Home!

Hey everyone, sorry it's taken so long to write this post!!

I am home on the farm. It was a great plane ride home (getting on the plane from the Korean immigration station was not great, but that's over and I'm willing to forget about that hassle). I'm sure that doesn't make a lot of sense to many of you thinking about flying for 13 hours in a plane. But I love flying and Shana is great company and we had lots of things to entertain us and 2 gravol helped with about 3 hours of sleep. There was next to no turbulence either.

We arrived safely in Toronto and Shana and I picked up our luggage quickly...I guess we were one of the last ones to check in! :)
Then we had some time to kill waiting for our connections, so we did what any Canadian would do - bought poutine! And I followed it up by buying my annual fall purchase of the Hockey News to help me with hockey pool picks.
I also ran into a good friend of mine, Jeff, who is a flight attendant with Air Canada! IT was such a sweet surprise to run into him there at a cafe in the airport!

Then I took the hour flight to Ottawa...where NO ONE was there to greet me. No one. It was really sad. I was picking up my first of two bags when I felt someone hug me from behind, I turned to find my friend Dani there!! It was SOO nice to see her. Made me very happy to know someone loved me...my family did arrive about 15 minutes later, fashionably late...but it was still a great reunion and a lively ride home!! There were lots of laughs and teasing and great memories for sure!

I just finished a busy day of car shopping with Dad and purchasing a cell phone...yuck. Bills and money already spent...here we go.
Looking forward to see many of you over the next few weeks!!

Thanks so much to everyone who followed my journey in Korea...even those who didnt comment! :)
I think I will be keeping this blog going, but we will have to see what kind of adventures Waterloo brings!!

Lots of love!

Concentrating

I'm having a hard time these days remaining focussed.
I have finished my 2 weeks of camps - they were alright, but it was much different than the other weeks of camps because these girls just didn't have the English vocabulary like the other students did, so communication was exhausting.
Other than that...I have 4 days of 'teaching' and goodbyes this week...should be pretty easy, but I can't stop thinking about home and leaving and what's all awaiting me there!!
I think Katy did the same thing, but I thought I'd share my list of things I'm looking forward to (this list is not in order of importance, just more chronological and I really hope I didn't forget to mention anything)!!
1) Flying - I love it.
2) Landing in Toronto on Saturday September 6th, I have a few friends coming I think, but if anyone else is around at around 2:35pm then you're welcome to stop by. I'm only there for a few hours though and then I fly to Ottawa at about 6:15 or so.
3) Flying to Ottawa from Toronto - I have travelled that short trip yet.
4) Seeing my FAMILY!!!!! YEAH!!
Seeing Oma, Opa, and Grandma too sometime soon after the plane
5) Eating my mom's cooking (maybe she'll even make her amazing cheesecake dessert....hint hint)
6)Finding a car
7)Moving to Waterloo and starting to work for Young Life at the end of September
8)Being around before Loraine's wedding and hopefully helping out if I can
9)Loraine and Rob's WEDDING!!!!!!!!
10)Visiing with as many friends and family as I possibly can
11) Finally getting to see my boyfriend Will, whom I have not blogged about, but only because I would rather share our story in person with people. We met when I went to the YL conference in June and he's coming from Calgary for a visit at the end of September. So Excited!!

And that's just September! Octobers got 2 more wedding, a flight to BC for a wedding and then a roadtrip back from BC to Ontario to make a wedding the next Saturday!!

OH man! So much to look forward to.
I'm trying my best to stay focussed on the present though and just really enjoy and be thankful for the time I have left here!

By the way, packing is going alright I think. I am leaving quite a few clothes behind, but that's ok. :)

Tours and Visits

I've had an incredibly busy week with my 1st of 2 weeks of summer camps.
They've been going ok, but I'm just getting tired I think and ready to come home!!

I haven't had a chance to update you on what happened last weekend - it was a great weekend!!

It started out with welcoming Maria and Nate back from Indonesia! They had a really good trip and were going to spend the weekend here at Katy's place (since she was still in China.) THen on Friday afternoon I headed out to meet Shauna. We had made plans to have dinner and go to Namsan Tower.
IT was such a fun evening - we had heard about the view and the fun. We had to take a cable car to the top. Very exciting. Also, for those of you who haven't heard, couples put each link a lock together and chain them to a fence to signify their love for each other. There were THOUSANDS there. We even (sneakily) took pictures of a couple who was putting their locks on the fence! Talk about interrupting an intimate moment...


But then later they asked us kindly to take a picture of them with their camera. And it was a really sweet polaroid one. So after we took one, they took one of Shauna and me, and so we have the cutest little picture of the 2 of us at the tower that I have in my wallet!


We also ran into the cutest little couple who were wearing couple t-shirts and celebrating 100 days of dating! hahaha Shauna and I couldn't get enough of how cute they were!


On the way home we met up with Nick and Mel who had come into Seoul to visit for the weekend from Jeon-Ju. They stayed in my room and then I stayed in Val's room, where Katy ended up too on Saturday when she came home.
Saturday was filled with lots of shopping - me and the 2 couples and Tanya joined us in Seoul! So much fun!!! I'm really going to miss my ex-Redeemer friends that I've become so close with out here.

Vacation Week

I can't believe we are almost half way through August.
This has definitely been a different week of sorts. The girls are all gone on their trip to China, so really - it's been VERY quiet!! I decided not to go to China in order to save up some money for home and also take a road trip from BC-Ontario in October after a friend's wedding!
I've hung out a bit with Shauna and Selena. Other than that I've really just relaxed scrapbooked and tried to do some preparations for coming back to Canada. I'm also trying to finish my scrapbooking of my time in Korea so I can have something to show everyone when I'm back home!
Next week I start 2 weeks of summer camps with students from my school - not really looking forward to it, but it should me the last part of August fly by!!

