 9 months! Which means we only have 3 more months to go! I can honestly not wait to come back to North America. I love it here, we’re looking at staying one more year, but I miss home. Most everyone who is here misses their home a lot, no matter whether they love Korea or hate it. It’s only because Korea is so unfamiliar, and we don’t have family here. So, even people who are here for multiple years look forward to trips home.

So, this afternoon I will post a blog about Seoul, but for now I think I want to go back to sleep. In the meantime, here are some of Ross’s pictures that he took on our field trip on Friday with the kids to MBC television and radio studios in Daejeon. Enjoy!

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Stumped about what to write

I should be blogging about what happened in May, or what’s been happening at school, or really what we’ve been doing day to day, but I don’t know what to write about. I am just stumped.

I guess first I’ll give you an update on what we’ve been up to.  July is going to be a good month for us, with Mudfest and lots of field trips and our vacation. We have three weeks to go until we have a week off. And honestly, as much as we love school, we can’t wait to have a week off! We have also been having weekly photo days with Su and Matt (most recently using the nice weather to take pics of breaking water balloons and breaking glass figurines), and painting nights with Su, Rachel and the Mullens. It’s been nice to have regular get-togethers with friends. Here are some of the pictures of what these days have produced.

One of Ross’s paintings.

One of my paintings.

Su and Matt. They both purposely wanted to be hit with water balloons.

There were some little girls who showed up to the park, and they wanted to use our bubbles.

She is super cute!

Taking pictures.

Today is Canada Day, and I was able to impose my Canadian spirit on my Kindergarten children. Here are some pics to finish off the post. I’m going to take a quick nap before Ross gets home. Happy Canada Day everyone!! xoxo nicole

Field trips and children

I will be sure to blog more about May either tomorrow or Thursday, but in the meantime I’ve got an awesome slide show full of pictures of our super cute children at school.

Enjoy!

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6 months and counting.

I know it has been SO long since I’ve blogged, I’ve just been so busy these past few weeks with Matthew being here. But, on the 25th of this month, a milestone passed for Ross and I. Fairly uneventfully, I might add. We’ve made it to six months in Korea.

I definitely never thought it would come this quickly, nor did I expect it to feel like we’ve been here for ages. It’s a mixed bag of emotions for us. On one hand, we’re quite happy here, ready to come back in February in hopes of living in Busan and teaching public school. On the other hand, we miss home – the creature comforts of home – the people, the food, the atmosphere.

But all in all, these past 6 months have been full of friends, fun, and for me at least, good teaching experiences. We’ve done some super cool things, been some awesome places, and met some neat people. I hope our second 6 months is just as good as our first.

I know this blog entry is short, but that’s because we’re going out for one last beer with our friend Elisa, whose leaving Wednesday. Pictures and longer blog entries to come.

xoxo nicole

The end of April

This weekend was a lot of fun. After being SO sick this week, I was ready to have a good time. We didn’t go overboard though. Here’s what we ended up doing.

Friday night we ended up going out with just about everyone we knew. We started the night at TGI Fridays, where the last Friday of each month is 2 for 1 margaritas. Needless to say, we stayed until they closed. Then we went to Sponge, of course, because that’s where we always go, but then we went to another bar called Yellow Taxi. They definitely were trying to target the foreigners in the area, because they had advertisements in English all over Dunsan-dong. It was okay, it will be nice when they have live bands, because they have a nice stage area and lots of room to move around. I wonder if it’s going to be the next foreigner bar.

Saturday we walked to Home Plus and bought new pillows. Then we went to Justin’s house for TRIVIA NIGHT! My team was Matt, Bernard and myself, and our name was Sparkle Motion. Ross was on a team with Fahd and Adam, and I can’t remember their whole team’s name, but it was a Monthy Python/Holy Grail reference (something to do with the knights who say ‘ni’). Justin did a great job with the questions, and my team won!! Woo! We had a great mascot too – George Washington with a zebra. It was sparkly!

Then Sunday we went to Kumdori Land, the same amusement park that we took the Kindergarten kids to go sledding at. This time, though, we got to have our own fun. The roller coaster was cool, but the one ride, The Blizzard, I couldn’t go on. I freaked out!

Anyways, I have a slideshow of the pictures we took, I tried to put them in before and the post got deleted, so it’s just easier to lump them all together to make a slideshow. Enjoy! (If you have any questions about the pictures, just comment.)

And if you’re reading this blog on a regular basis, you should subscribe! The button is on the right side. This way, you get notified whenever I have updates.

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Getting sick on the weekend

Getting sick on the weekend is a drag. I have experienced this first hand a few times while I’ve been here in Korea. It happened again this weekend, and it put a damper on everything we did. We still managed to have fun though.

Friday night we went over to Jenn and Matt’s for a bbq. Yes, a bbq. In Korea. They bought a little bbq grill at Costco, and it worked like a charm. They cooked for us and two other couples that they always hang out with. Chicken, pasta salad, fruit salad, and S’MORES!!! Best part of the night.

Saturday we went to the movies – saw The Book of Eli. It was decent, not what we were hoping to see, but seeing as how we can’t find any movie times on the Internet, we just show up to the theatre and pick when we get there. Then we walked around Dunsan-dong, went to Indy for dinner (always delicious), and met up with Summer and Sunny (our co-workers) at Sponge. Their friend Rik came into town, who’s pretty darn cool. We ended up going to the wii/norae/dvd bang – basically an awesome room where you can sing, play Nintendo wii, and watch movies. It’s pretty damn cool. I started feeling a little achy during dinner, it continued while at the norae bang, and apparently got worse while I slept.

Sunday, I woke up and felt like I was about 400 lbs. My body felt SO heavy – I literally stayed in bed ALLLLLLL day. Ross, on the other hand, taught his first photography class. He only has one student so far, but he said it went really well.

Now, I feel alright, my body doesn’t ache, but my nose and sinuses hate me. I have a box of tissues beside me, and have a feeling my nose is going to be really raw for the next few days. I hope I get better soon!

In other news, Ross and I are preparing for Matt Franklin’s arrival. He gets here May 11th – we seriously can’t wait. He’s staying here for 3 weeks, and I’ve been busy researching what festivals are going on that we can go to. One of the big ones is the Lotus Lantern Festival celebrating Buddha’s birthday. It’s gonna be pretty cool. But it’s going to be a busy and very expensive month!

Anyways, it’s 11:00pm, and I’m exhausted. I’m going to make some Theraflu, the Korean version of Nyquil, and head to bed. I’ll post some pictures soon!

xoxo nicole

Ross’s pictures in a slideshow

I read on the wordpress website that they have a slideshow option for showing pictures, so I thought that I would take a good majority of Ross’s pictures that he has taken lately and try it out. Enjoy!

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