Another Field Trip, Huzzah

Last Friday, my school went on the first field trip of the year. The weather turned out to be perfect; sunny, about 70 degrees, and little wind. It was also a great time for a field trip for me because I had been up past 2 at least three nights that week. Luckily, I brought my camera along and took some photos of the kids.

The field trip was to a small park located on the hill in town. It's surrounded by some trees and stuff, so it makes a nice opportunity to let the kids get out and practice some of the art skills they've been learning.

Walking to the park

Clara making some fine art

Some other kids I don't know

So the kids were told to stop drawing after only 20 minutes or so...I think the more important thing was to have photos of the trip to show parents. They gathered by class to get photos with the teachers.

Gemini Class

During the photo session, the kids not currently being shot were free to play around. Some ventured out to pick flowers.

Lyn finds some nice flowers

And after that was lunch. The teachers are given some food, but its also nice to hang out with the kids and steal their snacks.

This girl Clara, just about the cutest little girl of all time. I gave her a flower to put in her hair.

Another girl whose name I don't know

And after that was play time. I don't really have photos of this because I was too busy pestering the kids.

Judy running for some reason

The play time went on for a while, I got sweaty, and eventually it was time to leave. On the way out we passed by some excellent cherry blossom trees, in full bloom. Just ridiculous. See photos below:

A close up:
So anyway, it was a nice day even though I had to teach classes later that afternoon.

Teaching Can Sure Be Sweet

When my new kindergarten classes started about a month ago, I got a gift from one of my student's mothers. It was this bag with a jar of sugar candies in it. It's definitely a nice gift, but the messages with it are funny.

On the outside, it says "Bradley Teacher: I appreciate your interest in my son." Hmmm ok.

And here's the jar of candies, which say "Be My Love Sweet" on the outside of the jar.

The be my love sweet thing is pretty funny, but this is a fairly common practice for Korean parents to give a gift of food to the teacher as an incentive to teach their children well. The only problem is this kid is kind of a terror. He hates to sit down during class, and occasionally he likes to punch me in that special area. He is surprisingly strong for a 6 year old, too.

So thanks for the gift, I'll do my best. Or maybe I'll just give the candy to the kid in exchange for not hitting me in the balls.

My Computer is Now Korean

Not really an exciting post, but I think this is cool. I picked up these little colored stickers of the Korean alphabet, Hangul, and put them all over my keys. Now my computer is even Koreanized and I can type Korean if I want to. I haven't yet, but at least it's an option.

And if you didn't notice, that's a baseball game I'm watching thanks to MLB.tv.

Another Lantern

Thanks for all of the comments recently, everyone. I wasn't thinking about quitting posting or anything, I was just a little curious if anyone was still reading. So definitely thanks for still reading, too.

Here is a lantern that I completed (over a week ago now) and I'm really happy with. I started by drawing four circular nodes on the lantern, two near the top and two near the bottom. Then I connected them with some arcs that formed sort of a triangular shape. The colors are a gradation between yellow and purple.

The triangle

The node

Thanks for reading!

Everybody was Pillow Fighting

This will be a short, but exciting post. I was supposed to hang out with my friend Megan who lives near Seoul last weekend, and she told me about a massive pillow fight that was going on in Seoul. It turns out last Saturday was 'International Pillow Fight Day.' Pillow fighting actually takes place around the world on that day, go figure.

After spending a few hours in Insadong, including this tea joint with birds flying around on the inside, we made our way to Seoul City Hall Plaza with pillows in hand.

Me with my trusty giant white pillow

Megan with her whale pillow. Not too powerful but definitely stylish.

This is the plaza where the fighting took place. There was luckily a giant clock so we could tell when it was supposed to start.

So below is pretty much what took place for the pillow fight. It was a lot of people swinging away wilding in a massive chaotic gathering. I think the total amount of people there was in the 200-300 range, but I'm not really sure.

That's my friend John in the blue shirt

I just like this picture because there are tall buildings

A few people were cool enough to bring feather pillows. This really paid off when they inevitably exploded.

And the ensuing pillow entrails all over the ground.

There were definitely plenty of people there with cameras who eventually posted video to Youtube. I found a few with me on them. This first one you can see me at about :30 seconds in when I bust my way through the crowd in my green jacket.

This next video is a little overproduced (annoying) but I make a bunch of appearances throughout. At about 1:10 I can be seen prominently in my pink bunny sweatshirt next to my friend Megan.


So a giant pillow fight definitely is not something you get to do everyday, probably because pillow fight day only comes but once a year. It is definitely worth checking out, though, if you have a chance to go to one.