good news...i'm finally a TESOL grad! proof:




it was a long (sometimes agonizing) 4 weeks but it was worth it to get the certificate. glad to have that behind us!

to celebrate our graduation, we all went into seoul to shop our saturday away. the girls were all thrilled to find a 3-story forever21 in myeongdong. we spent alot of time & money there...we had a big group of about 12 teachers go up together. here are a few: my friend andy caught this picture in the middle of seoul shopping chaos. he's got quite the photographer's eye...check his blog for some other awesome shots from his canon.
it takes a little over an hour to get from cheonan to seoul by train, and costs a little under $6 each way. not too bad. seoul is enormous and we only saw one small part, so we will definitely be making some more trips up north. it was a long, but productive day, and we were all exhausted by the time we got home around 11pm.
i did have a funny experience while we were on the subway in seoul. our group was getting on the subway and i was in the rear. the subway was full so everybody was standing, but 2 older korean men slid over so i had room to sit on the bench. nobody was really paying attention so it probably looked like i wasn't a part of the "foreigner" group. anyways, i saw john looking at the subway map for our stop and i said "hey john, we have to get off in 3 stops." and there was this moment of sheer confusion as every korean in the car turned their head and stared at me, wondering where that weird accent-less english voice came from. i got uncharacteristically embarrassed because everyone was staring at me! hahaha. it was really funny.

patrick finally made it to korea this week! he made it on thursday night, but his luggage didn't make it til saturday. hahaha. he seems to be adjusting well and is ready to start teaching on tuesday. we are really glad to have him here. patrick was assigned to the same korean church that i attend, so he got to have his first experience this morning. it was hilarious. when we walked in the front door, pastor jo came up to greet us and all he said was - "WOW!" hahaha. patrick is really tall and all of the koreans have just been staring at him wherever he goes. he is amazing them! everyone at church was really glad to have him today and very interested in finding out more about him. we, of course, took some more family pictures. i don't have those yet, but here are some from john's visit a few weeks ago...


they are so welcoming to any friends that i bring with me...i love it! they are so happy when they get to meet new people.
here's a gem of a shot...3 year old yoon-hoo taking a pit stop to accept a nibble from a friend. hahaha. i love it.

i made a new korean friend named soo-in. she attends the international church on KNU campus and is getting ready to start her sophomore year of university. her english is SO good...it blows me away. you know you are good at a 2nd language when you can understand the jokes and humor in that language. she knows alot of slang and idioms and likes to use them whenever given the opportunity. like the awful english teacher that i am, i sometimes teach her new slang phrases. hahaha. she is so sweet and so much fun to hang out with. we had an unusually warm and sunny day on friday so we got to spend the whole afternoon/evening/into late night together. we explored some of cheonan and did some shopping and she taught me some korean and i taught her some english slang and words like "jay-walking," which happens often here. later in the evening, we met up with some of the other new english teachers to celebrate a birthday korean-style with some noraebong, or korean karaoke. everybody gets really into it and it's hilarious. soo-in and i were looking for an english song to sing together (since her english is way better than my korean) and she kept asking me to sing english songs that i'd never even heard of before. hahaha. she is a better american than i am! we had a blast together...i look forward to spending more time with her this year. sorry i don't have any pictures of soo-in to share with you...i'm really terrible at remembering to take pictures. all of the shots you see on this blog are taken by friends who are much better at getting a good picture than i am. i guess i'm too busy living the moment to think of trying to capture it. thankful for my friends with great equipment who can capture them for me. :)

today i did a test run to make sure i knew how to get to both of my schools and all went well. i will start teaching on tuesday! a little nervous but i'm sure everything will be fine. we get tomorrow off for a korean holiday so we might be taking a trip to costco. woohoo! i will be buying the largest jar of peanut butter i can get my hands on. hahaha.

hope you all are well. have a great week!