This Week in Photos

Here are some pictures to summarize this week. I'm heading off to Thailand and Cambodia for spring break today, and won't be posting anything for a while. Happy Spring!

Downtown Street Food

Open Market 

Red Bean Rice Cakes :)

Open market entrance

More open market

Alicia and her octopus bibimbap

My octopus noodle dish

Yummy lunch!

Exploring downtown 

Indian socks- made me think of my Aunt Libby and Uncle Dave in India!

Favorite Toilet 

Exploring Nightlife 

Korean Barbecue on Saturday for Lunch 

Barbecue spicy crab? Alicia wasn't so sure about it!

Yummy dumplings

Alicia figuring out the Korean photo book machine

Tavin's Birthday Party!

Measuring Weight

Mr. Zickefoose (principal) had a birthday! 

Dressing up for sprit week- Sports Day!

Elementary Performs the Wizard of Oz- scene from Emerald City! 

Watching our classmates in the Wizard of Oz! 

Fried octopus, noodle stuffed jalapeños and potatoes with honey drink for dinner :)

After school dance class stretching 

Crab Chips

I haven't posted anything on my blog for almost a week now, I'm slacking. I have been teaching all week- I'm flying solo in the classroom and I am exhausted after school everyday! Since I am teaching full days every day for the next 5 weeks, I'm going to do weekly blogs (with others in-between) as to not complicate my life further.

This week was my first week teaching and I LOVED it. I had many challenges to face (mainly behavior) and many more lesson successes! I introduced DEAR time to my students this week (Drop Everything And Read)- they loved it! Ms. Bechtold doesn't do DEAR time, so it was a new thing for the students. I was very surprised at how they reacted, they were silently reading their books the entire time!

Lilly, Aylin and Molly during DEAR time

Jiun reading during DEAR time

This week we dove into the Ocean science unit for IB PYP! The kids absolutely love learning about the ocean- from water to creatures! We did some water experiments this week, we were scientists in second grade this week! We did one experiment with an egg in fresh and salt water (density lesson). The students were so intrigued- we ended up making our own version of the experiment by cracking each egg afterwards and predicting what would happen in both the fresh and salty water.

Scientists posing for the camera- Check out our eggs!

For oceans this week, we also created an 8ft mural of our very own ocean! It is a work in progress, but will be completed at then end of the unit right before I leave! I'm excited to see what the students do with the mural. I gave them 8 feet of white paper and the following instructions- "work together to create our own classroom ocean on the paper". They busted out crayons, markers and stickers. I'll keep you posted on the progress of our classroom ocean!

Working on our ocean mural

Yesterday, I had an adventure after school! There is a new student teacher in 1st grade who arrived this week. Her name is Alicia and she is from Texas (goes to university in Idaho). She is my new adventure buddy and we ventured out with my cooperating teacher, Alice, and the 5th grade teacher, Christine. We went downtown Daejon to buy my bus ticket to the airport for spring break and to have dinner. We ate at a little hole in the wall authentic Korean restaurant. I discovered two things that I loved, and two that I didn't enjoy as much. At the restaurant I bought Aloe juice- its my new addiction. I also got Kimchi soup, another one of my favorites! I tried fish spam and fermented sour radish as well, a waste of my money!

Downtown Daejon at the bus station

Underground shopping mall under the street (miles long)

My main dish for dinner was a traditional Korean dish called Bibimpap. Its a dish that has rice on the bottom and raw veggies on the top, with an egg cracked over everything. They serve you a steaming hot stone bowl with the ingredients that cooks everything. You are suppose to mix everything and add spiciness to the dish. The dish didn't have much flavor to me, but it was a great meal compared to other things I have tried in my time here.

My Bibimbap

Cooking my Bibimbap

Christine and Alicia at the restaurant

Alice (my teacher)

After dinner, we went walking around downtown and did some shopping. I was finally able to buy a hair dryer! It was White Day in Korea when we went out (similar to Valentines day, but the boys are suppose to give the girls chocolate). There were all sorts of chocolate stands and stuffed animals- it looked like Valentines Day to me! As we were walking around, we stopped for some street food. There were squid sticks, spicy rice cakes and sweet egg bread. Alicia and I tried the egg bread. It was a sort of pancake batter bread with a poached egg in the middle, very strange. I enjoyed the egg bread, as much as someone who doesn't really like eggs can.

White Day booths 

Street food- squid sticks, rice cakes, more things...

Egg bread

Today in class we celebrated St. Patricks Day (because it is on Sunday). They didn't have a clue what the holiday was which was a lot of fun for me! While the students were watching Narnia during free time, I set up a little surprise on their desks for snack time! They were so surprised and were very curious to learn about St. Patrick's Day!

Snack time surprise for St. Patty's Day!

Aylin enjoying her green snack!

Today after school Alicia and I ran to the shop near school quickly before dinner. We stocked up on some groceries and I found two gems (sort of). At the market I found some face masks; I bought pure charcoal face make for relaxation and purification. I also bought spicy crab chips for a snack! When I was checking out, I asked the clerk man if the chips were actually crab (tasted like crab) and he said "no, spicy. vrrrrry spicy" and started to make a fa movement toward his mouth. I assumed this to mean that the chips were not actually crab flavored, but rather crab shaped spicy chips. I love spicy things so I bought them.

