Olympics Fun

Wondering where I've been in the past few weeks? Sorry, things always get crazy right before the end of school and the beginning of vacation!

With the Olympics starting in just a few days, I planned a week-long English summer camp for my kids, Olympics theme. It's been a LOT of fun so far, despite their relative laziness (I mean, cmon, it's summer!), and my anxiety about flying/maine/projects/wedding.

So far we've done a LOT. Here are some snapshots, if you want to see what camp is like in Korea:

relay race

 We had a "torch" relay. Teams (5 teams, one for each continent represented in the 5 rings) had to balance tennis balls (flame) on their torch (rolled up paper), run down to the end of the room, write a summer olympic event (ex. pole vault) and run back. They had 2 minutes to write as many words as they could, with each person writing one word at a time. If you drop the ball, you have to start at the beginning. Team with the most words won. We played 4 times and added scores up at the end.

flag coloring

The first competition was to create a flag for their team continent. This is the "Americas" team.

London Sightseeing

 Day 3 was a tour around London. Teams had to "visit" 6 different London landmarks and read a paragraph, answer some questions, and then complete a puzzle before moving on to the next landmark. The team who finished all 6 landmarks first won GOLD. This is by far the students FAVORITE activity. It lasts a long time (more than 1 hour) but they were very involved, super competitive and engaged. The puzzles at each station were different: crosswords, word searches, scrambles, cryptograms, sudoku, and a maze.

olympic history timeline

As a history/education major, I always sneak in some history into my camps. This camp the students made a timeline, spanning from the ancient Greek Olympics all the way to the 2012 London Olympics. We only focused on the summer games. Each of the 5 teams were in charge of a time period and had to research facts about 6 different games.

world map and country info

I made this map for another English teacher for her open class last week in front of the principal and faculty. I decided to reuse it for the camp. If you're wondering why Europe seems huge, it's because she was focusing on it and asked for it to be larger, and for the Americas to be smaller!  Each of the teams had to research one English speaking country from their continent: USA, Ireland, New Zealand, South Africa and India.

team flags

Here are the continent flags some of the students in the morning session made. You can see the small colors circles around them are the medals they've won doing various activities. A gold medal is 15 points, silver is 10, and bronze is 5.

Below are examples of the country fact sheets:

America country fact sheet....loving Obama!

Ireland fact sheet---how cute is the president?

Wedding Programs

Here is a sneak peek of a project that I am trying to get done before stepping on the plane in just
 3 DAYS.

These are our cute little ceremony programs, which are also fans. Not to be brutally honest, but I think that the fan might come in handy more than the actual program itself! Claire, our
South African friend, graciously offered to design these as well, and they're absolutely awesome. While we had a few snafus with the printing margins (stupid printers, honestly...we can make microscopic storage chips but we still have ridiculously junky printers?) we got them to work and I've been printing and cutting like a mad woman.

A few pieces of double sided tape (I think we've gone through a total of 15 rolls so far for all projects), these puppies are strong and work as wonderful fans. I think we will definitely be needing them at the church for an August wedding! Maybe some guests will save them and bring them to the reception as well.

Included on the program:

side 1: the wedding ceremony program itself. This has names of our priest, cantor and organist, as well as the order of events. Since this is a Catholic wedding and most of our guests are not Catholic, we thought it would be nice to give everyone a head's up on what will happen in order. There are also the readings and names of those who will be reading for us.

side 2: this side is a bit of fun. We have a cute little icon of our wedding party, with everyone's names listed, including the bride and groom, best man, maid of honor, maids, groomsmen, junior maids, flower girls and ring bearer. SHEESH, people...we have a LOT of peeps in our party! Under that diagram is a little Mad-Lib story that guests can do in pairs (we will put golf pencils out), while waiting for the ceremony to begin. Basically it's a cute story of us (Matt and Dani), that everyone can fill in funny parts of speech to make it interesting.

I have about 60 done with another 40 being printed as we speak!

