It's Party Time! April Birthdays and Wrap-up

Here we are, already at the end of April. Some parts of this adventure have seemed endless, while some of them have just flown by. For whatever reason I seem to be mentally stuck in March, though I blame the weather for that!

This month, in addition to multiple field trips, was also the April birthday party. Lucky for me, I was included in the festivities because like Sarah and Aron, I too turned a year older. Our Korean co-worker brought me a chocolate cake from Paris Baguette on my actual birthday, then our director took us out to dinner at an (extremely) local Italian restaurant. Then, near the end of the month we celebrated the birthdays of the month, and I had a seat of honor as well. I had a seat of honor and a cake at the party, and the kids/parents were even kind enough to get me gifts.

My special spot for the birthday festivities! The cake itself was delicious, but I'm a fan of the dark chocolate stars on top too. These bakeries know how to make good cakes.

These are all the things my families got me for my birthday, I feel so loved! The little yellow and orange larva near the top middle is my favorite, from Chloe. Mostly because it was a little bag with a card, the larva plush, and a small wrapped tube of lipstick and I'm pretty sure Chloe picked out the larva herself. :)

So what else happened this month? I mentioned field trips and we did go to a strawberry farm, Beartree Park, and Chungcheongbuk-do Forest Science Museum (to be seen in a later post). We got to go to the Cheongju Art Festival and see the blooming cherry blossoms downtown, and lots of little side trips. We also went on a Saturday trip to Seoul (4/27) this past weekend too. All in all, I'd say it's been a pretty good month.

That said, we just finished up our day earlier today with an open class. Our director moved around our rooms, and all the rooms really, the night beforehand so things were kind of off. An offering of rice cakes dusted with some sort of powdery substance (like before our Everland field trip) was placed in each of the rooms today too, and we ate them later for snack. For open class parents and prospective parents are invited to come watch class in action. I had three parents and one grandparent in my class and Zach had 6 or 7 parents in his room today. Fortunately, things went well for the hour, then it was back to normal business. Open classes can be kind of nerve wracking just because of parents sitting around in your classroom with various shades of bored on their faces. At least we were told that we have tomorrow, May 1st, off work. It's apparently Labor Day here so that means our school isn't open. I am okay with that! Sadly, Zach still has to go in and work at his other school in the afternoon, but he's making pretty good money from it.

We've also been busy this month due to preparing the kids for some sort of English speaking competition in Seoul at the end of May. That means me tweaking the things she printed out by retyping them and saving them and changing the language to make it easier. The younger kids are supposed to be presenting for a minute and a half while the older ones are supposed to be doing 2 minute speeches. Today I did additional speeches for two more kids wherein I found brief write ups online and tweaked them to meet my needs. Ellena is now doing a presentation on hanboks and Michael is doing one on housing/living in Korea historically to now. Go me. Now, she initially said this would be a Sunday trip to Soeul for this thing, but then she changed the date (we think?) and maybe it's just an in house thing? We just aren't really sure, like many things.

In other news, my class and I made paper snails this week. Aren't we cute?

Watch out! They're coming for you! Hopefully I update with a new post before these snails make it to you.