Katie's Wandering Seoul

Orphanage fundraiser MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE! Well Christmas came and went pretty quickly here in Korea.  It's not quite like at home, and it didn't really feel much like Christmas until Christmas day.  Korea isn't a place that really has a lot of Christmas decorations, trees, or lights.  In fact only about 1/3 of my students actually celebrated Christmas, and even the ones that did did not celebrate quite like we do back home.   Singing Christmas songs Snowball fights I tried to bring the Christmas feeling into the classroom as much as I could.  I had Christmas lessons, sang Christmas songs, and made snowflakes to hang in the room.  The students did seem to enjoy talking about Christmas and how it is different here in Korea.   Presents! This Christmas was my first Christmas away from my family, and it was a bit strange and sad.  I'm used to being around my family all day long and cooking and eating and playing with my ...

As I wrote in my last post Thanksgiving has come and gone.  Although, it was a depressing time because it is my favorite holiday, I still had a good Thanksgiving. It was nothing like any other Thanksgiving I have ever had before.  There was no big family meal, no little kids running around me, and no turkey.  I did however spend Thanksgiving and the entire weekend with some really great friends, which is what the holiday season is all about really.  Spending time with your friends and family, and here in Korea my friends have become my family. I also got to Skype with my family at home, so I got a little bit of the things that are the most important. Now it is the Christmas season and I'm very excited for it.  I do think that I will be a little depressed being away from the family, but we are already planning our Christmas day.  Many Koreans have Christmas yes, however it is not as big of a holiday here as it is at home.  I will only get Christm...

I managed to survive my first week with lessons!  My first day started pretty rough like I mentioned, but the week got so much better as it went on.  It probably helped that I did not have school on Friday.  It was the schools birthday, yes they don't have school because it's a holiday.  The schools in the states should really celebrate the schools birthday as well! To celebrate the survival of our first week of school a bunch of us Waygooks (foreigners) went to Daegu.  We had been planning it all week, for all of us from the Gyeongbuk orientation to get together.  I got to see so many people, I think our orientation took over Daegu! I went over with Darren, Mark, and Beth; we were planning to get to hang out with other people since we see each other almost everyday.  However, we pretty much stuck with each other the entire night.  We got to Daegu pretty early and did a lot of wandering around (mostly because we didn't have our Korean speaking...