Reception Shoes

Well, I did it people. I went with my gut instinct and ordered some "fun" shoes for the outdoor reception.

Since I knew everyone would cry mutiny if I changed into Crocs (haters don't be hatin'!), I chose another, less ugly version of a comfort shoe:

Yes, TOMS. Blue, sparkly ones to be exact.

To remind everyone back home, I haven't stepped foot on American soil for 1.5 years. Although I have seen some Korean girls sporting TOMS, I think they must order them from abroad, since I can't find any in stores here. Because of this, I haven't had the pleasure of owning a pair...

..until NOW!

I ordered them a few weeks ago and they've arrived at my moms. I am excited to be changing into comfortable shoes for the entire afternoon after the ceremony. While I'm not sure what I will be wearing yet when I walk down the aisle, at least I know I am covered at the park!

Did you realize that TOMS has an entire "wedding" section on their website? Neither did I! It didn't take much to choose these ones as the winners.

Photo Love

More pictures of the other photo collages we've put up around the apartment:

above our bed in the closet bedroom

on the wall to the right of Matt's computer desk

Unfortunately with this humidity the pictures keep falling down. I didn't use a lot of double sided tape, though, so as they fall down we've been repairing them and adding more tape. Hopefully they'll stay up for a while.I hate hate hate the cement walls. The wallpaper is literally plastered right to the cement.Oh well, what can you do! ^__^

Closin' In...

...on the RSVP deadline!

This is exciting stuff, people.

On our list, there are a total of 91 parties that are invited to our wedding and all but 22 have RSVP'd. Our deadline (per our wedding website) is July 21st. That's just 6 days away! While we have a pretty good idea who will come and who won't, it will still be nice to get the official numbers in soon.

We have a few people that are obviously coming  who haven't RSVP'd yet (mainly family), so with those numbers calculated in to the total, we're looking good! Now we just have to have them take a couple minutes to fill out the RSVP form, easy peasy. Our spreadsheet is not only keeping track of numbers, but also vegetarian meals and is calculating how many little welcome bags we need for the out-of-town guests.
This weekend we will take a look at who hasn't contacted us yet, and will email/contact those who may have forgotten.

We're in the process of making pie charts (because Matt loves to do little things like this with Excel!) of the number of "yes" v. "no" and also the percentage of out-of-town guests v. in town guests. Should be interesting to see the final tally!

Once everyone has RSVP'd then we are going to try to nail down seating charts before we go home. It's a goal, but it might not happen just because it will probably take the entire last week we're in Korea to track people down. Wishful thinking, though! We'd like to get as many paper projects done and printed here, so we can work on larger stuff in Maine.

Loving the marriage advice from all of those who have submitted their RSVPs, friends and close family alike. We were thinking of maybe writing down those pieces of advice and displaying them at the reception in some way, shape or form. Who knows!

Exciting stuff!

1:1:3

1 week of school left
1 week of summer camp (Olympics theme, yeah!)
3 weeks of MAINE until the WEDDING

With just 12 days left until we depart, all of our free time is spent organizing, packing, and doing last minute projects (printing and cutting and packaging). As busy as that sounds, we're in a pretty good spot. I'd like to think that this is the calm before the proverbial storm. The storm of awesomeness!

Sitting here at my desk on a cloudy (re:not raining yet) Monday morning, enjoying my homemade vitamin water:

Watermelon rosemary water, July, and numbers BINGO

These people on the interwebs (mainly Pinterest) do not lie when they say that watermelon and freshly picked rosemary go wonderfully together. It's so true! A few watermelon chunks, a spring of rosemary (crushed just a tad with a fork), some ice and some water and I have myself a refreshing drink that I just refill all day while at work. Delicious!

Off to teach a class. We're playing numbers BINGO all week, which will be fun. I read a bunch of big numbers ( ex. 56, 700) and kids have to listen and play. It's one of the best listening games because Koreans have a REALLY hard time with numbers in English. Koreans count by 10,000s, so it's very different.

