Happy Thanksgiving!

I want to wish all of my family and friends a very Happy Thanksgiving! I hope you are all enjoying some great food, great company and perhaps a little football. I am very thankful to have such amazing family and friends in my life and I feel very blessed in many ways. I hope all of you are well and I look forward to connecting with each of you soon!

Mountain Getaway

I love Busan and living in the city, but I definitely miss the peace and quiet that the mountains provide. Since I hadn't left Busan in a few months, some friends and I decided to spend the weekend in the mountains recharging our batteries. We decided to head to a town called Benegol which is about an hour from Busan by train and bus. My friend Jess researched the area and reserved a pension (rental house) for us to stay in for the weekend. We spent the weekend playing games, laughing, telling stories, lounging, eating and most importantly...relaxing! Two of the people that came are from NC. One of them went to Appalachian and one went to Western. Below are a few highlights of the trip.

The whole gang, minus myself. Carlos, Jess, Jill, Billy and Luna.

Jill, being from LA had never seen a haystack before. She was more than willing to hop on top of this one for a few pictures.

She is also obsessed with apples and eats several everyday but she had never seen an apple growing on a tree. I had never seen someone so happy about picking an apple. The owners of the orchard ended up giving her 5 free apples because she was so excited. It's the little things in life that bring the most joy.

This is the village where our pension was located. Looks a lot like Western NC, huh?

It was a great weekend with great friends. The next time I leave Busan, I will be going to Indonesia for my winter vacation! More on this to come.

Hiking with Co-Workers

Every so often here in Korea, each school's teacher will leave work early and have some sort of outing. It helps keep the morale of the teachers high and gives them a chance to socialize outside of a work setting. Each teacher pays a certain amount of money each semester to cover the costs of the outings which usually include dinner and lots of drinking. This past Friday we all left school at 3pm to go hiking near Dadaepo Beach. Dadaepo is one of my favorite spots in Korea for many reasons and the hiking we did there just added to that list. We hiked about 20 minutes down to small pebble beach and spent an hour chatting, laughing, playing games and skipping rocks.

A lot of trails in Korea aren't very rugged. As you can tell this one is paved. Kind of takes the fun away but most of the avid hikers in Korea are very old so I guess they appreciate it.

This is most of the group on the beach. This was supposed to be a "crazy pose" picture. Looks pretty tame to me.

This is Myungoon's "sexy man" pose. As soon as he did this, Mina ( a female teacher) looked at me and said "Myungoon's sexy is broken." How funny is that!

Mrs. Wie (my co teacher), Me, Mr. Beh, UnJoung, cant remember her name. When I first met Mrs. Wie, I asked her what I should call her. She said you can call me Mrs. Wie. I thought this was strange considering we are basically the same age but I went with it. I told her she can call me Aaron, not Mr. Osteen which would be weird.

Who doesn't love skipping rocks? Myungoon was like the Michael Jordan of rock skipping. His went forever. I challenged him to a skip off and he embarassed me!

This game was pretty simple. Whoever breaks the beer bottle with a rock is the winner. This game was stopped abrubtly when our principal finally arived.

PROTEST!

My school is involved in a David vs. Goliath battle right now with Dong-A University. The university, which is right next to my school is constructing a new building. This ordinarily wouldn't be a big deal, but the new building is going to completely block the sun from hitting most of my school and will block the sun from hitting the 3rd and 5th grade building entirely. Once the building plan was revealed, my school officials and parents started the process of fighting the university. They are filing a lawsuit (on what grounds I'm not sure), they held a huge Q&A with the university officials (I attended and it got really heated), my school has posted signs proclaiming their distaste for the university, and the parents protest with signs outside the building site everyday. The university isn't breaking any laws as far as I know, but the parents are more concerned with how the morale of their children will be affected by studying and playing in the shade all day.

One of the many signs around my school. I am not sure what it says but I know it isn't promoting Dong-A University in any positive manner.

You can see the building site directly behind the 3rd and 5th grade building (the tan building on the right).

The parents were out in full force this morning. There were around 45 of them and this time they wore masks with an "X" on them.

Either the parents don't work or they have very forgiving bosses.

Trash Day at Bumin...

Every Thursday is trash day at my school. Since there are no janitors here, the students are in charge of emptying each classroom's trash and recycling. The same three girls have been taking my trash every Thursday since I got here. The kids are also in charge of cleaning the school and are each given daily chores. I think it's genius. Not only is the government saving money by not hiring full time janitors, but they are teaching the kids responsibility at the same time.

This is Jason. If I had to peg one student to be the next president of Korea, it would be him. I taught his 6th grade class the game "duck duck goose" the other day. Everyone had been the goose except for one girl who none of the kids like. No one would even touch her head as they passed by her. I whispered to Jason that he would be the duck last and that he should pick her. He didn't ask me questions, he just smiled and said OK and when he picked her he made sure to make good contact. It made her day that the most popular kid in school chose her.

These little guys are in 1st grade.

These 6th graders had to sweep the dirt off the pathways around the playground this morning. Check out those brooms they use. I expect Harry Potter and the Wicked Witch of the West to come back for those any day now.

I'm in the news!

Yesterday a few of my students came by my office and told me I was in the newspaper. They opened it up and sure enough there was a picture of me. The article is about my school and I have no idea what it says. Since I am in it I would venture to guess that's it's about our English program. Even though the picture is small, its still pretty cool to be in a Korean newspaper.

These aren't the students who brought me the paper, but they were more than happy to reenact the moment.

Where is Aaron Teacher?

The article. The second part of the title says Bumin Elementary School. That's about all I can understand.

A blown up version just in case anyone doubted me.

HORSE!

A few weeks ago I bought a basketball with the hopes that I would find a court and start playing again. As luck would have it, there are two courts within a 5 minute walk of my apartment. On Sunday, Jill and I decided to go and play a friendly game of HORSE. Has anyone ever wondered why the game is called HORSE and not a word that is slightly more relevant? I guess you could substitute HORSE for any word you wanted to, like CONUNDRUM or SCHENANIGANS. For those of you who are not familiar with this particular game, let me enlighten you. Horse is played with two people. The first person shoots from a location they select on the court. If that person makes the shot, the second person must make the same shot or will inherit an "H". If the first person misses the shot, then the second person gets a chance to take any shot they want. This trend continues until one person spells out HORSE and loses. Since Jill hasn't played basketball in a while, I was a gentleman and altered the rules a tad in order to make it slightly more fair. Our rules were as follows: if her shot touched the rim, it was considered a make. I would then have to make the same shot in order to not collect a letter. If her shot went in, I would have to swish the ball in order not to collect a letter. She was actually a lot better than she gave herself credit for and ended up beating me. There will be a rematch! While we were playing, a few of my students and their Mom walked by the court and gave me a big slice of rice cake she had in her purse. I don't like rice cake, but it's always nice to see how much they appreciate us being here and teaching their kids.

Who's the big winner?

What fun is HORSE without a little creativity? In case you were wondering, I made it.