Busy Days

Since school has been back in full swing, I've been keeping pretty busy. On the weekends, J and I typically stay in town and wander around finding new things. About 2 weekends ago we found that our town has a shrine to the legendary founder of all Korea (back from the year like 2333 BC).

And that day we also bought a 3D crystal puzzle. And I bought cute shoes. :D J bought me an adorable bunny shaped white out strip dispenser and hello kitty eraser.

In the meantime I eat chips with cute actors on the bags (i mean, it's not enough for sunny 10 soda to have pop stars.. LOL). And watch clouds, sunsets and such things.... 

This is of course when I'm not cleaning my house. 

Like last weekend, when I went to Everland in Seoul with J. (and didn't clean my house.... the centipedes thought this meant they were welcome to move in. ha.)

Everland was decorated for Halloween, and we were even lucky enough to come the 2nd night of the horror nights. :D I must add -- one nice thing about Korea is that they do not understand the scariness of clowns. I've asked my kids, different ages, if they thought clowns were scary, and they said no. They were puzzled. The Western concept of a clown is new to them, and luckily the scary part didn't carry over yet. So there were no scary clowns at all! ^_^ The only actor that got me was the Korean grim reaper. I didn't realize he was a costumed guy at first, and all of a sudden he whipped out a fan and spread it open, fanned himself and walked briskly past, scowling. I scream a little. (which was his goal anyway)

Everland has a really pretty rose garden with all kinds of roses, and naked Greek goddess statues. lol.

This vampire was willing to pose for a picture. He got really close. 

 Right after the rose garden is the "four seasons garden" which changes depending on the season and holiday. It was a graveyard when we went through. It felt like fall - with orange and burnt red colored flowers, lots of pumpkins, and even a bush or two shaped like a jack-o-lantern.

In the horror village, you could pose with plastic bones and body parts. 

The owl is my new stuftie - Whoobert. J got him for me. 

The day after Everland, J and I went to see the Studio Ghibli and Miyazaki exhibit at the Seoul Arts Center. They had at least a few hundred of the layouts and storyboards all on display. There were some for every single Ghibli movie, even the obscure TV only ones. It was really cool. I realized I've only seen a small fraction of all their works. 

Other than that... my school went on a field trip the week before last. I went with the kindergartners through 3rd graders to the Cheongju zoo. That was fun. The kids would ask me what different things were called in English. That was exciting for me, because usually they don't care. And the kindergartners, who I don't teach, looked at me curiously. One little boy asked his sister (my student) is she the English teacher? So I told him yes I was. (all in Korean...) 

I still am not very good at Korean. But I understand a lot more.