Fun fun!

Tonight: we talk cake!

Wedding Wildflowers

Here are a few pictures of the wildflowers that are being grown at Matt's Mom's/Heather's house:

Broadturn Farm is doing the flowers for the reception, but for some added color we will be making simple bouquets to hang on the pews for the ceremony.

Can't wait to get home and see everything! ^___^

Today's Happy Maker

I walked into one of my small, low level classes today to be handed a wedding gift from all of students:

It's a bag full of beautiful cranes, in a few different sizes and tons of patterns. How SWEET! Everyone knows I am was folding cranes for the wedding, so this class thought it would be sweet to make some as a gift.

While I obviously can't use them with the rest of the blues, I was thinking of putting them in a bowl and displaying them somewhere...whether it's at the wedding, or at the rehearsal dinner, etc.

Here they are:

Don't be deceived by their lack of smiles, Koreans are very shy and REALLY don't like the camera. These kids are very friendly (despite not being able to communicate a lot with me) and are always all smiles and giggles. You get them in front of a camera, though, and they shut down! It makes all of my pictures of my kids look like they hate their lives, haha. I promise that's not the reality!

As you can see, one goober is holding the cranes in the back (although I heard from the girls that the boys were wicked lazy and didn't help much, haha).

This was a great way to walk into class this morning! My Friday afternoon, though, turned out to be pretty terrible. I went home to have lunch (like usual) and after eating a pre-made chicken caesar salad I started to feel pretty terrible. I made it back to school though, only to feel worse and worse. I sucked it up and went to my last class of the day, only to start shaking and sweating profusely. Then, right in the middle of class (as I was reading aloud big numbers for BINGO), I excused myself and ran to the bathroom. Luckily I made it before throwing up, UGH. Guess I had a little bout of food poisoning, but I am feeling ok now. It was probably the chicken, but who knows.

Too much information, probably, but there you have my Friday!

Bring on the weekend. We have a new list of things to get done for the wedding, mostly emails and confirmations and little things like this. We should be printing out the ceremony programs though and will be cutting them here as well so they'll be ready to make at home!

1000.

I can say with a big sigh that the cranes are complete.

1000.

This is without a doubt the longest and largest craft project endeavor that I have ever done, as well as Matt. If you've ever worked on something that has taken months, maybe you know the feeling. The slight feeling of emptiness, that something is missing? haha. Maybe this is what it feels like to work on a giant quilt and finally finishing. Whatever the case, ever since folding the last crane yesterday, I've felt strange, like...oh I should be doing something, but there's nothing left to do!

can you see the bit of sadness behind the eyes?

Here is a pic of the 1000th piece of crane paper.

The last 60 cranes were folded while indulging in a big treat:

yup--definitely splurged on this one!

Just looking at this picture gives me a sugar headache, haha.

And here are some more obligatory crane pics:

getting all our cranes in a row..

counting and color coding

So there you have it. We did it...in approx. 2.5 months, yeah!

Along with the two of us, some of our students helped out a bit, as well as some of the teachers at school. It will be great to take pictures and show them a little piece of Korea when we come back to school!

THEY'RE DONE.

Now we just need to package them snugly,and prepare them at home by stringing them and gluing them on fishing wire. Can't wait to see the final result!

Bathroom Baskets

Heather, "the sis" (in-law for me ^__^) just sent us a pick of these awesome bathroom baskets she put together:

This project was kind of an after-thought on the long list of wedding projects. I found a lot of good ideas from other brides on various websites, and decided to add it as a "if we have time" project. Well, Heather and Matt's mom thought "why not?" and went to the local dollar store to complete the project. Even though it wasn't on the top of the list, these baskets will be SO useful. I am sure our guests will appreciate  most, if not all of the things that these baskets have to offer.

Just as an aside, these are to put in the bathrooms during the reception, and are meant for guests who maybe need a little something to get them through the afternoon.

