Halloween In School

I worked so hard that week!  Planning, preparing for, and throwing Halloween parties in school turns out to be much more work than teaching a regular lesson.  I have 3 different classes that I plan lessons for (aside from all my regular set-curriculum classes).  One group is ten 1st & 2nd grade monsters, another is a nice quiet set of eleven remedial 4th graders, and finally a great 5th & 6th grade high-level class of fifteen.

I made a Halloween coloring and vocabulary book for the little monsters, but I was really sick on Friday so I didn't even get to teach it to them.  My 4th graders learned some new words and we also colored pictures for the classroom wall.  My high-level class is my most enjoyable group of students at my school.  I see them 3 days a week and they are really great kids.  They all work really hard on English, so I went all out for them.  There were 5 stations in the room with different activities:
1.  Mask-making.  I got all kinds of crafts and even snagged a hot glue gun so they could get creative.
2.  Art table.  I had colored construction paper, crayons, markers, scissors, glue and rulers so they could make something to take home or put up in their classrooms.
3.  Mystery bags.  I had 6 bags that the students could reach into and guess what was in them.  They were all creepy-feeling of course!  Pistachio shells felt like fingernails, a fuzzy stuffed animal that they thought was real, string with water and lotion rubbed into it like nasty oily hair, a different furry thing, flattened orange peel also with lotion to feel like skin, and finally peeled grapes felt like icky eyeballs!
4.  Halloween quiz board game.  Had to have a little English in there ^^
5.  Candy and soda table.  I had cute little bags of assorted candies, and one student's mom heard we'd have a party so she brought candy and some soda for us!

I had two students help me get the room decorated a little, and 4 girls stayed after to help me clean up.  It went by so fast I even forgot to put on the Halloween music video playlist I had spend an afternoon making on YouTube!  But nonetheless, it went very well.  All the kids had something to take home with them and they actually had fun playing the board game.  Luckily the director of English for our school had the foresight to bring her camera down for us!

About photos

I go through times where I don't really feel like taking pictures for one reason or another.  I can't find the time, I don't want to carry my camera around, I forget the camera, my computer's hard drive is full, or just plain don't feel like it.  I'm in that time now.  Typically when that happens I don't really notice it, but I have noticed it lately.  As an effective remedy, usually I will challenge myself on some picture project or specific photo goal.  Case in point, my Maroon & Gold photo challenge introduced to me by my cousin.

Yesterday, I was walking home from work and found that the glass wall of a phone booth had been broken out.  I literally ran home to grab my camera in order to grab a couple pics of it.

Go Red! (Maroon and Gold, actually)

The challenge was put to me to "Go RED" or orange this autumn. I made the decision to go maroon & gold, in honor of the Blackduck Drakes (my elementary mascot) and the Golden Gophers (U of MN). Plus they're both great fall colours. Enjoy ^^

  

More maroon & gold: SonjaJean's Flickr Photostream

Still green in Korea

All is good in the land.  Previous home-sickness has left to make room for hopes of seeing my family, excitement for travel, and being busy with work.  I'm still searching for a new home for my rabbit, who unfortunately is quite hard to give away.  The new apartment I moved into will not allow pets.  I've found many prospective caretakers, but usually their parents say he'll be too smelly.  What do they know?  He's cute!  (And not smelly if you take good care of him...)

Also, I'm having a hard time realizing that it's half-way through October.  Everything's still green around Busan and, though it's chilly at night, it is still nice and warm most days.  Halloween ought to drive it home for me.  Hopefully, I'll be able to pull together a nice costume in time and rock it out in Seoul with old friends who moved away from Daegu long ago.

Anyway, I'll be spending the weekend writing evaluations for my after-school class students, then I signed on to work on Sunday.  I have to interview elementary- and middle-schoolers from the county to see who's fit to go to Canada for a month over winter break.  Fun stuff.

I've autumn-ized my blog, as you can see, complete with a new playlist of down-tempo fall music.  I tried to stick to mostly "featured" tracks or full tracks so you can enjoy the whole song.  Just scroll up to the top of this page,  click the "play" button on Destiny by Zero 7, then they'll all play through for you.  Enjoy ^^

View Autumn Chill playlist on iLike

Holidays

A week and a half ago, I fell into another hole of sadness (a deep one, though short-lived). Over October 2nd-4th, Korea celebrated it's Thanksgiving holiday known as Chuseok. I's like to flash back here a bit.
Year 1: Chuseok marked 10 months in Korea. I spent the weekend ridiculously overdressed for my boyfriend's family get-together. It was the first time to meet all of them, and I had a great time. Played games, ate loads... basic Chuseok.
Year 2: A MN girlfriend of mine and I were invited to spend the weekend with our mutual Korean friend, Steven (Sung-Woo). And so we embarked on a three-day tour of central Korea by car. First his father's side of the family - small dinner, big lunch, ancestors' burial-site ceremonies. Then off to his mother's side of the family - HUGE dinner, games, drinking, drinking games, singing room, field-tending (traditional activity?). Decidedly more active and entertaining than the previous year.
Year 3: This year. Not having the opportunity to travel or visit friends, I was happy to relax in Daegu with DK's family again. Unfortunately, of his 4 sisters, one is living in the US now, one had just left on vacation to visit the other in the US, and the third is fighting with their mom. So we only expected one sister with her husband and 2 daughters. That would be alright, I thought. Have a good meal and see the girls... Well, the 4th sister decided not to come. And we were going to visit the fighting sister but her daughter was sick with a cold, so we couldn't even see them.

It really made me miss some good holidays I've had back home.  Like the time my aunt, uncle, dad, sister, and cousins played Cranium for hours. 
Or the other time, when my mom, dad, sister and I spent New Years Eve sticking ice in each others pajamas and throwing packing peanuts all over the house. 
Or even all the Chrismas hams that were cooked in the rotisserie at my grandpa's apartment while Becky complained about this or that. 
Aunt Nancy's jello eggs.  Ice skating in Spicer on Thanksgiving. 
Driving 4 hours to and from North Dakota in July heat, in a non-air-conditioned Jeep the age of my sister, for a box of fireworks that took half that time to shoot off. 
Or watching spectacular fireworks from the roof of someone's uncle's friend's house, overlooking the Charles and downtown Boston with my summer friends. 
Being able to see multiple fireworks displays from the dock at my aunt and uncle's lake house near the city. 
I even thought of the time I made a stellar lemon blueberry upside-down pound-cake with whipped cream all from scratch for Easter at aunt and uncle's cabin on the lake. 
All of these memories came flooding back to me while I was sitting watching TV on Chuseok in Daegu with one other person whose family wasn't even around.  Made me quite sad to think of how long it would be before I could do any those things again.

To feel better, I went into downtown to meet my other lonely, homesick foreign friends for a beer and a chat.  We hit the club and slapped a band-aid on our sadness.  It worked for long enough.  As it turned out, in practically the same moment my dad and sister were sitting in a cafe together writing me a message inviting me to spend Christmas in AZ with them this year!  So, that was the reprieve my soul needed.  Now, I'm buoyed by not only the thought of family and holidays, but also tacos, warm weather in mid-winter, shopping, and live NFL I don't have to stream on my computer.

So if you are looking forward to getting away this holiday season, keep in mind that someone in your family may just be looking forward to creating some great memories with you.  It's those memories that kept me from going crazy here last week.  Thanks, fam!