China, Day 3 & 4: The Summer Palace

The Tower of Buddhist Incense, Longevity Hill and Kunming Lake
I went to the Summer Palace twice. The first time, I went with Sarah on Wednesday, the day we got back from Xi'an. It was cloudy and overcast all morning, started to drizzle on the ride and then began to pour as our taxi arrived at the gates to the Summer Palace. We bought tickets anyways, hoping the storm would blow over, but were forced to abandon that idea once it started lightening. Sarah and I tried to wait out the worst of the storm under a covered walkway, but after half an hour, we decided to just go get lunch.

The first taxi we saw was black, not the normal color for a Beijing taxi, but the driver assured us he had a meter, the puddle we were standing in was lapping at our ankles and there were no other taxis in sight. It wasn't the time to be picky. We got in, made sure our drive flipped on the meter and then, maybe ten minutes into the drive, I noticed that the meter was already at 100¥, more than double what the much longer taxi ride from our hostel had cost. We demanded the driver pull over. He refused and said this was the normal price. We pointed out that we had taken a taxi TO the Summer Palace, so we knew how much it actually cost and also, PULL OVER. He ended up turning off the meter and driving us to the nearest subway stop, which was decent of him, considering it was still pouring rain.

We ate lunch at a Middle Eastern restaurant and ordered an obscene amount of food, including four different dishes of hummus. Mmm, hummus. Then I bought Korean World Cup stickers at an Art Box. In China.

I drug Mom and Leah back to the Summer Palace the next afternoon, once Sarah had left for the airport. Our first stop, after we walked past some halls of various beatitudes, was a name calligraphy booth. Artists would write western names using different Asian-esque pictures to represent each letter. (There's a video [not mine] of the Summer Palace calligraphy here.) Leah had her name written and I lamented that none of the letters in my name are depicted with a dragon.

Our next stop was Kunming Lake. Kunming Lake covers two thirds of the park and is surrounded by bridges, pagodas, pavilions, temples and gardens. It's absolutely gorgeous. When I was at the lake the day before, I could barely see through the rain, but on Thursday the storm had temporarily driven away the smog and haze, and there were brilliant blue skies. We rented a paddle boat and went out on the lake. Mom, who had a broken foot, sat in the front of the boat while Leah and I did the heavy lifting in the back. The lake was full of boats and the paddle boats don't exactly have a sophisticated steering systems, so we kept running into other boats. Luckily, paddle boats also don't go very fast and most of the collisions were avoided by Mom leaning forwards and pushing the other boats away.

The Tower of Buddhist Incense, perched on Longevity Hill overlooking Kunming Lake, is the highest point in the Summer Palace. We climbed to the top of the tower to get a view of the lake and the park. The Summer Palace is big enough that by the lake, the trees and hills hide the sprawl of Beijing surrounding the park, but from the top of the tower we could see the city spread out in front of us. It was definitely worth going back a second time.


Lotus blossoms at Kunming Lake


The Tower of Buddhist Incense


Decorated eaves on the Tower of Buddhist Incense
The rest of the pictures are here.

China, Day 4: The Mao-soleum

(Subject line courtesy of Sarah and The Rough Guide to China)

When I was in high school, I saw Discovery Channel special about mummies. It mostly overlooked Egyptian mummies and focused on European bog bodies and the Chinchorro mummies of Peru, but there was also a section on the mummification of modern politburos such as Lenin, Ho Chi Minh and Mao. Lenin is so well preserved that even eighty years after his death, his body is still squishy! (I am many things, but squeamish isn't one of them.) Look, mummies are just generally awesome, but I'm especially fascinated by the modern ones.

Mao's mummy is laid to rest in Beijing, and there was no way I was visiting China without paying my respect to the Chairman. Sarah and I went on Thursday morning before she left for the airport. The mausoleum is large building in the middle of the of Tiananmen Square, a mere ten minute taxi ride from our hostel. We stored our bags at the luggage check and joined the line to enter the mausoleum. Even though we were at Tiananmen Square by 9:00 in the morning, there was already a long line snaking around the mausoleum. We waited for at least an hour, but the line was constantly moving and before long we were past the metal detectors (our second metal detectors, since we had to go through a metal detector just to get into Tiananmen Square) and the florist booth selling flowers in memory to the Great Leader.