I won't list everything, but here are some items that Heather added to the baskets:

1. spray deoderant
2. gum
3. Women's sanitary products
4. antiacids
5. clear nail polish (if anyone's stockings run)
6. antibacterial hand gel (this will be an outside reception after all!)
7. saftey pins
8. a comb

and many other things!

Can't thank her enough for picking up all of these items. One less thing to go shopping for when we get home in 2.5 weeks!!!!!

No Woman, No Cry

A lot of people interpret Bob Marley's famous lyrics in a negative light: "If I don't have a woman to love, then there won't be a reason to cry"...as in...love can be painful.  I don't like to think of it that way, and I am not alone. I interpret the lyrics as "No Woman, Don't Cry", like he is consoling her: "Here little darling, don't shed no tears"...you see?

Regardless of the real meaning, I titled my post because it's time to talk about tears. I am a crier, not going to lie. I have always gotten a little teary during particular sad or romantic movies (at the end of the Notebook...anyone?), but I feel like lately (in the past 2 years or so), it's gotten much, much worse. When the Lion King came out in 3D in Korea, I had to contain myself from wiping my tears from my face at the opening scene with the circle of life. That movie sums up my entire childhood. When we went to see War Horse without knowing too many details, holy crap, I was practically bawling towards the end of that movie...damn animals toying with my emotions!!

So, you can probably see where this is going. Although I don't think I am going to be a bawler, I do think I might have some issues. Fortunately for me, Matt says I am cute when I cry, so that's good, I don't want to be one of those ugly criers in front of 140 people!

To remedy this issue, Matt suggests I watch this video over and over again until I am numb and void of all emotion:

It's the P&G Olympics commercial, which I am sure most of you have seen back home, but it's completely new to me. I was researching Olympic advertisements for my students for the Olympic themed summer camp, and I came across this tear-jerker. What the heck, people?!

Matt was only joking of course, but I wonder if it would help at all if I just practiced the vows and such a lot before the big day. While it might help calm my nerves, I don't think it will help in the crying department. If I cry, I cry. Now which of my maids will be holding the tissues?!

Staying Positive

This past weekend was a crap shoot of emotions. Stress levels are high, with both of us. The past few weeks of school have been a struggle, with cultural differences, wild kids, summer camp workbook deadlines, and the over-all anticipation of vacation looming in the distance. We're now at the point where we're just trying to get through, with no real effort to teach any new materials. The games have come out, for sure.

While the rainy season has begun, Saturday we woke up to a surprise of the most gorgeous sunshiny day of the summer. Taking advantage, we jumped in the car and drove to the beach, only to have a ton of things go wrong. People were driving horrendously, our GPS died mid-drive, we ended up stuck on a slow, winding road behind the slowest car ever, and the drive home was long, with numerous random detours for no apparent reason. These things aren't normally enough to make us upset, but with the stress already high, let's just say it was a rough day. The only reprieve was the actual beach itself: not crowded at all and the water was amazingly warm.

Yesterday we slept in and had plans to go shopping at a brand new complex at the newly renovated bus station. That specific EMART is known for having a larger foreign foods section, as well as gluten free food and whole grains.Unfortunately, we drove all the way there, excited about corn tortillas and baby shopping, only to be turned around at a gate AFTER we had parked the car. Korea has a new law in place that the second and forth Sundays of every month, large department store grocery chains have to close to give opportunities to the small traditional markets. Dumbest rule EVER, considering it's been in place for a while, and of course, as you can imagine, people just shift their shopping day to Saturday or Monday. The courts in Seoul just ruled in favor of the big stores, but it hasn't trickled down yet. We were stupid enough to not think about it (considering July 1st was a Sunday), so we surprised and pretty upset, again, because we were already having a crappy weekend.

Things turned around, though. We made a bunch of cranes yesterday afternoon, and only have 100 to go! We also made shopping lists and are getting organized for the big trip. We lugged out our luggage from the back room and are wiping them down and starting to put things in a pile for future packing.

