Monday morning science class with Venus...I sneakily place a red plastic ball in a pencil case at the front of the room. We carry out our normal morning routine, and then I introduce the science lesson: a magic jar. I show them that there is a red ball inside the jar. Then, I dramatically cast a spell over the jar, saying the magic words, to make the ball disappear. I animatedly react shocked beyond belief that the ball is gone when I lift the lid of the ball. I search high and low for it, to discover it in the pencil case. My kids go absolutely NUTS over this, laughing in total wonder. Wow, Leah teacher is magic.
They wanted to see the trick again, but a magician can only perform their trick once. When I taught them how it worked (as they each got their own), they had lots of fun hiding their red balls around the room, to reveal to their audience where the ball had disappeared to. Good fun.
Last Friday we made patbingsoo, as I mentioned. It's a popular dessert - shaved ice with red bean. The kids brought in fruit, cereal, chocolate, rice cakes, and jellies to sprinkle on and make it their own. We had some fun with the camera, too. Julian, who used to be so camera-shy, wanted a Leah-Julian photo shoot! I have many more, but chose just a couple to post.
Silly time with Julian
Chef Matthew
Chef Scarlet
Pardon me if I have mentioned this before, but my Venus class has gotten into a bit of a morning ritual with me. The students like to take the board markers (with the lids STILL ON), and the board eraser, and pretend to do me up - brushing my hair, applying make-up - fussing over me and giving me the star treatment. It's quite cute, really. I feel so loved.
Despite the rain, I had a wonderful weekend in Samcheok. We caught at 9 bus on Saturday morning and arrived around 1:30 in the afternoon. First stop: Haesingdae park, aka the penis park. There is a story behind all the phalli. There was a Korean bride-to-be that was brought out to sea by her husband-to-be. He told her to wait there for him, and he would return soon. She drowned waiting for him, and her bitter heart significantly decreased the catch of the fishing village. To remedy this, the people of the village carved and erected wooden penises, pointing them seaward. Once again, the fish were in abundance. The penises eased the bitter heart of the poor bride-to-be.
The obvious silly photos...
The park was in a really beautiful location, as you can see!
Magda and me
Grey day, checking out the beach
Curious abandoned house
I can never resist testing the waters
On day 2 we checked out the Hwanseon caves. There were very few buses heading out this way, so we had to get our timing just right. As we were eating lunch in town, I joked that it would be funny if we missed the bus for not watching the time. We check the time...the bus is leaving in five minutes. Time to sprint across town!! We arrive in time, sweaty from the muggy weather, collapsing into our seats.
We take the monorail up to the caves, as we have to complete the course in a record 90 minutes, in order to catch the local bus back to the bus station, to get to the bus leaving for Seoul, early enough that we don't miss the metro. Consensus told us we would need two hours. Anyways, we get to the cave entrance, 1.6km of path. No problem! We're laughing. We don't have to rush through, but we also can't go too slowly. We emerge from the (AMAZING) caves. It's 4:15. The bus is at 4:30. The path down is almost 2km. It's raining. We run. We run the whole way down. Once it wasn't so steep and the ground leveled a bit, I was on such a runner's high. It felt really good. I could have kept running for a long time. We made the bus with time to spare (though it left earlier than the timetable said, so every minute counted)! We had a good laugh.
(It's now Wednesday morning as I complete this blog)...HARRY POTTER TONIGHT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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