Buddha's Birthday and Other Happenings

After a not so hot week, today was great from start to finish. (It's not actually over yet, but with a wine and queso/board games party on the agenda for the rest of the night, how could I not assume this night is going to end great? )


I feel like I only share the good on here (except that one time I had to give the North Korea speech), so I'm going to get real for a minute with you guys if that's okay. ....if not, skip this next part. lol As always, I'll be sure to end with the happy and the good. It's extra good this time, too. :)

Let me preface this post as I have already said so many times before. I really do love Korea. It's a great, beautiful country and the people here are wonderful. I don't regret coming here at all, but when 6 months is up, I'll be running to the airport to get on that plane. It's the teaching part (ironically, the part that I'm here for) that gets me sometimes. The Korean school system is so different from the American school system. That's to be expected obviously, but sometimes it's just too much. I won't go into crazy detail, because really there isn't any, but it's very frustrating 3 out of 5 days. Looking at it from the Korean student's perspective though, I can see where they are coming from. If I was a tiny elementary student in America and got stuck in a room with 15 of my friends and one crazy Korean lady (or any other ethnicity that doesn't speak English) for 40 minutes every day and she didn't know anything in my language, I would find it difficult to want to listen and be there too. I get it, but from the other perspective  it's my job to teach these kids and I want to help them but it's close to impossible hard most days. Sometimes I wonder if it's just because I have been in so many American classrooms and I want mine to run that smoothly and for my kids to understand, but it's freaking hard when they understand about 2% of the words I say. I will say that my good days are great and I love it on those days. I've been asked if this experience has ruined me on teaching. My answer is, and always will be, no! I love teaching and I can't imagine doing anything else. BUT, as some people can teach children who don't speak their language, I prefer mine to speak my language. It's so much easier to control them. I know I'll have bad days when I have my own classroom in America too, but I know it will be different than this. And if it isn't whats another 10 years in college. lol jk..

On top of all that, my best friend moved to Arizona this past week. My little sister finished her freshman year of high school and my little brother finished his freshman year of college. (which isn't sad, but still..it happened and I wasn't there.) If you do the math, they're both on pace to graduate college before me. hahaha jk...I hope. Tornadoes ripped through Moore, a mile away from my boyfriend and his roommate's house. Luckily the house was untouched and they were at work when it all happened, but that's way too close for comfort. It also destroyed many of the places we like to go when I'm visiting them in Moore, as well as schools, homes, and the lives of innocent people. It breaks my heart to be 6000 miles away when all this is going on. I wish more than anything that I could be there to help with the clean up. My aunt also had her roof blown off her house, so prayers there as well. Your prayer list, if it's anything like mine, is probably so long you don't have time to sleep, but keep praying.

With all that out of the way, I think it's time to move on to something a little more light.

I can't remember if I said this last time or not, and I'm too lazy to go back and check but...my mom bought her plane ticket to come visit me!!!! I can't wait to show her all the amazing things I've discovered!!!

Last weekend was Buddha's birthday. Even though I'm not Buddhist, I love an excuse for a long weekend. My group of Oklahoma girls headed off to Busan on Thursday night. Busan is kind of like the Florida of Korea. Beaches, restaurants, bars, shopping. All the great things we needed on this long holiday weekend. On top of all that, a lot of foreigners,  especially from our program, were going to Busan as well. Reunions with these people are always fun! It was nice getting to see a lot of familier faces. We stayed at an amazing hostel and felt like royalty all weekend, got sunburns at the beach, stayed out entirely too late making new friends and having Korean soup for breakfast, shopping, visiting the aquarium* with possibly every other Korean in Korea and eating all that good Western food we'd been missing. It was a nice, relaxing weekend and I'm so glad we got to go. I didn't get many pictures for some reason, but here are a few I did get. I also got the sunburn of a lifetime.


*If anyone is reading this and planning on visiting Busan, personally, I think the Busan Aquarium is something worth skipping. I am no aquarium professional, but it's up there on my list of things I love right next to Butterfingers. I've been to a few in my day and this one claims to be much cooler than it is. It wasn't bad by any means, but for the amount of people and the price, Coex Aquarium blows this one out of the water. No pun intended. Maybe during a weekday it'd be better.

Haeundae Beach

Freezing water and a cute Korean girl laughing at us for being dumb enough to get in...to our ankles. 

Korean sun: 1   Kyla: 0     well played, Korea. 

So back to this week one more time. I have a fever blister bigger than Texas and so I was really nervous to go to school. It's bad enough to have everyone asking what happened, but it's a whole new level when I try to explain it to people who don't know the words fever blister. lol What did I do about that, you ask? Well, I told my 2, 3, and 4th graders I got bit by a lion. hahaha they believed me I'm pretty sure, and it was hilarious. They all said, "OH, TEACHER! A LION!!!!" So mean hilarious! Anyway, on Tuesday I called in sick because the fever blister had me feeling very under the weather, so my classes were cancelled. Today, one of my sweet second grade girls came to class even more excited than normal and hands me this....

Deer Teacher

I said, "Oh, for me?!" and she said, "Yes!! Open!!!" She was so excited, and I will admit that I was too.  So I opened the little home made envelope and pulled out this little gem....

Just wait, it gets sweeter. So then I open it and read it, trying to hold back tears. What a sweet little girl. Moments like this make all the other bad days okay. This also happens to be the smartest little girl I've ever met. Her English is better than most Korean college kids who have had English since 3rd grade. She's amazing and tells me her and her mother practice English at home all the time. Clearly that's a true statement. I guarantee this little girl wrote this letter without any help. I was so impressed. Read on...

It reads:

Deer teacher

Yesterday, do you have a sick? teacher, I want you'r health. Well, Good By

I love you

That's also a picture of me, clearly, and the speech bubble says, Hello? I'm Kella. lol Good try, kid.

Isn't that the sweetest thing you've ever read!? Koreans have a huge emphasis on health and are very concerned about exercising and staying healthy, so in the second sentence she meant she wants me to be healthy. lol

And here she is now...Sarah! She's the little angel behind this sweet letter. Isn't she so cute?

Then there's this...

What is that, you ask? Well..remember the sweet old ladies who are outside sometimes when I walk to school? And remember how I gave them a little snack a couple of weeks ago? Well they were outside again today. I walk up to them and bow, saying hello. They say hello and then a few things in Korean. I don't understand what they're saying..still, until one of them pulls that candy out of her pocket for me! I take it with two hands, which is how you're supposed to in Korea to show respect and I bow and say thank you a couple of times in Korean. They laugh at my Korean attempts again, but you can tell they appreciate it. Sweetest little ladies. They really give me a good start my day when they're out there.

Okay, that's all for now! Thanks for reading. Love you all and praying for America, Oklahoma, Moore, and everything else.

-Kyla