Finisheee

I did it! I finished my year of teaching in Korea!!!

This year had its ups and downs. Its good times, its bad. Its kids I wanted to strangle, its kids I adored. Its never ending Kimchi-eating jokes. And of course, let's not forget its almost-run ins with the labor board. Yes, this year was certainly an experience, and a memorable one at that. 

Of course my favorite part about my job was my kids. I was initially skeptical about teaching upper elementary and middle school students, considering I'd never taught before, especially this particular age group I hadn't had any real encounters with in years. But turns out they were amazing :)

Gah I adore them all! I'm going to miss them all so much!

Cheers!

 - Christine - 

Trick Eye

Turns out monsoon season blows. Really, really blows. For those of you who have never experienced a real monsoon season, monsoon season is a period of about 4 weeks in Korea where you have torrential downpours. Every single day. It's been pretty depressing, dreary, and detrimental to my shoe collection. Very sad.

Luckily, however, Saturday marked the last day of the 2011 monsoon season. Horray! As an aside, I think my favorite coffee shop lady has a 6th sense about monsoon season. In between making me lattes and giving me free cookies, she would nonchalantly mention that, oh yeah, Saturday would be the last day of rain. And it was. Weird. Sun is a genius ^^

To celebrate the last day of monsoon season, my friend Becki and I decided to visit the Trick Eye Museum in Hondae. We got the idea from this one, and it was completely worth a trip into Seoul. Spending a rainy afternoon taking silly pictures, mmm yes please!

Super fun! Seriously people in Korea, do it!

Cheers!
 - Christine

Namhansanseong

After spending my entire Saturday stressing out about the 18 million little things I have to do in the next 14 days (!?!?!), I decided to get out Sunday and take some more pictures per usual. This time, I went out to Namhansanseong, a mountain on the far, far southeast side of Seoul. It was much less stressful than most of my prior hiking experiences have been, which was awesome. Unfortunately, my shoe choice was less than ideal (also pretty per usual...), and I had blisters before I was even out of the subway. Damn you Korea for not selling half sizes!

 Ergo, this marked my first time hiking in $3 flip flops... in the rain. Actually a surprisingly successful venture.

Very, very pretty! Monsoon season has made for a horrible hair month, but some pretty swell waterfalls :)

Cheers!
 - Christine -

War Memorial

Today we're going to try a little something called Wordless Wednesdays, a (maybe?) weekly occurrence in which I  give you a slew of pictures, and you "ooh" and "aah" and forget to notice that I was too lazy to write any words to go with them. Deal?

War Memorial of Korea. 

Cheers!
 - Christine