Hey everyone. Change of pace this week as I (Trevor) am going to write the blog. I guess its been longer than a week. We've been busy, and I keep forgetting to write. So here we go.
November has been a somewhat busy month, and its been a nice change. First week nothing special happened. We were going to go to an amusement park with the youth of our church but decided to chicken out since it was raining so hard. They still went and said it was okay, but not as fun as it could have been. We were glad we didn't go. The second week was about the same, lots of rain and getting colder. I got some good news that I got an interview with a graduate school in Winnipeg. It went well we think and are hoping to hear back from them soon. Also at the end of the third week in November the relief society president asked Kelsey to make a dance for the sisters in the ward to perform at the ward Christmas party.
That brings us to Thanksgiving week. I had graciously invited the missionaries to Thanksgiving dinner, because I know what it can be like in Korea. More times than not the missionaries don't get much of a Thanksgiving here. However, I did this on Sunday, without discussing it with Kelsey. So any plans that she may have had went out the door when I invited 4 extra bodies (2 of them being hungry Elders) to our Thanksgiving dinner. I also soon invited 2 coworkers but they had other plans. My wife being the amazing person that she is, took this all in stride. I soon realized why though. She was fine with all these extra guests because it gave us a good excuse to go shopping at Costco. Always one of Kelsey's favorites. There we purchased several things, including our turkey (about $50 for 13 pounds) some hot chocolate, and veggies. We also then got to go on several “shopping adventures” for pie tins and other baking goods for the desserts and rolls.
Now that thanksgiving is over we are promptly moving on to Christmas and couldn't be more excited. Kelsey has had several ideas to decorate our apartment, which have resulted in several more shopping trips (noticing a pattern here?). I'm sure some of you have already seen our Santa door. We are currently finishing up our Christmas tree. We decided not to buy one since they are very expensive here, and we would then have to turn around and sell it when we leave. Anyone tried to sell a Christmas tree in July? I'm sure that's rough. Now do that in Asia. Yeah… we didn't like our odds. So we made our tree this year. That's about it as far as what we've been up to. Lots of shopping and getting things ready for Christmas. We have started going to a language exchange on Wednesday nights, in order to improve both of our Korean, and to make some more friends. These next couple weeks will be nice, since we are winding down here at school for the winter vacation, and we'll probably just end up having a nice small Christmas with just the two of us. We may have the missionaries over so they can Skype their families later that day. Don't know yet. So that's all I wanna say as far as catching us up. By the time I post this I'm sure Kelsey will have another blog post ready since its taking me so long to type this.
Now for all of you that are curious. I'll talk a little about my job. I teach at a private high school in Ulsan, South Korea. Its one of the most prestigious high schools, simply because there are always students from here that end up going to the top national university in Korea, Seoul National University. That being said, most of my students are very smart, and academically driven. For those of you that don't know the Korean school system basically revolves around the college entrance exams or suneong. You take this your senior year of high school, and if you do well enough on it and get into your school, great, if not, you may retake it NEXT YEAR. That's right. Think like SAT or ACT, but you only get to try it once a year. Combine that with vast amounts of social, family, and peer pressures, and you see why suicides always go up in Asian countries around the time of this test. If you don't get into one of the best universities you get kinda a low end of the stick, since many companies here operate on the good ol' boy system, where they will take people from their own Alma mater, rather than look at credentials all the time. This is changing but slowly. Anyway, so my students have lots of incentive to learn, and grow. Sometimes I do get a few students that don't want to participate in class, simply because they don't like English, but really I can't complain at all about my job.
Lately me and my co teacher Joe, have been trying some new ideas. I had them research animals one semester and give presentations on animals of their choice, and we also had debates. This semester (which is just ending) we've been doing K-pop, or Korean Pop. More specifically how we can help spread it. So what we did was have the students pick a popular Korean pop song they liked, and make their own lyrics in English to it. They had to include certain literary elements, as well as make a music video. Its been a fun unique experience for them I think, since most other places don't do things like this. But I sure am glad its over. Imagine having to listen to over 60 different k-pop songs that don't have the best lyrics, and are done in almost karaoke fashion. Haha yeahhh…. But thanks to the Internet you don't have to imagine! I'll provide a link to our facebook site where a lot of these music videos are. So head over there and listen to a few maybe! It's kinda fun! Anyway, thats about it, just a normal high school teacher. I guess I may write more but since it took me so long to get this one out, maybe Kelsey will ban me from the blog all together! Thanks for all the support and prayers. We've appreciated it. Love you all! Cya!
Music Videos: www.facebook.com/
*turn down your sound, the videos are a bit louder than normal
Also, check out this video of one of the students at a little talent show at school.
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