Mao is housed in a crystal coffin. His mummy is a rather distinctive orange hue and he clashes with the red Chinese flag covering him. We can't even be sure we saw the real Mao; there is a wax model of the body which is sometimes displayed in place of the real chairman. We shuffled past in less than a minute and emerged into the bright sunlight of Tiananmen Square.


The Mao-soleum

China, Day 2: Xi'an and the Terracotta Army

The travelogue continues! The trip to Xi'an is one of the more crazypants things I've ever decided to do. When Mom and I booked our tickets to China, we planned to spend five days in Beijing and five days in Shanghai. I asked Leah what she most wanted to see in China and she immediately said the Terracotta Army. I have also wanted to see the Terracotta Army for approximately forever, but it's 750 miles from Beijing. Not exactly a day trip. Or is it?

Enter Sarah. Sarah decides she is going to China and we have the following conversation in a ten minute break between classes:

11:34 AM
Sarah: how close are the terra cotta soldiers?
me: um, fairly far away
unfortunately

11:56 AM
Sarah: um
so I totally want to see the terra Cotta army
apparently it's only and overnight train ride away
I'm totally up for that

And like that, I decided that maybe going to see the Terracotta Army was something I should seriously consider. Clearly, I'm easily suggestible if I already want to do something. (I was already planning to go back to China over Chuseok just to see the Terracotta Army, but I would rather go with someone. China can be intimidating by yourself and if I go by myself, I have no one to make excited seal noises to.) I shot off a quick email to my mom, letting her know I was going to Xi'an for a day (on a family vacation, no less) and inviting her and Leah to come along. They thought it would be fun. And like that, we were going to Xi'an.

The plan was to take an overnight train to Xi'an, spend the day at Mausoleum of the First Qin Emperor (home to the Terracotta Army) and then take an overnight train back to Beijing that night, essentially treating this like a 1,500 miles (2414 km) daytrip. (It also meant two and half days without showers, and China is hot in August.) Ca-ray-zee.

Guys, it was so, so worth it.

We left Beijing on Monday evening from the Beijing West Railway Station, the largest train station in the world. Sleeper trains to Xi'an were four berths to a compartment. We booked our tickets through our hostel, and the travel agent was only able to buy top bunks, meaning we were separated into two compartments. Luckily, there was an Austrian group in the same situation, and we were able to switch berths and end up in one compartment. The sleeping cars were nice, if small. Bedding was provided and there were two bathrooms (which quickly ran out of toilet paper) at the end of the car. I was lulled to sleep by the rocking of the train in the suburbs of Beijing and woke up to sunrise in Shaanxi province.

The Terracotta Army was amazing! The army was built from 246 BC to 210 BC by Qin Shi Huang, who unified warring city-states in the Yellow River basin and became the first Emperor of China, to help him rule another empire in the afterlife. It was buried when he died in 210 BC and rediscovered in 1974 by farmers digging a well during a drought. The sheer scale of the necropolis is staggering. There are an estimated 8,000 soldiers guarding the tomb, and in addition to the soldiers, there are horses, water birds, musicians and acrobats awaiting the Emperor in the afterlife. Only three pits of soldiers open to the public, but dozens of other pits have been excavated and there's a really excellent museum full of the finds. There's no AC in Pit 1, which is really just a glorified air craft hanger, and it was sweltering hot, but we still spent hours walking around the army until our clothes were plastered to our bodies. Well, Sarah and I did. Mom and Leah abandoned us to play cards in a gift shop.

We stayed at the Mausoleum until closing time, then caught a bus back to Xi'an. We made the mistake of getting on a local mini-bus instead of the tourist bus that goes directly to the train station. They cost the same, but the mini-bus has a much longer route and there was a tense twenty or so minutes as we stared out the window and tried to figure out why we kept seeing fields and not a train station. We just barely made it back to Xi'an in time to catch our train back to Beijing.

