Thanksgiving in Seoul, November 2007

This was my first year cooking Thanksgiving dinner completely by myself, and it was also Morten's first year eating Thanksgiving dinner. It was pretty simple, but here in Korea, simple American food is often complicated and expensive. We decided, however, that the $50 turkey and full day of cooking were worth it.

Fall photos from Tessa's Englishland

On October 1st, I started a new job, teaching kindergarten at Tessa's Englishland. I have six darling little Korean five year olds, and we've had alot of fun over the last two months. I teach with six other foreign teachers, all Canadian.

I think our first event was Philip's birthday. Philip turned Korean age five, but I suspect he's only 3 1/2 or four. He still has that little baby face and is infamous for falling asleep regularly in class. He passed through his birthday with the blank and emotionless expression of one who just doesn't quite get it yet.

For the mini olympics, all seven kindergartens were mixed up into six teams and given to a teacher to lead. We each chose a country to represent. I chose to be the Denmark Vikings, and we also had Canada, Australia, Macedonia, Switzerland, and Fiji. Team Denmark won three of the five events. Go Vikings!

Next came Halloween. I knew that all the teachers were going to dress up, but not wanting to spend money on an elaborate costume, I put off thinking of something until the last minute. The night before Halloween, I gave Morten puppy eyes and asked him if he could make some butterfly wings for me. With his wings, I managed to pull off a pretty great costume, and for a good price too! Each teacher had to prepare a craft or game to execute with each class. I chose to make slime (which was really just playdough). I had a gas hotplate and all the ingredients laid out, and each kid got to measure and stir in one part of the dough. Then I gave each kid an individual portion in a plastic bag, and they got to squish in their choice of color. It was pretty fun, but after doing it seven times, I was ready to be done.

For pictures of all these events, please click here and browse through the sub albums.

Tibet Photo Exhibit, October 5th

I almost forgot about this, so it's going out of order. One night I went down to Samcheondong to attend a Tibet photo exhibit put on by Kyoung and Johan, a Korean-Belgian couple we know. They're not professional photographers, but they were so inspired by a recent trip to Tibet that they put on this very well-organized event to raise money for the children there. They had their photos nicely framed and hung, and offered specially printed books of postcards, all for purchase with all proceeds going to charity. At the opening ceremony I attended, they had a traditional Korean flutist and singer perform, and Kyoung, who is learning how to tango, bravely showed her skills. I think if you click here and here, you can see (poor quality) videos from the evening.

Biking: Han River & Gangnam, October 27th

After a fairly miserable summer and early fall, the last couple of weeks have finally cleared up, offering lots of sun and mild temperatures. Saturday the 27th was just one of those days, and we took advantage of it by taking the bikes out for a spin. We rode down the hill to Itaewon for lunch at the pita place, kept riding down to the river, rode to and crossed over Banpo Bridge into Gangnam where we locked up the bikes and took a long walk around the popular shopping district of Gangnam. The sun set as we rode home, and we stopped for some pictures on Hannam Bridge.