Wrappin it up like a Present!

Only THREE MORE DAYS of school left then I'm packing and heading HOOOOOOOME for the holidays! I am so excited to see my family and friends, and I can't believe I'm finishing up a whole semester of teaching. I've learned so much about what not to do that the spring can only be better, and I've been lucky enough to have hundreds of extremely intelligent, sweet and generally cool students who have been very patient with me.

I've already said 'goodbye' to most of my classes, and I was extremely sad to let my 2nd graders go since I won't be teaching them in 3rd grade next year (Korea is on a Spring-Fall school year). Tying up the loose ends of teaching really allows me to sit back and reflect on all the work I've done, and on how great these kids I work with really are, and I didn't do either of those things very often in the thick of it all.

Here are some of my students from 1-9, also known as Recycle Generation, with me 'n Big Red:

Outside school, recent highlights have been a weekend trip to Gyeongju to proctor an English test and some lovely banagrams time with friends, going to see HP7 with my awesome Cheonan buddy Phebe (but not in 3D, so I'll have to go again...) and volunteering with the lovely Jillian Moga at the Asan animal shelter:

Tonight I made Ryan-family-style Christmas sugar cookies with my host sisters, and my host dad dug out their old Christmas tree that they haven't put up since the girls were young! The cookies were difficult, because my host family is one of the rare Korean families with an oven, so the bakery sections in grocery stores are extremely limited. My efforts at two different stores to get food coloring resulted in one saleswoman trying to sell me hair dye, and another explaining to me in a very condescending tone and a smile to match, "You see, Korea and - where are you from? America. Yes, Korea and America are very different places. So you might have this... food color... in America, but we do not have it here. You see?" So we had to improvise a bit with the decorating; I got sprinkles and cranberries for color, and we put chocolate chips on some cookies. Here are some pictures of tonight and my host dad's birthday a few weeks ago:

  

So, three more days of normal routine, then I'll be pulling an all-nighter to pack and implement my fool-proof anti-jetlag plan, heading to Seoul to finish up Christmas shopping, and hopping on a quick 14-hour flight home! I'll be home for Christmas, and not just in my dreams! Heheheheh... Thought I should end with a bad joke since I started with one... 

MERRY CHRISTMAS ALL! Thanks for reading!