The trip to Beijing wasn't quite as pleasant as the trip to Xi'an. We weren't able to switch bunks for the ride back, so we were in different compartments. Also, Mom and Leah found out the hard way that you *must* show your train ticket before exiting the arrivals terminal in Beijing. Sarah and I had our tickets, but Mom and Leah left theirs on the train. Mom blustered her way past the guard, but Leah, who was prone to getting stuck places on this trip, lacked Mom's gall and was detained, so Mom went back to wait with her. Sarah and I tried to pass Mom and Leah our tickets, but we were caught and the guard started ripping everyone's tickets so they could only be used once. Someone eventually gave Leah an extra ticket and she made it out, but Mom was still stuck. Eventually a guard took Mom back to the train to search for her ticket, but due to the language barrier (we spoke no Chinese, they spoke no English), all I knew was that Mom had been taken away after pissing off the guards in the Chinese train station. I spent the thirty minutes Mom was gone freaking out about how we hadn't even be in China for 48 hours and ALREADY someone had managed to get arrested or detained or whatever, what am I going to DO and, oh God, Mom has Leah's passport, I can't even take her back to Korea with me. Luckily Mom reappeared waving her ticket before I started contemplating calling the Embassy.

We escaped the the train station, caught a taxi to our hostel, and I took the best shower of my life. It was an awesome trip!






There are many, many more photos and more information that you could possible want about the Terracotta Army at my Flickr page.

China, Day 1: The Olympic Park

We left Seoul and flew into Beijing on August 2nd. We were meeting up with my friend Sarah and leaving Beijing that night, so the first few hours in China were a bit crazy. We needed to go the train station to store our luggage, we needed to have our tickets to store our luggage, we needed to find Sarah who had our tickets, we were at the wrong train station, etc. etc. Around and around we went, and it was 2:00 by the time our luggage was safely stowed and we made it to the restaurant for lunch. In addition to Sarah, two other friends from high school were also visiting Beijing at the same time (it's a small world after all), and we all met for lunch at a pizza place near Wendy and John's hotel. It was great to see them again, and so strange that we should all happen to be in Beijing of all places.

After lunch, Wendy and John left to see the Temple of Heaven and Mom, Leah, Sarah and I went to the Olympic Stadium. My brother is a huge fan of the Olympics, and Mom wanted to visit so she could tell him about it. Leah and I wanted to visit because we knew it would kill him just a little to know that we had been and he hadn't. (We're sisters, not saints.) Sarah came, I think, because the Water Cube has air conditioning.

I moved in the middle of the 2008 Olympics and missed pretty much the whole thing, but even I know what the Bird's Nest looks like. It was cool to see in person, all post-modern and grandiose. We spend twenty or so minutes walking around the stadium, dodging groups of Chinese tourists. I was surprised that almost two years to the day of the Opening Ceremonies, there were still hundred of tourists at the Bird's Nest. Of course, I would quickly learn that this is China and there would be hundred, if not thousands, of Chinese people milling about everywhere I went. Wikipedia tells that the Chinese government plans to turn the Bird's Nest into a shopping mall and hotel, but for now it's just a tourist destination.


Next to the Bird's Nest is the Water Cube. Part of the complex has been turned into a water park (which officially opened a few days after we visited) and much of the upper levels has been devoted to gift shops selling official Water Cube merchandise, but we eventually found the pool where Michael Phelps won all the gold medals ever. The pool was delightfully air conditioned, there was a video showing the highlights of the 2008 Olympics and we had an hour to kill before we left for the train station, so we camped out by the pool for the rest of the afternoon. Not a bad start to the trip!

The DMZ

When I mentioned to people back home that I now live in Korea, the most common response is something along the lines of "OMG, North Korea!!!!1" This is because North Korea is the only thing most Americans know about the Korean Peninsula. (In fact, many Americans seem a bit unsure as to how many Koreas there are. Here's a hint. There are two of them.) I live less than 50 miles from the most heavily militarized border in the world, but the truth is that the possible threat of Communist invasion isn't something I spend time worrying about. There are the occasional air raid sirens, soldiers on the subway and the annual war games, and every so often North Korea threatens to end 1953 ceasefire (technically North and South Korea are still at war) or sinks a South Korean Pohang-class corvette killing 46 seamen and I get a flurry of emails asking me when I'm coming home, but if you're going to live in South Korea, you learn to adopt a blasé attitude towards North Korea or you'll go insane.


