Hwacheon Mountain Trout and Ice Festival

For the past week and a half, I have become not only an English teacher, but a science teacher as well.  While teaching a 2-hour per day science class seemed daunting at first, my former doctor-wannabe nerd self came out and stepped up to the plate.  Each day, I started out with a kid-friendly powerpoint that no one paid attention to, especially the kindergarteners that don't know how to read.  Then we got to the fun part of doing experiments.  I wracked my brain for the fun experiments that I did in elementary school, then used the internet to fill in the gaps.  We did all the fun stuff.  We started out with a mini-unit on lemons and acid, so we made invisible ink with lemon juice on day one.. the experiment didn't actually work too well (it didn't work at all) so that was kind of a crappy way to get everyone's interest.. but fortunately, it was all uphill from there. On day two, we made "fizzy lemonade" from scratch.  The rest of the week, we made volcanoes, pizza dough (yeast lesson), ice cream, oceans-in-bottles, etc.

Drinking their homemade fizzy lemonades

Making volcanoes

DongHak and his volcano

Shaking the bags to make ice cream

On Thursday, we had a big field trip.  We piled the kids into 2 cars and headed to the Hwacheon Mountain Trout and Ice Festival.   The festival was on a frozen river that was divided up for different activities.   We started out the day by going through the ice tunnel (that changed colors because there was Christmas lights inside).  Inside a small room with paper mache trout in the ceiling, we wrote hope letters and hung them on the trees. 

Color changing ice tunnel

Writing hope letters.. notice the paper mache trouts

Hope letters

My hope letter

 Once we got inside the ice festival, it was a winter wonderland.  They built an ice castle and a huge penguin out of ice.. they had an ice slide, bob sledding, ice skating, ATVing on ice, sitting on the back of an army vehicle and doing donuts on ice, etc.  You name it, and they were doing it on ice.  

Ice Castle

Frozen river

Pororo made of snow

Ice slide

ATVing on ice

ice skating

The kids were too scared to go bobsledding, so my class decided to go ice skating.  I hadn't been ice skating in ages, and have never been ice skating on an actual outdoor body of water.  I've always wanted to after hearing stories about the "good old days" of ice skating on frozen ponds from my parents, so that was cool.  The kids were really funny to watch because they were just falling all over each other.   I couldn't stop laughing at some of them who just couldn't grasp the concept that you're supposed to skate, not run on the ice.

eating hot lunch

After a hot (pretty awful) lunch of uncooked dumplings, we moved on to the main event: ice fishing.  I had never been ice fishing, and never really expected to go during my life.  I think regular fishing is boring, and that's when it's summer and the sun's out and you can drink beers on a lake.  So ice fishing really stood no chance.. it was the boring fishing aspect but ON the ice, minus the summer, sun, and beer.  It was about zero degrees.  The kids were really excited about it but lost interest after about 20 minutes.  There were hundreds of people fishing and obviously not an a correct ratio of fish.  People may have caught fish in the beginning of the festival, but by the time we got there, no one was catching anything.  You couldn't even see trout in the river.

On our way into the fishing arena

Excuse me, your face is in the ice

My girls

Donghak

So many people, so little fish

Yoonjoo digging a new hole

We went home empty handed but everyone was in pretty good spirits.  I got a bit grumpy from my lack of lunch and nauseous because my students were eating silk worms and fish in the car...  Whenever I smell silk worms, I honestly feel sick to my stomach.  I really try to be culturally sensitive most of the time, but I draw the line here...

See what I mean? The smell is even worse.

The ride home from Hwacheon is through the mountains and is unbelievably curvy.  If there's any snow or ice on the road at all, you can't make it.  Lucky for us, on the way home it started snowing.  And then it got dark.  We were doing fine and JiYoung, my co-teacher, was being a real good sport about it all.  She only got her license a year ago and she borrowed her husband's car for the trip.  All of a sudden, literally out of no where, one of the students vomited ALL OVER the back seat and all over herself.  So... that was that.

So my first field trip as a teacher had all the essentials: bad food, too many activities, babysitting, and vomit.  Not too bad.  But I'm so ready for a vacation.

Which is why it's great that today was my last day! Time has flown by.  I've been such a brat these past 6 months.. i've worked less than I've been employed.  Oh well! Hello Southeast Asia!

The Hills are Alive.....

For the past month or so, I've been working an institute ("hagwon") in Dong Song.  Basically, when the kids are done with their actual school, they come to "hagwons" to learn more.. (because god forbid they go outside and play).  At my hagwon in Seoul, I felt guilty about working there because I knew the kids resented it's entire existence.. I really felt bad that they had to come to me for an hour and a half after they spent a full day at school.   But in Cheorwon, it's a lot different.  Because it's a rural area, things are laid back in general.  Parents are much less intense, and this hagwon is a lot of fun.  It was brand new when I showed up, so I've gotten a lot of freedom do teach what I like.

Since the kids are officially on winter vacation (which lasts from mid-December until March), my boss decided to run an English camp the week between Christmas and New Years.  She used to be a producer, so she decided to make it a Musical Theater camp.  I thought this was a great idea, and I agreed to run the camp.  I figured she would do most of the dancing/singing teaching, and I'd take care of the English stuff.  Well, I was wrong.

I found out a few days before the camp that we would be doing the sound of music.... and I would be playing Maria.  Just because I'm blonde, I can sing.. right?  Actually, I'm tone deaf, I haven't taken dance lessons since I was in kindergarten, and I've never seen the Sound of Music.  And the icing on the cake... we had five days to learn three different scenes, complete with songs and dances.

After a stressful week and learning to dance and then teaching it, our show was a success!  I was really nervous that the kids weren't going to remember their lines/dance moves but everyone really pulled together and did a great job.  I sounded bad, but no one was covering their ears. Phew!  We sang Do Re Mi, My favorite things, and Edelweiss.  The families of all the kids came, and Matt was nice enough to come cheer me on (it also gave him something else to make fun of me for!)

Here are some photos from the show that Matt took.  No laughing!

Do Re Mi

My favorite things

Finale

The cast