Two more weeks of regular school, with one week of summer camp, and then we are home. It's the home stretch now, and we can do it. Tensions are high, but it's all good...trying keeping a positive attitude!

We have a few small projects left to do and then our Korea project list will be finished. Feels good to be so productive ^__^

Things are Prettier in the Rain

Well, folks, two weeks late is better than never. The rainy season is officially here. While global warming is certainly messing weather cycles up all over the world, Korea is no different. It's a blessing, of course, since this country was about to plunge into a serious drought.

I woke up with a start at 5:00AM this morning to the most terrifying thunder I've heard in a long time. The flashes of lightning, with thunder following almost simultaneously, were amazingly  bright considering our bedroom is  a cave and the only window is in the kitchen and is the size of a computer monitor. The entire day was intermittent sprinkles with ridiculously heavy downpours. So heavy that many plants have fallen over, dirt is splattered all over the wall of the apartment building next door from our pots, and the roads, of course, are flooded.

We welcome the high humidity, (that humorously makes my students think I have a perm because my hair curls all over the place), because let's face it, everything is prettier in the rain:

second floor rooftop at my school

our first sunflower of the season in our driveway!

almost-ripe tomatoes and white lillies in a toilet

wet driveway garden

Besides getting stuck in the 1-10 minutes of monsoon downpours, and being sickeningly sweaty and sticky during class, I love the rain. The sound it makes pattering on my umbrella is one of my favorite things ever, and with my L.L. Bean rain boots, there's no need to get fussy about puddles ^__^

Another plus, we leave in 3 weeks from tomorrow and when we get back it will be over! Yessah!

Bridal Jewelry

While I have absolutely NO idea what I am wearing on my feet as a bride (and honestly I don't care too much), I knew that I did want some nice jewelry for my big day. I don't usually wear a lot of jewelry, which is why I felt like buying a few nice pieces that I can wear for anniversaries and special occasions would be great and remind me of my wedding day.

I ended up going with a wonderful Etsy seller, who hand makes all of her own pieces. I decided on a matching necklace, bracelet and earrings, all made with pearls and royal sapphire Swarovski crystals. The necklace (which was a special order for another bride), caught my eye since it was in a light sapphire color and was exactly what I was looking for. The maker gave me a choice of three shades of blue, I went with a darker, brighter blue, and so she is adding it to the earrings and bracelet as well.

So, wonderful blogging world, here is my bridal jewelry:

the necklace that started it all (mine will have darker blue)

the bracelet (which will have blue crystals)

the cascade earrings (also with blue instead of crystal)

I am beyond excited to be wearing these on my wedding day, and hope to enjoy them for many years to come!

Red Mud Healing

This week is finals week here in most schools in Korea. Late, isn't it? Actually the last day of school isn't until July 21st (!!!) so we actually have two more weeks after this of COMPLETE FLUFF. Seriously, teachers break out the movies and it is just hot, sweaty, monsoony mayhem.

Because midterm and final exams only take place in the mornings, it provides a great opportunity for school teachers to do something together as a type of bonding in the afternoons. As I have mentioned many times, it's all about community and family in this country. Whenever there is an opportunity to strengthen relationships, these peeps will do it.

This time around we went to a recreational forest outside of Daejeon that is famous for its red mud path. You take off your shoes and delight in walking in squishy clay that is supposedly beneficial for your health.

view from the path

can you spot the snowy crane in the rice fields?

two of my English co-teachers enjoying the clay

it's definitely not mud, but clay

three of my English co-teachers and one Korean teacher

What made today interesting was that Matt's school ended up going on a field trip to the SAME place! This never happens, since there are so many mountains surrounding the city. My teachers and I sat on that platform pictured above and he just came strolling up the path with his teachers, too funny! He sat and chatted with my teachers for a while, since they all know him. They had just gotten their wedding invitations from me a few hours earlier, so they were so excited and happy to be talking to us about the big day.