Guards in the Mac Conference Room at the JSA
The point of all this is that I do live very close to the border, and while Mom and Leah were here, we took a trip north to the DMZ. (I had been to the DMZ once before when Sarah visited last summer, but we happened to visit the same Bill Clinton went to North Korea to free the two captured journalists, and halfway through the tour, we were packed into a bus and evacuated due to security concerns.) Our tour started at Camp Bonifas, the United Nations Command military post located a couple hundred meters south of the DMZ. We signed disclaimers telling us that the visit to the Joint Security Area at Panmunjom will entail entry into a hostile area and the possibility of injury or death as a direct result of enemy action, boarded a bus, drove past the most dangerous hole in golf and entered the DMZ. Most people assume that the DMZ is completely isolated, which isn't actually true. The Joint Security Area (JSA) lies within the DMZ, as well as the South Korean town of Daeseong-dong and the North Korean town of Kijong-dong.


Looking across Conference Row towards North Korea
The first part of the tour visited the JSA. The JSA, with its iconic blue buildings and soldiers staring each other down with clenched fists, is the only official crossing point along the DMZ and the only part of the Korean Peninsula where representatives from the two Koreas meet. We were allowed into the MAC Conference Building, used for talks between North Korea, South Korea and the United Nations Command. The Military Demarcation Line (MDL) runs through the center of the conference building. We were allowed to walk freely through the conference building, meaning I crossed the border into North Korea, if only on a technicality. (The MDL is the actual border between North and South Korea; the DMZ is the 2 km buffer on either side of the MDL.) The next stop was Observation Post #5 for a view of Kijong-dong, the North Korean town located within the DMZ. Kijong-dong is a Potemkin village; it was built by the North Korean in the 1950s for propaganda purposes and the site was never occupied. It is, however, home to the largest flagpole in the world. In the 1970s, the South Korean village of Daeseong-dong, also located within the DMZ, built a new 100m flagpole that was taller than the flagpole in Kijong-dong. The North Koreans responded by erecting a 160 m tall flagpole flying a 600 lb flag at Kijong-dong. The Cold War: two countries getting into a pissing contest over the size of their giant phallic objects.


Flagpole at Kijong-dong. Also seen, pollution!
We continued on to the site of the Axe Murder Incident and the Bridge of No Return. On August 18, 1976, North Korean troops attacked a United Nations Command security team guarding a tree trimming detail and axed two American soldiers to death. The UN Command responded with Operation Paul Bunyan, the most expensive tree trimming operation in military history. Arriving in a convoy of twenty three vehicles guarded by two 30-man security platoons from the Joint Security Force and a 64-man ROK special forces company and supported by Cobra attack helicopters, B-52 bombers, F-4 fighters jets, F-5 fighter jets, F-111 fighter jets and the US aircraft carrier Midway, sixteen military engineers chopped the offending poplar tree down with EXTREME PREJUDICE. They trimmed the hell out of that tree. Nearby is the ominous sounding Bridge of No Return, built in 1953 to exchange prisoners at the end of the Korean War.


The Cold War blessed the world with both nuclear proliferation and some very dramatic names. Here's the Bridge of No Return.
From there we left the JSA (with a brief stop at the Camp Bonifas gift shop; this might be one of the last outposts of the Cold War, but it's still Korea and I'm just surprised there's not a theme park nearby) and drove to the Third Tunnel of Aggression. The Third Tunnel is the third of four tunnels under the DMZ discovered by South Korea since 1974. The North Koreans have treated the DMZ a little like the obstacles in the children's book We're Going On a Bear Hunt. Uh-uh! A demilitarized zone! A heavily fortified demilitarized zone. We can't go through it. We can't go over it. Oh no! We've got to go under it! Discovered in 1978, the Third Tunnel runs from North Korea into South Korea, is only twenty-seven miles from Seoul and can accommodate 30,000 men per hour along with light weaponry. Now it is a tourist attraction and visitors can don hard hats, descend into the tunnel and walk the two km from the edge of the DMZ to the MDL. The tunnel is low and small and I pity the soldier who has to carry his gear on his back through that tunnel.

