Luminarie Light Festival at City Hall

Last night I took the subway to City Hall to meet a women named Kay for dinner. Kay spent 2 years living in Peterborough with her son, and just returned to Korea in the spring. She spent some time volunteering at Rhema and attending Living Hope, so we had LOTS to talk about. After dinner she gave me a tour around the City Hall downtown area. Right now they have the Luminarie Light Festival going on, which continues until the end of January.

In the Classroom

Here are some pictures from a couple of my classes. The top picture has two of my grade 1 students working at their seats. The next three are from my kindergarten class, unloading their bags, and circle time. We have 6 English classrooms that we use, so I'm not always in the same room. They're each basically the same. Right now I teach one kindergarten class, two grade 1 classes, one grade 3 class, and one grade 6.

Sketchy Playground Equipment

This is some sketchy playground equipment that we came across by the Han river here in Seoul. This equipment would NEVER be allowed back home. Of course I had to try it out!

Olympic Park

On New Year's Day I went to visit Olympic Park. Seoul hosted the 1988 Summer Olympics. Dispite the rainy, gloomy day, this was a very nice area with a small lake, walking trails, and many of the sports facilities used during the Olympic games. The Canadian Flag was a nice reminder of home.

New Year's Eve

I spent New Year's with 3 other teachers from my school. The top picture is Teresa (from Florida) and I, then Kylie and Donovan (from Saskatchewan). The 3rd picture is the street outside the pub that we were in. I will admit there are a few more people out on this New Year's evening than other evenings, but this is definitely a popular area. Cars actually try to drive down this road, NO idea why.

Seoul Scenery

A couple weekends ago my friend Teresa and I went to a park along the south side of the Han River. The Han River runs through the center of Seoul. I wanted to try out my new digial camera that I purchased from Techno Mart, which is the HUGE brown building in this picture.

Olympic Bridge

My Apartment

Here is my apartment in Korea, the first building on the right. It's very nice, and only about a 5 minute walk from work. I am surrounded by one way streets, which really means nothing here. Cars, trucks, scooters, bicycles, small school buses, people, are always moving and squeezing by in all directions. My neighbourhood includes many restaurants, markets, churches, small stores, but mostly rows of apartment buildings.

12 lane street

This is the 12 lane street which is about a 2 minute walk from my neighbourhood of apartments. I have been fascinated by the fact that a 12 lane street goes right through the center of a city! This is a Sunday afternoon, so traffic is light. Usually it's pretty jam packed with cars. There are a lot of American restaurants along this street... the Outback, Pizza Hut, Chili's, KFC, Burger King.