3 of my extra class students really wanted to hang out with me on my vacation and they decided they wanted to go to a movie with me. I agreed, but that was until I got a message from them saying that the movie was playing at 9am Tuesday morning!!!?!
I was supposed to meet them at 8:30! Oh man. The things I do to please the Korean students - the perk was that my movie ticket was only $3!!!

I don't really have any pictures to add to this blog today! haha. Sorry!
I'm going to be doing some sightseeing in Seoul this weekend, so I will update you later and put up some pictures!

Shout out

Well, yesterday/today officially marks my "ONE MONTH LEFT IN KOREA" day.
I can't believe it!
I'm getting very excited to come back and a little curious to see what kind of adjustments I will need to make when I settle back in Canada.

Today is a special day for my parents - it's their anniversary! Congratulations on 26 years mom and dad, that's just awesome. I love and miss you both a lot! Have a great day.

High School

I was approached near the end of last semester to do a high school summer English camp. One of my co-teacher's father-in-law is a high school principal. They heard that another high school close to them was having an English camp, so they had to compete. Nonhyeon High school doesn't have a Native English teacher though, so I was asked if I'd like to participate. At first I was a little apprehensive, but then I found out I would get paid about $450 for 2 and a half days of 'teaching.' It was pretty much the easiest money I've made here. I had to teach 11 classes, and they flew by.
The one hitch was that the half day was on a Saturday, so I did have to wake up EARLY on my weekend. But it was worth it. The students were really smart and mature. It was a different experience because these students really could hold a good conversation with me. One of the girls lived with a host family in New Zealand for 2 and a half years (most of middle school). So she still speaks perfect English from that experience. It was awesome.

It made me really miss the high school girls I've worked with doing Young Life!

Dongbu English Camp

I had my greatest teaching experience last week during a summer camp put on by the local board of education.
60 of the top grade 7 students, both boys and girls, attended this camp from all the middle schools in our area.
I was a little anxious to be doing this camp, worried that my lessons were too difficult or that I wouldn't be able to relate to the boys having taught girls the whole time I've been in Korea.


My co-teacher's name was Dan Hae, and she was amazing. She lived in England for 3 years, and she speaks almost perfect English. We had a lot of fun together!
And it was also a fun week because I got to work with my good friends Val and Ivan. The three of us all live in the same apartment building, so it was great to spend time together with them in a working environment, it made it much less stressful!


Well, turns out my worries were quite unnecessary. I had a such a great time. There were 5 homeroom classes. Each class had a Native English teacher and a Korean-English teacher. So throughout the day we were teaching by ourselves or co-teaching classes of 12-14 kids!!! What a nice change from the 40+ I'm used to.
On the last day, the students were able to spend all the fake money they'd earned throughout the week for answering questions/winning games etc. So Friday was 'Market Day' and each Native teacher had their own 'store' in which we sold all kinds of school supplies...haha. no candy or toys, just pens, notebooks, folders etc! Poor kids...


AND they were all incredibly intelligent, especially in the English language. So I could have GREAT conversations with many of them. I even had a great time teaching the boys.
I was so glad I had this opportunity to teach. I was a little emotional after Friday was finished...and I'd only known these kids for 5 days!!

Oh, and in case you're wondering why the boys are wearing bee costumes, it's because our homeroom was in charge of doing a musical...and I chose to do something I found on the internet that was the story of Rapunzel (it was like a 'rap'..get it? RAPunzel) from a the perspective of a hive of bees. And the boys totally got on board! I figured 'rapping' was better then getting these kids to acutally sing their way through a skit. And I think it worked pretty well! :) Wish you all could have seen it.. they were pretty cute, even for grade 7 students!

The end of classes

I can't believe I've reached the day where I can say that I'm done teaching. I still have a few camps left (the one I've been participating in this week has been amazing, and exhausting...more on that later). But I was sad to have to say goodbye to some of my students who were in my extra class. I absolutely loved teaching these classes of 10 or so students. I bonded with them so well. It made me so sad to say goodbye.






Also, there was a final dinner for the school year with all the teachers. Many of them are all so shy during the week to talk to me, but whenever we all go out for dinner they always say how much they love me and how sad they are that I'm leaving...it's a little confusing! :)

The last couple weeks

So, again, I've gone through a writing drought...

Two weekends ago, we had the amazing chance to go to the mud fest in Buryeong, South Korea. What a blast! Seriously, it's the most insane, hilarious and dangerous weekend!!
I'm sure you've read some of the other girls blogs, but yeah, being covered in mud and running around wrestling, swimming and trying not to slip on the ground that's covered in an inch of pure mud!
Here's some pictures curtesy of the other girls, I was too afraid to take my camera out for fear of getting sand in it again...




Last weekend was also a ton of fun, but a little more low-key. We were able to travel to Jeon-Ju and stay with our amazing friends Nick and Mel Bokma. All together there were 8 of us, all Redeemer Grads. We mostly played cards and chatted. The girls also went for some haircuts and a little shopping on Saturday. It was so fun to just relax and hang out with such quality people! :) I'm gonna miss this group!
On Sunday, before heading back to Incheon we all ate a late lunch together - bibimbap. It's a really great Korean dish of vegetable, rice and a little beef all mixed together. Jeon-Ju is famous for their bibimbap, and it really was DELICIOUS!