The last two stops were the Dora Observatory where, on a clear day (what, we sometimes have clear days in Korea) you can see the North Korean city of Kaesong, and Dorasan Station, the northernmost station on the South Korean side of the Gyeongui Line. One of the oldest railway lines in Korea, the Gyeongui Line originally ran the length of the Korean Peninsula, but has been closed since 1945. It opened briefly from 2007-2008, with freight trains carrying materials to the Kaesong Industrial Region, but closed again after only a year of operation. Dorasan Station, whose motto is "Not the last station from the south, but the first station towards the North," isn't currently serving any trains, but there are signs listing both Seoul and Pyeongyang as destinations.

The trip to the DMZ is a stark reminder of the tension between North and South Korea. The road north from Seoul is lined with barbed wire, guard posts and trenches and during the tour, we were told about the long lists of incidents along the DMZ. Over 500 South Koreans and 50 American soldiers have been killed in skirmishes along the border since the armistice was signed in 1953. It was also a stark reminder of things I don't like to think about. The Seoul area, with a population of twenty-five million people, is just a stone's throw from the North Korean border. Kim Jong-il doesn't need the long-range missiles his country is developing to attack Seoul: short-range missiles from along the DMZ could easily hit the capital, and the sinking of the Cheonan is a clear sign that the dangers aren't all in the past. Something has to give on this peninsula. It's not something I worry about, or even really think about, but every time I hear the air raid sirens or get an email from home, asking what is happening with North Korea, I'm reminded, just for a second, that I live in a country with an emergency evacuation plan.


Just remember: the Norks are always watching.

A Door Story or, Let's Start This Trip Out Right

Alright, finally, travelogue time! Mom and Leah arrived on Thursday afternoon. Since my apartment is tiny and Mom's best friend from when we lived in Dallas happens to live in the same suburb of Seoul as me (small world, right?), while we were in Korea, Mom stayed with Shaunna and Leah stayed with me. The first night, we ate dinner in Shaunna's neighborhood, then Leah and I headed back to my apartment for the night. I let her have the first shower, because I'm a gracious host like that, and also I had a suitcase of goodies to paw through.

Now, because of the sink-shower contraption, my bathroom door repeatedly gets wet and over time has warped so it no longer fits properly in the door frame. You can mostly shut the door, but it doesn't latch. I normally just leave the door cracked and don't worry about it, but Leah pulled it all the way shut, and then, after her shower, couldn't get the door open. We yanked and shoved and attempted to remove the door hinges to no avail. After a good fifteen minutes of trying, we figured out the problem was that the deadlatch (the medal rod that actually keeps the door shut) had separated from rest of the doorknob. Shoving and pushing wasn't going to work; short of dismantling the doorknob, Leah wasn't getting out of my bathroom.

Leah: Moooooooooommy!
Cait: I've had you in my care for an hour and already I've gotten you locked in a bathroom. HOW IS THIS MY LIFE?! I AM NOT ACTUALLY A TERRIBLE BIG SISTER, I SWEAR!

I ran downstairs to get the security guard/adjoshi-who-is-always-hanging-out-with-the-building-manager-and-does-maintenance. While my Korean has improved a lot in the past months, at no point in my studies have I learned the phrase "Help, my younger sister is trapped naked in my bathroom. Can you get her out?" (An additional complication of the sink-shower is that you can't bring clothes or a towel into the bathroom with you lest they get soaked.) I did, however, manage to say "Help me, sister in bathroom door no" and beckoned for the guard to follow me upstairs. He fiddled around unsuccessfully with the doorknob for a bit while I hovered behind him, poised to throw Leah a towel should he manage to open the door. After ten or so minutes, he left in search of someone with a bigger toolbox, telling me he would be back shortly.