When I returned home, I put on my face mask after dinner and made a mess! The face mask actually was pure charcoal (it said volcanic ash on it). It was so thick and messy- not very relaxing. Once I got my face mask on I opened up my bag of chips only to be rudely awakened by the horrific fish stench. Yes, they were indeed crab chips, just like the picture on the bag says. I was very disappointed. Now I have a huge bag of spicy crab chips that are not appetizing. Lesson learned- in Korea believe the pictures over the non-English speakers.

My spicy crab chips

Charcoal mask

Saturday Adventure

Today was the first day I was able to sleep in and venture out around Daejon! I watched the high school girls soccer match, and part of the boys, then decided to explore Daejon. The weather was beautiful today, it was in the high 60's! It was a very windy day, there was sand and all sorts of things blowing around as I walked into town.

I decided that I was going to try and find E-Mart. Many of the teachers here recommended that I go there, they said it was the Walmart of Korea and that I would find anything I needed. I started off walking in the general direction that the teachers said it would be in, "walk about 20-25 minutes that way and veer right". So, I did.

In a perfect world, I would have ended up at E-Mart exactly where I was supposed to be. Instead I took a detour and found a fun area that was much better than just a supermarket! I'm still not quite sure where I was (maybe a suburb of Daejon) but it was a good 35 minute walk from school. There were all kinds of local clothes shops, restaurants, cafes, bookstores, markets and even hairdressers. Everything was brightly colored and there were advertisements everywhere! There were lots of people walking along enjoying the beautiful weather!

Start of the shops and markets

Korean Goodwill

I ended up browsing through the shops trying to figure out what was in each shop. I went through many small "stationary shops" that had all sorts of paper, notebooks, pencils, pens and such- all of the cute stationary Korea is notorious for.

I did my grocery shopping and had lunch during my outing as well. I bought different things at about 3 separate markets. I found some fresh strawberries that were reasonably priced (the ones I've seen before have been about 12,000 W = 12 USD)! I have struggled with the currency conversion here so far, even though it is very easy. Today while I was looking at things in the shops I struggled to put things in my basket. It wasn't until I got to the milk section and decided that I needed milk for my cereal regardless of the price, and I put it in my cart for 3,000 W. It wasn't until I checked out that I was reminded that 3,000 W was only 3 dollars.

On my way back home after all of my shopping was complete, I decided to be brave and try some street food. I stopped at the busiest stall and put up one finger and said "One juseyo" (one please), hoping to be understood. Thankfully, it worked and I was given a cup of fried something. I'm still not too sure what it was, I think it was a mixture of fried chicken, squid and tofu. I grabbed my cup and hopped over to another stall to get a blue ginseng slushy. To my surprise, it was very good (sharp tasting) and I enjoyed my fried cup of goodness and blue slushy for lunch.

My street food lunch

For dessert, I stopped at a gourmet rice cake bakery. There were two older ladies making the rice cakes and all I was able to afford was a small delicacy. As I was paying, the ladies saw my family photo in my wallet and asked me where I was from. When I told them I was an American student teacher working at TCIS, they pointed to my mom in the photo and said "she is boooytiful american". I laughed and tried to tell them that my mother was Moroccan. I wish that I could have video taped their responses, for about a minute they went on a tangent in Korean and all I could understand was "maroko". Its moments like those where I realize that I am completely helpless and can't communicate.

My gourmet rice cake dessert

As I was walking back to school, I came across a group of elderly Koreans. They were singing and passing things out to people walking by. I was very curious as to what they were doing so I tried to stop and ask. I had no clue what the old man was saying but he put his arm around me and started mumbling. Then he gave me a paper and sent me on my way. I was very confused and kept walking. When I got home, I looked at the paper he gave me and it all clicked.

Tract given to me by an elderly Korean man 

The tracts are from a Bible Society in Pennsylvania 

Dance, Dance, Dance!

Today was a long, eventful day in second grade! We did our first debate today and the second graders loved it! We talked about a debate and what it means to "argue" in kind voices in order to share different perspectives. The students identified well with the arguing part, but not so much kind voices all the time. It was very interesting to see how they handled themselves in the group setting as we debated over the situation in Dr. Seuss' "Horton Hatched the Egg". I video tapped the students as they debated, and we let them watch themselves interact afterwards!

Students watching themselves debate

Ms. Bechtold prepping the kids for the debate

 Today I set the second grade students up with their own glogster accounts for them to use during the oceans unit I will be teaching starting next week. They completed an "all about me" glog and got familiar with the program and how to use certain computer skills.

Yana working on her "all about me" glog

At the end of the day today, I went with the students to music class. The students played the xylophones, sang, and even learned a new song and dance! It was a blast getting to observe the music class! After school, dance club met and we completed the sid shuffle. We learned some ballet, tap and jazz moves in addition to learning the beginning of our new cupid shuffle dance! I had two more students attend dance club and there are two boys in my class who have ants in their pants! They LOVE to dance and enjoy everything we do. I'm pretty sure that these boys would dance, dance, dance all day long if it were an option!

Second grade playing their xylophones during music