After our nice walk we went to a local restaurant for some du-bu (tofu in English) that had been soaked in soy sauce, duck and pork, and simple side dishes. Can I just say that I love duck?

It makes me a little sad to know that I only have two more testing periods left before my time here at Mannyeon Middle School is done.

It makes me HAPPY though, to know that I have less than 4 weeks left until MAINE! ^___^

Inviting the Koreans

Along with tons of craning (total count thus far: 780), Matt and I spent the weekend making more invitations! Why, might you ask? Well, there were a few friends in Korea that we wanted to give them to, despite knowing that they couldn't make it. Then, after some convincing by our teachers, we figured we would make a bunch more for our schools.

Why did we leave it until now, the first week of July?! Purely for logistics. See, dealing with weddings and invitations in Korea is a little different than in the States. Here is how it's done (some of these steps are specific to being a teacher, or working in an office):

1. Go to a wedding venue, order hundreds and hundreds of invitations from one of the many templates they offer. (We're obviously not doing this, which is why our teachers are going to be pretty surprised when they see our hand made invites)
2. Schedule your wedding to be in the hometown of one of your parents. Now, this might sound inconvenient for not only your guests but also as a bride and groom, but let me remind you that Korea is the size of Maine. Unless you're getting married on Jeju Island, everyone can most likely reach your wedding destination within a few hours.
3. Send out/hand out invitations 2-3 weeks before the wedding (any earlier and people will forget). If you work in a big office or a school, you hand out a few invitations to the heads of each floor, and they post them on a board for all to see. Indirectly everyone is invited, whether you are handed an invite or not.
4. People don't RSVP, people just go.
5. If you work with the bride and groom, you are expected to give money. Only really close friends and family give gifts. If you attend the wedding, you bring the money with you. Someone (usually a cousin or relative), sits at the entrance to the wedding hall, collects the money, counts it, and marks it down in a book. If you can't attend the wedding (which is really bad form), you give your envelope (which has your name and the Chinese characters for "happy flower wedding" on it) to the head of your department. They in turn go to the wedding and give the money in your stead.
6. The majority of weddings are held at a wedding hall. Americans would call these types of weddings "cookie-cutter". You rent out a hall/floor of a wedding hall building, they supply everything (flowers, officiant, music, food, etc) and you basically just show up. A lot of the time there is a private, Korean ceremony with just the family before, and then a western-style wedding afterwards.  Then afterwards everyone eats in a banquet hall, sometimes with guests from other weddings! This is how it's done here. Also-no reception, just food. There is no dancing or music or games or fun. Most weddings usually last around 2 hours.
7. Part of the money you are giving to the bride and groom goes towards your meal at the wedding. Some people are really "cheap" and they basically just pay for their family's meal costs (around 15 dollars a person). Most people, though, give money for the cost of food plus extra for the newlyweds.
8.You go on a honeymoon, usually for a week. Popular destinations include: Jeju Island, the Philippines, Thailand, Japan, Macau, Hong Kong, and Guam.

So that's how it's done! Any questions?! hehe

So one of the reasons why we've had some hold ups with the invites for our schools is because of the protocol. Koreans are VERY serious about saving face. This means that they will go through anything to save someone from being embarrassed , offended or put off. This also goes along with the communality of the society here, you must include everyone. Therefor, my co-teachers and vice principal talked long and hard about my wedding invitations and decided how many I needed to make in order to not offend anyone. Then they talked about the money issue. While I am TOTALLY FINE with not receiving money, it's Korean custom, and so it needs to be done, and done right. This means that each floor in the school will most likely round up money for me, and hand it to me at the necessary time. Who knows, all I know is that other people are handling this, and I just need to hand out the invitations, answer any questions people have (mainly, no, the wedding won't be in Korea, so very sorry!). That's it. My situation is very unique because one, I am foreigner, and two, my wedding isn't in Korea, which never happens here. But they seem to have figured everything out, so we're good to go today: