Milk School

Field Trip Time!

This Friday, everyone went to Milk School. Some one hundred kindergarteners feeding and milking and screaming. Oh, those poor cows.







We also got to make ice cream and share our germs!





It was beautiful though. And fall hit us the day before, literally snapped from one season to the next, so the air was crisp and clean. Except of course for the bite of cow pies and dirt. It occurred to me as we were lulled into a post-field-trip stupor on the bus ride home that Korea is no longer "other" to me. I had the sense of returning home through familiar landscape. I forget that I have light brown hair and am just as surprised as a Korean to see foreigners in our midst. Not to say that I am, or could ever be, indoctrinated. I don't think they allow that here, really.



May I express, momentarily, how overwhelming it has seemed this week to keep in touch with all of you? I love that you fill my inbox with e-mails--I mean I thrive on hearing from home. Please forgive me the tardiness of my replies. I spend a minimum of two and a half hours commuting after work when I venture to Seoul, which, this week, will be four times. I'm using the time to listen to a Korean audiobook and learn how to say, "The weather is nice. Yes, it is so."

I divide my time between dancing, hanging out with Korean friends, American friends, and dance friends, discovering tentacles in my soup (side note--when I'm not expecting it to be there, a tentacle in my soup is probably the most startling phenomenon in Korea), and keeping my cupboard stocked with cereal and peanut butter.

Sad to say, I haven't written much of anything for a while. But one of my advanced students asked me the other day, "you are a famous writer?" Where did that come from? I don't even know how she found out that I write, but I cleared up the mis-understanding about the famous part, and she asked to read something anyway. Seeing as how I have little in the way of eleven-year-old appropriate stories, I've decided to write one for her. She said she likes mysteries, and when the kids don't have to be around their parents. I think, perhaps, I should just buy her a copy of The Golden Compass...

Big Scissors

I want to get my next haircut from this chick.

Photo Extravaganza

Photo with Teacher, everyone!

Today was Chuseok, some sort of Korean Thanksgiving type holiday. My kindergarten classes came dressed in the traditional hanbok. Like this one:

Of course, theirs were slightly unkempt after the first five minutes...

After lunch, they showed me what I assume is a traditional bow:



They also showed me how to demonstrate rowdy, seven-year-old affection:



These are a couple of boys from my kindergarten reading club:

And these are my advanced students, all of whom I adore:



And, just for you Dad, because I think of you when I think of parks, this is the park by my house:

Anticipating Autumn

We decorated the board with fall leaves. Such great artists in my class!


Meanwhile, outside, it's a balmy eighty degrees Fahrenheit and the empty lot by school looks like this:

I have, however, caught one red leaf lying poetically on the pavement, and another falling lonely from a tree in Gangnam.