Field Trip to the Bear Farm

Yes, you read the title correctly. We took about 25 small children to the bear farm last week for an LCI field trip! It was the first field trip I've been able to go on since switching to teaching at LCI in the mornings. It was great to be out of the school for part of the day and doing something outside, and you could tell all the students just had a blast. I think the "Bear Farm" would have been a little more exciting in the summer, there were a lot of run down areas and empty swimming pools. But we did see bears, as promised!



Entrance to the Bear Farm. Random, right? Random Bear Farm Scenery Picture #1



Easter Island, or Osan Bear Farm? Random Bear Farm Scenery Picture #2



Random Bear Farm Scenery Picture #3



The first activity: grass sledding. This was actually pretty fun and the kids just went bananas for it. There were metal tracks secured in the grass that the sleds ran on and you actually got going pretty fast!



It's a race!



Clara and I, she was too small to ride by herself!



Brianna with one of her favorite students, Mimi.



Nick, one of the newer teachers, with Clara and Jenny.



Katie with Peach. She calls her Peachy Pie she is so adorable!



Another of the new teachers, Ian with Clara and then Josh in the background.





This looks dangerous.....



Clara and her boys! She's obsessed with them and already boy crazy at age 4! :)



The LCI group! Clara and I are in the front, and I'm pretty sure I missed the memo on the funny faces!



Yeriel and Jenny, two of Amy's students. Now they have Ian Teacher instead of Amy Teacher!



And now we get to the main event! There were 4 Asian black bears in a little caged area and we fed them animal crackers for 10 minutes. I don't even think the kids were that impressed! I thought it was pretty cool to see them though, you forget what wild animals like that look like in real life.



Antonio and Caesar- sleepy boys on the way home!

Halloween (or lack of) in the ROK

Welcome to November! Or "MO"vember for all you gentelmen out there growing your mustaches/beards out for the month. 9 months down in the Republic of Korea, 4 more to go until I am home to beautiful Sammamish. I have been thinking about home a lot lately as the holidays approach and the weather turns from mild to harsh and instead of leaves falling it is snow!

We have had a beautiful past month, I can't even remember the last time it rained! I was chatting with Sally, one of my Korean partner teachers today and she was telling me that it only rains in the summers and hardly rains at all the other 9 months of the year. The weather has been consistently sunny and warm enough but is beginning to freeze my nose hairs on the bike ride to school! It is funny to think that we have almost come full circle and I have almost spent 4 distinct seasons in Korea. When we got here in February we were greeted by Jack Frost and I can again feel him nipping at my nose (like I previously mentioned, haha)!

Last weekend was Halloween for all you guys back home which meant a huge English Halloween party at work! Koreans do not celebrate this holiday, only now are costume shops starting to pop up and decorations being thrown across store fronts. Maybe to cater to the growing number of foreigners in these types of cities? Just a thought. Anyway- the 8 of us foreign teachers had been preparing and crafting for this party for weeks and it all came into existence last Friday. We were all pretty exhausted after preparing for yet another round of Open Classes, filling out end-of-the-month paperwork, and arts and crafting decorations for our room. My room was the Pumpkin Cookie Decorating room. I strategically suggested the cookie decorating idea because I figured I could just sit with the kids all day and eat cookies. Imagine how surprised I was to see that Jade bought me CHEESE cookie mix, MILK to make the icing, and PEANUTS to decorate the cookies with. REALLY?!?!? Who eats cheese cookies?! Cheese, milk, and peanuts: three of the things I am most allergic to. It may have been a blessing in disguise I suppose because instead of eating 100 cookies that day I ate 1. Each room on the 2nd floor was decorated differently and the kids took turns travelling in and out of each one for 30 minutes each. My favorite way Amy's room: Mummy Wrapping. She spent 5 minutes wrapping the kids in toilet paper until they looked like mummies and then the remaining 25 minutes having an all-out toilet paper fight. Some pictures:









Vicky posing



Clara was "Little Red Riding Hood".... with a purple wizard's cape and a sign that read "trick or treat, smell my feet, give me something good to eat, if you don't I don't care, I'll pull down your underwear!"



Mimi and Christina from Bri's class.



Best room at the party! Getting the kids all hyped up on sugar....



Jenny



Yeriel



LCI Halloween party = excuse to wear the best purchase I've made in Korea: my giraffe animal onesie



The gang's all here! LCI teachers and students at their finest :)



Random picture (these kids are from my GGUM special classes, not LCI morning class) but how stinkin cute is Jason in his snowman hat?!

That about sums up Halloween in Korea! A group of us went out Saturday night to celebrate as if we were at home, needless to say we were stared at (and probably mocked) by every Korean we passed. Amy and Sarah leave in 2 weeks :( and we get 2 new teachers this upcoming weekend!

OH- and 53 days until Christmas on the beaches of Thailand!

Until next time- I MISS YOU GUYS!!!!

Tia Teacher