Little kid fun, Big kid fun

Last night, I had a dream that I was asked to teach a journalism course at UNI. I was given a topic, but I had to invent the curriculum for myself, so I printed a bunch of journalistic photos off the internet and came up with discussion questions for the events in each picture. And it worked out for the first class...then I was back to square one.

That's sort of how the science/conversation class for winter "break" has been--the class with the two brothers and JiWoo. When I told them on Wednesday that Friday was our

last class, they were visibly and audibly disappointed, which made me feel that maybe my ramshackle efforts paid off. On Friday, I had them write letters to their parents about what they learned in English class, then we went outside and played a version of tag where "it" can only step on certain playground colors. (We've had fairly nice weather here this week.) The game had been taught to me by other students: twin girls, You Rim and You Jin, their third

muskateer, Hajin, and little miss English genius, Anna.

I also took these four outside this week upon the order of Mrs. Joe, who hopes the people of Jilyang will see me playing in English and sign their children up to study with "Sally teacher." When she told me the plan, the thought of entertaining four eleven-year-olds in a small town with my limited Korean was unfavorable. Fortunately, the kids had a few ideas about what we should do. First, we ate kimbob and dukbooki and a small Korean diner, then we went to "Bang! Bang!"--a giant trampoline inside a carnival tent with balls and children bouncing everywhere. Dangerous, but fun anyway. We played a few dodgeball variations and duck, duck, goose, and in general, had a good time. As a post 40-minute workout refreshment, the girls insisted that we go to the market for ice cream. Finally, we went to the craft shop to buy supplies for a class project. It was a little girl afternoon.

Last weekend, Raeann and Jong, friends from my Snow Mountain Ranch summer of 2006, met up with me in Seoul. Raeann and I stayed up until 3 a.m., catching up on every major life event during the last four years. On Sunday, the three of us plus Raeann's brand new, fresh-off-the-plane, Canadian coworker drove around Seoul in Jong's car, listening to N'Sync and looking for a Dr. Fish spa to no avail. Instead, we ate a late Korean lunch and went to N'Seoul tower. We parked at the base of the mountain and hiked up the steep 20-minute stretch to the landmark. An orange and pink Seoul sunset backdropped the city landscape from at 1,574 feet above sea level. It's actually the shortest among major towers in the world. It's kind of strange, but they were practically advertising this fact. Quite a few tourists circled the observation deck and several attractions at the top, including a photo booth, tarot card readings, and a press-a-penny machine, only for Korean won obviously.

At the bottom of the tower, there was a big porch covered in padlocks of different colors, shapes and styles. Jong told us people select a padlock with their love, lock it around the fence and throw the key off the mountain to symbolically vow everlasting love. He did it once with his ex-girlfriend. Even more ironic, there's a sign that says, "Don't throw away your key!" on the fence.

The twenty minute hike down in the dark got us lost, so we had to take a taxi back to our car. It was pretty funny. We were all exhausted, but Raeann's new coworker, Rebecca, hadn't slept since the plane ride, hoping to hoodwink jet lag in order to regulate her schedule. I kept making jokes about Canadians being super laid-back, and Rebecca was a good example of that. Poor girl. After a long day, we decided a little American food would hit the spot. We bought a Papa John's pizza and ate until our stomach's were satisfied.

I know it's been a little while since I've written about my adventures in Korea. I sort of ran out of things to say for a while...also, I've spent too much time looking at a computer screen lately, and my eyes are suffering for it. So I need to take a couple of days away and look for entertainment elsewhere. Thank you for reading this now! I'll try to keep you updated.