Day 336 in Korea-Updates and Sports Festival 2011

A lot has been happening the past few weeks. The most significant thing that happened was breaking my &*^%* toe. It's make walking difficult, which has really been unfortunate because we've had two holidays in the last two weeks!

Now that the weather's nice, the travel bug has been nudging me to leave the confines of my concrete abode and see nature again. BUT because it kills my ankle to walk (the cast that I'm in rubs my ankle when I walk) I've just stayed at home. Sigh. Tomorrow though, I'm going to rebel and leave the house. I'm sick of these four walls and to be quite honest, Maestro is also driving me nuts. Never thought I'd say this, but he's just too doggone cuddly. Anyway, we went to the doctor last Monday and he said that my toe's placement is good, but I still have two more weeks in the cast. But I'm starting to notice that my toe really doesn't hurt too bad when I walk without the cast, soooooo it may accidentally stay at home one of these days.

Thankfully, the cast will come off in time for our next holiday, Memorial Day, which is the first Monday in June. Our school is lucky enough to get an extended vacation-our school's anniversary is the next day so we get a 4 day weekend^^ Working on planning a quick jaunt to the east coast and the southeast Korea of the ROK.

4 weeks until moving day. Yikes. I got some wonderful news from my new school that I'm not quite ready to share yet (because honestly I'm not exactly sure what it means) but I'm very excited about this move. However, I'm really really going to miss the school that I'm at now. Over the last few weeks, the other teachers have started to figure out more and more that I can speak Korean, plus they're getting less shy about speaking English with me. Also, our students this year are (mostly) interesting. During class, they're fairly shy, but in the hallways I hear "HELLO STEPHANIE TEACHER! NICE TO SEE YOU!!!" approximately 4,689 times a day. So. Cute.

For obvious reasons, no pictures with the kids faces!

Friday we had our Spring Sports Day, which was just a ton of fun. They did the same events as last fall's sports day: relay races, jump rope competition, tug-of-war and nohtdalee, a traditional Korean activity. This time, however, I spent a lot more time taking pictures of the kids and talking to them. I've been wanting to bring my camera to school for a while and start taking pictures of them but I didn't want to have to explain why. This was the perfect excuse. The kids that are usually very quiet in class were quite loud today and strangely, the girls were more wound up than the boys! Since they were so excited, they were also less shy. The school year is 8 weeks old, but I heard more English on Friday than I have this entire school year combined! Granted, a lot of it came from my 3rd grade students that I don't get to teach anymore. But the 1st grade students and the 2nd grade students did their fair share of talking as well^^

Once again, they had competitions for class spirit, so they all dressed up in their own way. One of the classes had t-shirts that said "Big brother/sister is here. Get out of the way" while another class showed up in Hawaiian shirts and straw hats. And of course, a class showed up wearing giant animal onesies. I'll try and edit a picture of the onesies so that all of the kids' faces are removed; these things are so stinkin' cute.

Each class had their own uniform-this class chose to write "poop" (in Korean) on the front and put a picture of poop on the back.

Where are his shoes??? I'm not sure if it's because he runs better that way or if he forgot his running shoes. Both are quite likely. Surprisingly, a lot of kids went shoeless for this.

The last tidbit of news is just an FYI thing. I don't really trust Facebook and I don't feel like sitting down and reading their Terms of Service so I can find out if my suspicions and the rumors are correct, but I will no longer be posting most of my pictures on Facebook. Basically, if I took it with my big camera, I will post it on a new photo blog that I'm working on right now. Having to stay inside so much for the last two weeks has given me time to do a lot of research about different camera techniques and equipment, so I'm hoping to really step it up with my photography and take it to the next level. As soon as I finalize the design and layout, I will let you all know more about it.