Drawing Day

Welcome, loyal readers to post number 6 of March. That makes this a productive month of twice as many as last month. Actually, come to think of it, I called last month a haitus month, so that's not too impressive I guess. I'm not completely sure anybody still reads this actually since nobody has commented for a while.

Lately I have sort of a backlog of posts I've been meaning to get out, so I literally have about 5 posts in my head that I'm just to lazy to write. Something happened today, though, that I have got to post about.

I called this day 'Drawing Day' unofficially because it started out with my first graders having to draw a picture of their family. To give them the idea (they dont speak much English) I drew a picture of my family on the board and labelled it. I think I did a pretty decent job for stick figures:

My dad did come off looking a little like Fidel Castro, but that's not too big of a deal. So next period, a bunch of my students had the idea to draw me, I think they had the idea because of the drawing that was left there on the board.

Anyway, here a few drawings from my grade 2 students:

beautifully captured my eyelashes

kind of a melancholy look

But theres actually a pretty funny story to this last one by my grade 2 student. He drew this, and I'm pretty sure he's not really fond of me. So flash forward 3 hours and I have a class with 2 students. I pushed one of the girls in her chair, and I wasn't sure what happened but she kind of sat there crying with her head down for like half an hour (Korean kids cry all the time-its not a huge deal). I decided to take these drawings out to try to chear them up, and I show it to the other student. She cracked up for about ten minutes. Literally ten minutes. The other girl decides to perk up and look at this and she gets a little kick out of it. They asked me who drew it and I went 'oh it's some grade 2 I don't know his Korean name but his English name is Derek.' They go 'Woa,' because it ended up that the kid who drew the picture is the little brother of the girl who was crying. So then we laughed for a another few minutes about it and the day was over. Here's the picture by the way:

So those events made the day end kind of weird, but it was OK overall. I did get this other drawing of me that I thought was pretty good:

See you next month!

Some Painted Things

Ooooh, another painting post. Let's see what it is. First is this painting I did based on a drop of water causing ripples in a surface of water. I of course jazzed it up by discretizing the surface into a bunch of square type shapes. I think it turned out well:

Here is the image I based the painting on:

So next is what I'm really excited about. I picked up lanterns the last time I was in Insadong, and have since painted one. It's really great because I feel like I'm painting in three dimensions. My first painted lantern is sort of a two sided sunset with trees. Theres suns at both ends and trees are coming from both ends.

Here's how the trees interact:

It is a lantern, so this is what it might look like with an internal light:

I have another lantern almost finished that I'll post about soon.

A Day in Insadong

Let's get back to the blogging then. This is a post about an exciting day I had when I went to visit Insadong, located in Seoul, Korea. It's home to perhaps the highest concentration of gift shops in the world centered around one street, as well as art gallerys littered along the sides of the primary street. I knew I wanted to visit some art gallerys as well as pick up some art supplies.

My bus left at noon. I was waiting outside of the terminal when I checked my phone for the time. It was 11:51 so I figured I should get on the bus, though this was the last time I would see my phone for a while. I was looking through my pockets for it once the bus left, and found no sign of it. Oh no! More on that later.

I made it to Seoul and to Insadong fine, but my day was hindered by thoughts of whether I would ever see my cell again. I looked around a few gift shops looking for paper lanterns I could paint, and ran into a Korean man I had met before. His name was Jacob and he remembered me from a birthday party we both went to in Seosan, though I didn't remember him right away. He and his friend David invited me to lunch with them. I said no because I wanted to see art galleries before they closed, but these guys didn't take no for an answer. They said they would find the gallery I wanted to go to and then go to lunch from there, so I agreed.

The whole area was really nice along the side streets that contained the art gallerys.

The one I went to is called Kyungin Museum of Fine Art, which is a complex of about five buildings housing galleries with a nice courtyard and some sculptures.

We went through only one of the buildings and they were hungry enough that we decided to leave and look for food. We went to what turned out to be really great dok bokki. For anyone who doesn't know, this is cylindrical rice cakes in hot sauce, which my little sister likes to call fire noodles. The restaurant even had a great mascot:

"What's for lunch? Oh....my head. Well, let's dig in."

The dok bokki had some shellfish and noodles in it as well as the rice cakes. It was really really good.