While we waited, I sat outside the bathroom, chatting with Leah (who was punch-drunk with adrenaline and exhaustion) and worrying about how many old Korean dudes were going to see my underage sister naked, when I noticed the slit at the bottom of the door. Mayhaps, I though, it would be big enough to slip a towel through, or at least some underwear. Turns out, it WAS big enough and by the time the second maintenance man was fetched, Leah was fully dressed and had even fixed her hair. Aided by several large and impressive looking tools, the maintenance guys were able to rip apart my door knob and after nearly an hour of her being stuck in the bathroom, I got my sister back. THANK GOD!


An annotated after shot of my bathroom door.

영어 캠프 - Week Two

(I promise this is the last post about English camp until I start to plan for the winter camps in December.)


6th graders posing on the last day of camp.
During week two, the 3rd & 4th graders studied body parts and animals. Both units were covered in the regular lessons, but review is always good, and I used the opportunity to teach extra vocabulary and grammar. During the body parts unit, I put the students into pairs and had one student trace their partner's body on a sheet of butcher paper. Once they were done, they drew in additional features (such as the face) and labeled the body parts. Their favorite part about the activity was how they didn't have to sit at their desks. My favorite part was how few students actually sat on the ground when tracing their friends; half of them chose to Asian squat and do a funny squatting waddle as they made their way around their partner's body.


During the animal unit we read Brown Bear Brown Bear, What Do You See?. Well, I read Brown Bear Brown Bear, What Do You See? and the students listened to me and looked at the pictures. The first time, they just listened to the story. The second time, they made their own copy of the book. I gave the kids pictures of the different animals (bear, bird, duck, cat, etc.) and as we read the story, they colored the pictures the appropriate colors and wrote descriptions of the animals (brown bear, red bird, yellow duck, purple cat, etc.) Or at least they tried too. One boy had some trouble.


Whoops.
On Wednesday afternoon, 안 수빈 and 신 다해, two 4th graders who aren't in English camp, saw me in the hallway and followed me back to my classroom to play. We colored the animal flashcards from camp and they entertained themselves for a while by writing things like cat and ice cream and I love you Teacher on the whiteboard. Then they gave themselves eye tests. 다해 wrote an eye chart on the board and 수빈 sat on a desk a couple of rows back, covered one eye with a fuzzy plush ball and called out the letters. Apparently this was fun, although they did get into an argument when 다해 told 수빈 her eyesight wasn't very good. The eye chart reminded me of the eye test I had during a medical exam my first year in Korea. I had only been in the country for a few days, the only Korean I knew was hello, kimchi and I love you very much, and all the eye charts at the hospital were entirely in Korean letters. Eventually, the nurse found an eye chart used for very young children that had pictures instead of letters, and I had to identify the pictures in English while my co-teacher translated my answers into Korean.


They also wrote out the Korean alphabet and, with some help, transliterated it into the Latin alphabet.
My mom and sister arrived in Korea on Thursday and I brought them to school with me on Friday. They made quite an impression on my students. Fourth Grade, Chapter 7 is titled Who Is She? and it was a gratifying moment when every single one of my 4th graders looked at my family and asked, "Teacher, who are they?" Yes, retention! My students were also the only people we met during Mom and Leah's trip who accepted that my sister, who was adopted from Korea as an infant, was American without question. I guess I'm so firmly linked with America in their minds that despite looking like a Korea person, my sister must be American. While they didn't question her nationality, they did seem a bit fuzzy on her age. My 5th & 6th grade class objected to me calling Leah my 여동생 (Korean for younger sister, as opposed to 언니, older sister), so I asked them how old they thought Leah was. "Is she 30?" one girl asked. For the record, my sister is fifteen. I'm twenty-five. While I'm routinely mistaken as my 21-year-old brother's younger sister, this is the first time someone has ever asked if I'm younger than Leah.


Leah is on the left. Does that child look 30?!?
At the beginning of camp, I divided the 3rd and 4th grade classes into three teams and told the students that group with the most points at the end of camp would get a special prize from America. Teams could get points for winning a game, volunteering to speak in class or having the first person to finish an activity. On the last day of camp, I brought in Silly Bandz my mother had brought me from the US and gave them to the winning teams. Despite the fact that I guarantee you that none of my students have ever seen a Silly Bandz in their life, they loved them. I gave the older students Reese's Peanut Butter Cups (also from America) and my kids, who have only ever had Korean candy, were throughly impressed. "Teacher," they told me, "VERY GOOD CANDY!" I know kids, I know.

