summer vaca

Finally finally finally!!

I will have a summer vacation! It's only a week and hey beggars can't be choosers.

Best of all, my summer vacation will be spent relaxing on the white sandy beaches of Boracay in the Philippines.

This is my first ever vacation in which the motive is to relax. I'm so excited.

Oh Korea.

So all of my Korean co-teachers think that I LOVE Korea. Not that I don't love it...I just think its funny. They just think I like everything about the country. I think I started liking it here when I accepted the food and the culture, but I'm definitely not an expert by any means.
I'll replay a scene had between my supervisor and I.

Supervisor: Wow Andrea you like Korean food. You watch Korean dramas. You listen to Korean music. Is there anything you don't know about Korea?
Me: Well I don't know Korean.

I just think its funny...

Oh and here are some recent pictures from this month.

Me at the Kimchi Museum!

Some of my co-workers!

Kirsten and I on her birthday!

WOW its July!

So open house went decently. Some of my kids were constantly getting out of their seats and trying to run around and I had to politely say (*ear to ear grin*) "Sit properly please...." Whereas normally I would be like "SIT DOWN!" haha I remember when I first started teaching in September I was astounded by how mean and domineering I was. I've only ever been like that when I was playing a character, but I've never been outwardly like that in real life. Its kinda liberating I should say, but yelling is sure exhausting sometimes.

I am now definitely used to an enjoying life in Korea right now. Weird how I start to get used to and then I'm leaving, but then again teaching six year olds without hardly any holiday or breaks I could definitely do without. But my friends here have definitely been a blessing. Next Thursday, my co-worker Carla is leaving to go home to England for the summer. We have gotten really close and its gonna be really strange here without her.

Us at Seoul Land (along with some other new friends)

Erica and Carla

This Friday is the 4th of July! Hopefully us CUA Seoulites will be doing something...maybe the Han River cruise. Hopefully we can shoot off fireworks somewhere (they have no laws about that here).

Open House...aka shoot me in the face.

Tomorrow and on Friday, my school is having an open house. This isn't like the open houses that my schools used to have in which the parents would go at night and meet the teachers and talk, eat snacks, etc etc. For our open house, the parents come in and watch us (only the foreign teachers) teach a class. It's awkward because the parents just stare and the kids are like little Stepford children. They sit properly and they never talk out of turn. It's weird. I did it once before in January. But this time, I'm doing it with my six year olds....eeeek.

In case I've never explained it, I have two six year old classes that I teach from 10-2:30. One class, the Lovely Ladybugs, are amazing. I mean yes they tend to get a little rowdy and the girls have amazinly high pitched voices (I have to tell them to use their "small" voice), but all in all they are very cute and sweet and SMART! I love them. But my other class on the other hand- terrors. They are the "precious"( haha) Polar Bears. In this class, there are some little devils who don't listen and have no respect for me. I mean I can't fault them too much...they are actually five years old (six Korean), but man they drive me up the wall. The girls are really sweet though and much smarter than the boys (isn't that always the case?)



Anyways, we have preparing for this open house for awhile. In the midst of this prep, my supervisor tells me that I have to change my voice to sound like some creepy Snow White flight attendant I guess. And then she says 'You were a theatre major right? You should be able to do that.'
When she said that, I was just thinking 'wow...I really dislike you.' It really made me angry.

So I have this open house tomorrow...lets hope it goes well.

Nightmare Concert and other happenings.

Life in Seoul is good. The weather is finally warm and I'm enjoying my time here. My school is difficult but thats another story.

Jen and I are big fans of Korean pop and she suggested that we go see a K-pop show sometime. Jen found the "Dream Concert 2008" which is Korea's biggest concert and all or most of the big names come. We were confused before we went about how to get tickets. First, we thought we had to buy tickets online (or you buy a book and then you get a ticket free?) But we couldn't figure out how to do it! My Korean co-teachers and others told us that you didn't have to buy tickets because the concert was free and that anyone could get in! I was perplexed by this, but I was intent on going.
So Jen, her sister Cara, and I got there and there's already this mass amount of people. The fan clubs were taking up the most amount of seats...We even tried to blend in with a fan club but I think my whiteness gave us away! haha So by this point, there are huge lines and all of the doors are closed. We weren't sure how we were supposed to get in. We tried to just fit in with this crowd, but we were then shoved and pushed by crazy crazy angry fans. I have never been shoved like that in my life. The weight from the fifty people behind us was pushing and we then toppled over on the ground. I was so afraid of being trampled. It was so scary!

We finally did get into the concert. The concert wasn't so great. Some of the performances were good. Epik High was really awesome to see.
In Korea, all of the fan clubs wave balloons and they never stop waving them!

Here's a tip Korea. Give people tickets and ticket takers and scary, big security guys.

This is only for now

I have much to update on, but for this post I thought I would focus not on teaching English in South Korea. I thought I would give a little shout out to my homies in the U.S.

There were many graduations this month, but in particular my cousin Julia graduated high school yesterday. Julia is an amazing student (she's going to UNC Chapel Hill in the fall) and she works so so hard! She was also the speaker at her graduation, which I was so upset to miss. I'm really proud of her and love her alot!

I'm gonna give another shout out to another class of '08...My CUAdrama loves! Congratulations!

Birthdays of past and present.

My birthday, which has April 29, has usually been a wonderful day for me. When I was a student in school, it was always the end of the school year so the weather was nice and people are usually in a good mood. I've always loved celebrating it! The last four years I haven't been able to celebrate with my family because I was always still in classes and this year....well I'm in Korea so lately I've celebrated it with my friends. So this post is basically thanking my friends for making my birthdays special and to my family for being amazing.

Okay so freshmen year....well I don't have that picture. But I figured I'll just put in a picture of me and my friends from freshmen year. I remember we went to Old Ebbitt Grill in D.C. and I got crab cakes...and they were good!
Sophomore year... I was stage managing a show so I couldn't really do the whole going out to dinner thing. So after the opening night of the show, my friend Meghan, kept saying "Let's walk back to your room together...I'll go with you.." But I kept talking to people and then when we finally got back to my room, there my friends were with a big "Surprise!" That had always been a dream of mine to have a surprise party because I LOVE surprises. So that was amazing.
Junior year...Quite a different birthday. I had studied abroad that semester and at the end I thought I would travel with some of the people in the program. I really wanted to go to Greece and they said they would go too. I bought my ticket and they said "Oh its just too expensive..." So I ended up going by myself. So I was alone on my 21st birthday. That was kind of a bummer, but I was in Greece so you know....it was okay.
Senior year.....my birthday was on Gilby's. For our drama department, the seniors put on a kind of Academy Awards type show where they give out awards and put on skits/ parodies about the shows/teachers/ students from that year. Its a lot of work so I wasn't expecting anyone to really remember or at least not to make a big deal out of it because we were so busy. However, during the ceremony, I hear from CSmith "What if it was Andrea Mullen's 22nd birthday?" Then everyone at Gilby's sang Happy Birthday to me and I got a cake afterwards (Tweety of course)...I couldn't believe that.
This year, it was another great birthday. Us CUAers along with Carla, Aerim, and Aerim's friends Ellen and Young Gwan went to Seoul Land, an amusement park. It was fun and not too crowded so that was nice! Then my friend Carla took me out for a really nice lunch at this place called Top Cloud...it was fancy.



Basically I'm so grateful.