A picture of Daniel:

And Jacob:

And me. We got to wear nice red aprons because the food is so sloppy.

After lunch we walked down some more of the streets in the Insadong area. It was super scenic, and we walked to the area where the president of Korea lives, The Blue House.

Here is a picture of what the main street of Insadong looks like on a Saturday:

I bid farewell to my new friends, and I was finally able to do the shopping I wanted. I picked up a few paper lanterns from a souvenier shop, and I also found a really great art store that had canvases, paint, and brushes:

So it was a nice day in Insadong, but there was still the matter of my phone. I got back to the bus station in Seosan at about 9:30 and started (trying) to ask around for a lost and found. This involved something very similar to a game of charades, but with real consequences. After being shown a bank of pay phones, I was led to an office around back of the station. The guy there let me call my phone to see if I could hear it, but nothing came up. He then thought of an old desk where some items like this are kept, and luckily the cell phone was in one of the drawers. Sweet relief!

Korea can be a great place because people tend to be honest about things like this and not go and make a dozen phone calls to Nigeria or something. So thanks to whoever picked up my phone!

Some Close-ups

Not much to say, just enjoy these photos:

Andra

Monica

Barbie

Noah

Gloria

Ben

Thomas

Cindy

Oops, don't know his name.

Kids in Costumes

So I promised that I would post again within a day or two of the last one, but I have a really good excuse this time. Tuesday I was super sick from this deep fried octopus tentacle that I ate, and then my internet was down for a day. I finally told my boss about it today at noon, went home, and a service guy was at my apartment by 1:15. That's what I call service.

That brings me to my post, which holds some of the overflow of great pictures I took during the graduation ceremony last week. I will go on the record of saying that Korean kids are the cutest in the world, and putting them in riduculous costumes definitely does not hurt. So, I present to you: Adorable Korean Children in Demeaning Costumes. Enjoy.

This little munchkin is now my student, but I cant remember his name. Just look at that costume.

Can't get enough of it.

Cindy lookin' great in a giant pink bowtie.

Joseph was really upset at this moment, but it made for a great picture.

Daisy dressed up as the fox from Pinocchio, dancing to a ridiculous K-pop song.

The Superman costumes were way overdone.

Donald lookin' great as a puppy.

Alyssa doesn't look like a wicked witch, does she?

Michael played Cinderella, and they found a great wig for him.

This kid Ryan makes a convincing girl.

Well, that's it, but I do plan to post again soon with more pictures of little kids, so I know you'll be back.

Graduation

And.....we're back. It's March, vacation time is over, let's get back to it. This first post is a great one, too. I promise.

Recently, my school held a graduation ceremony for all of our kindergarten students, which is about 50. This involved loads of preparation for the Korean kindergarten teachers, but luckily none for the 2 foreign ones, who continued class as usual. The Korean teachers had to help the students memorize speaches, teach dance numbers, and choreograph and practice plays for the students. A lot of work to do, but as I mentioned, I did none of it.

The work did pay off, the graduation ceremony started at 5 o'clock with handing out diplomas to all of the students. I got to read one of the diplomas in front of the audience, so I felt special to be involved.

Here is the background that the students performed in front of, pretty ridiculous. The students all had to stand still in the bleachers in front of their parents, and lets just say that these kids couldn't stand still for more than about 4 minutes.

Next, they had to recite some speach about seeds growing or something like that, it turned out OK.

The plays were a definite highlight of the night. They performed parts of Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Pinocchio, and Beauty and the Beast. Here is most of the cast of Sleeping Beauty.

And the cast of Pinocchio:

This is Micheal, who performed as Cinderella. He did a really good job actually.

Interspersed within the plays were dance numbers. They performed pretty well choreographed moves with popular K-pop songs which turned out the be the most entertaining event of the night.

More students in dance costumes:

This is a cast of 6 year olds about to perform a song in notably skimpy outfits. They performed so well that the parents demanded and encore, so they performed the same exact song twice.

This one is my favorite class performing in superman costumes, which was really great.

It really turned out to be an entertaining night, and it was the last I got to see some of the kids who were moving away, quitting, etc. We also went out for dinner afterwards for Korean barbecue. Well, I took a lot of great pictures from the night, so I'm going to put up a few more posts with just kids in costumes, so check back soon.