All the photos from English Camp are here. I'm so glad it's over!

Home!

I'm back from China! I flew into Seoul on Wednesday night with over a thousand photos, quite a lot of new jewelry and an impressive array of bruises.*  I knew I was home when I saw two giant advertisements featuring Kim Yu-na before I even made it out of the airport. I went back to the airport yesterday morning to drop my family off and managed to get stuck on the Incheon Bridge for over an hour when my bus broke on the way home. Because of course it did. I've spent the past two days holed up in my apartment, trying to go through vacation photos (the terracotta soldier photos just won't end) and discovering that post vacation/house guest laundry is easier to accomplish when you have a dryer.

My plan is write a travelogue about the trip and upload my pictures to Flickr, but I have never successfully finished a travelogue for any vacation longer than four days, so we'll see. (I always start one, but I usually get bored and quit after day four or five.) I do have a solid week of desk-warming to work on it though, so hopefully I'll at least get to the part where my little sister got locked in my bathroom for an hour or my mother was briefly detained in a Beijing train station. FUN TIMES!

*I might have fallen down a flight of stairs.**
**And by "might have fallen down a flight of stairs," I mean I totally fell down a flight of stairs. Face first. Sometimes I'm not so good at walking.

[July, July, July // it never seemed so strange]

The spring semester ends on July 16th, which means I have two weeks of class left. Even less actually, since the end of the semester if rife with tests (yay, only one day of actual teaching next week!) and fact that the last period of the day has been canceled due to unknown reasons for the rest of the semester. It would have been nice to know in advance - I could have rushed the axed classes through the last lesson, or at least said goodbye to students I won't see again until September - but that sort of forewarning is asking an awful lot of a Korean school.

I could not be more ready for semester to be over. The kids are restless and ready for vacation to start. They're also far more preoccupied with their upcoming national exams than they are with Lesson 8: What Will You Do This Summer. (My favorite answers so far come from 6-5 class. One rather rotund little boy plans to eat 100 ice cream bars. Another simple wants some meat.) (That being said, I was super proud of my 5th graders today. They're normally highly unmotivated and well, not very bright, but I was trying to explain why "Let's go baseball" and "Let's play swimming" are incorrect. We ended up doing some brainstorming on the board and a decent number of students realized without being told that "Let's play..." was used when talking about games or musical instruments whereas "Let's go..." was used with locations or the present participle and I actually got examples that hadn't been used in class and just, that's a big deal. It was one of those moments where I could see the students understand the lesson and actually learning, and those moments are few and far between, especially with the 5th graders.)

I also had my last after school class last Thursday, which is probably for the best, since I had completely given up caring. I made the world's weakest attempt to teach comparisons, said "Oh, fuck this," half way through and gave the students a word search. And then we watched part of School of Rock. Between being sick and the classes being a joke in the first place, I just could not bring myself to care last week.


Not going to miss the classes. Am going to miss play time with 3rd graders.
Once the semester ends, I have two weeks of English camp. Last year I was ~super~ stressed out about the camps. This year, I'm far more confident in my ability to BS a lesson plan in the half an hour before class starts and subsequently way calmer. I will also have one of my regular co-teachers teaching with me, which means I'm not responsible for ever single facet of the camps myself. In fact, I'm so calm, I've yet to even begin planning. My co-teacher and I are going to the bookstore to buy textbooks for the camps tomorrow and I'll spend my days off next week writing up the lesson plans, but in general, I'm not worried.

Then, once the camps are over at the end of the month, my mama and little sister are coming to see me! We're going to spend a few days in Korea, and then hop over to China for ten days - five days in Beijing and five days in Shanghai! I am all sorts of excited about seeing (half) my family for the first time since February and getting to show them around Korea, and also going to China. And, of course, visitors from home means they can bring me things from home! Tell me, does anyone have any thoughts on the best way to transport hummus on an airplane?