God, I love South Korea! The people are overall good people and peaceful. Yeah there are ups and downs to every country. The sad part is the education system how they push too much and the koreans know it too. The education system is clearly more stricter. My hagwon is pretty good I think though. At least my class. When I express a concern about some students, my boss has my back and also tells me don't worry. My boss studied in Australia so that helps aLOT. He understands more about me and the culture I came from.

So before and now especially since the breakout of the Swine Flu I've been literally MAKING my kids go wash their hands with soap. It's actually pretty amusing and sweet at the same time. When they come back from the bathroom they put their hands in my face and I smell their hands to make sure they washed their hands with soap. It's really funny! And I'm learning korean more by using flashcards in class and asking my adult students to tell me what "i'm so proud of you, not a big deal, that's not good manners" in korean. As much as I want to speak english most of the time, that's not really reality. My kids have gotten closer to me due to my effort to talk to them both in korean and english. It's funny cuz when I try to tell them something that I have in korean. My kids look at me like huh?? HA! Then I think , did I say it right?  I take out my notecards my kids come over looking at it, cuz it's written in english translation and in Hangul. They look at it and they go.. "Ooooohh!" haha..

So I'm trying to find a video website to so I can link the videos I take of my students on this website.. They don't have a option to upload videos on here! UGH! But I've been sending feedback alot on this website so hopefully they will soon! =) There's a korean song by Super Junior called Sorry Sorry if you look on youtube. Whenever my kids say Sorry about something.. they break into song.. HAHA "sorry sorry sorry, nicka, nicka, nicka! " LA LA. I love it! haha..

Buddha's Birthday was amazing! My friend Kim from Hawaii and I went to a lantern exhibit in Seoul. It was beautiful! There was a beautiful lotus lantern parade on Sunday. WOW! My goodness! It was SOOOOO cool! They had a lantern elephants, dragons, and peacocks (that breathed fire...???) but it was cool! I think the peacocks were supposed to be after the bird Pheonix from Harry Potter.

But that wraps it up.. i'm off to Beijing on Saturday morning. I commend China for they're efforts to prevent the swine flu coming in to China! WOW.. How proactive and responsible! you go chinese!