Day 177: Hey guys. So here's our long awaited update- we've been having issues uploading photos on here, so it took us much longer then expected to be able to post. Anywho, since there's so much to catch up on, we figured we'd keep the writing short and sweet...so here's the last month in pictures:

First, we had Pajama Day at school which was fun for the kids and relaxing for the teachers...


Next, Brandon, Jenny and I went to a beautiful palace in Seoul called Chang Deok Gung where we got an awesome English tour with more foreigners than we are usually used to seeing...


After that we celebrated the Korean thanksgiving (called Chuseok) at school and all the kids wore their traditional Korean outfits known as Hanboks, and we spent the day playing traditional Korean games. The kids outfits were so bright and colorful, they looked adorable as you can see...
Then of course we celebrated Brandon's 25th birthday! We had a long weekend (because of the holiday) and amazing weather so Brandon wanted us to check out Bukkhan Mountain. Our friends Jamie and JD came with us for the adventure, and boy was it an adventure! We had decided to climb to the peak of this one mountain and had no idea how long it would take, not to mention how hard it would be. To make a long story short, Brandon was the only one to make it all the way to the top, and after about 2 and a half hours of hiking to the top, the sun was starting to set, and we made the majority of the climb down IN THE DARK! Climbing down really steep rocks without being able to see ahead of you is not the funnest thing ever, but we made it down with only minor injuries, and can laugh about it now :)





Lastly, we had our friend Greg's wedding. He has been in Korea for a few years and married a really nice Korean girl named Kuen Hwaa. The wedding was beautiful and got us even more excited about our own...So that's what has been happening with us, and we hope that life is treating you all well. As always, we miss you and think of you often!

With love from South Korea,
Shayna & Brandon xo

Day 162: Hi everyone! Sorry we haven't been posting lately, and we promise we'll be updating you soon. It's a long weekend here right now so we'll have plenty of photos to show you in a few days. But until then we figured we'd let you see what's been keeping us so busy at work these past few days. We had a monthly test recently, and of course, we are in charge of marking the essay questions that the kids have to do. Since English is their second language, this is not as straight forward as it seems, here's one our our favorite responses from a girl in grade one:

Question: If you could be anywhere in the world, where would you like to be? Tell why.

Answer: I like Vocab. It is funny.Because it is easy. But vocab is lot of HOMEWORK! But that is
easy. I like easy BOOKS. Because it is easy to HOMEWORK my self. Some thing is hard
But any thing is easy and hard. Some thing is hard and easy. So, I like Vocab. So, I like
to do Vocab. I want to do lot of HOMEWORK. But i get tired Because I have some
school too. have lot of HOMEWORK. Than i like Vocab.

So needless to say, although very entertaining, having 20 or so of these to mark become a little draining. But as we said it's a long weekend right now, so we are going to enjoy our free time and get ready for Brandon birthday on Monday :) So check in soon, updates are on their way!


With love from South Korea,
Brandon & Shayna xo

Day 144: I just realized that its been almost two weeks since our last blog post, I guess we just totally forgot about it last week since nothing too exciting happened. So thankfully, this weekend was very busy. On Friday, it was my student's birthday and since the girls always dress like princesses on their birthdays I brought along my camera. As coincidence may have it, our art project for the day was to draw faces on paper bags that the kids could wear on their heads. Put the two together and I give you the ultimate "paper bag princess"...

After school on Friday, all of the teachers went out for our friend Katie's farewell dinner. Here's Katie (on the left) and Abby . We went to a place that served Shabu Shabu which is a type of soup that has tons of meat, vegetables and potatoes in it. Not my (Shayna) favorite thing ever, but we were in good company :)

Here's jenny enjoying her food, and smiling with Sophia who is Brandon's Korean partner teacher. It was nice to have the Korean teacher's come out with us to celebrate Katie's last night.
On Saturday, Jenny and I had a full day of shopping at Myeong Dong which is an awesome area of Seoul. There are well known stores such as Forever 21 and Zara but there are also tons of street vendors selling all types of things, most of which are only $10. Once we were all shopped out, we decided to go see a chick flick. By the time we got to the theatre, the movie we wanted to see had already started so instead we went to "My Sister's Keeper" and we had no idea what we were in for. I knew it was supposed to be a sad story, but man. We cried so hard throughout the whole thing and even a little in the elevator! It's about a little girl whose sister is dying of Cancer and what the family does to try and save her- that's all I can say without giving away too much. It was an amazing movie, and I totally recommend it, as long as you bring a ton of Kleenex with you.
As if the weekend wasn't already so fun, on Sunday night we went to go see R.E.N.T.!!!!! We found out a couple of weeks ago that it was coming to Korea for two weeks only. So, since I've always wanted to take Brandon to see it and Jenny loves R.E.N.T too, the three of us got tickets right away. We took the subway to the island of Yeouido which is like a Manhattan type island in Seoul and as always, had to document the entire trip...

We finally arrived, and had the best time ever! The play was just as good as I remembered it being from the first time I saw it in Toronto almost ten years ago. The two guys who played Mark and Roger in the original production were back for this tour and they put on a great show. It was a very interesting crowd of young artsy Koreans and foreigners. I don't know how they could keep up with the story from reading off big subtitle screens on the side of the stage, but they managed to laugh at all the right parts, so I guess they knew what was going on. Now after years of singing R.E.N.T in our apartment (completely off tune may I add) and dragging him to the movie of the play, which doesn't do it justice- I think Brandon now gets why I love it so much. I'm actually pretty sure that he secretly loves it too and now will sing along when I play the soundtrack on my Ipod :) So that was our weekend, we hope yours was just as fun!

With love from South Korea,
Shayna & Brandon

Day 128 : As the summer winds down, we thought we'd put together a collection of some of the cool places we've been and amazing animals we've seen over the past little while. As you all know we work pretty long days so we really try to maximize our weekends. These first few shots are from our trip to Everland, which is the Korean equivalent of Disneyland. Our friend Patrick called us at midnight the night before and we went on a whim. It was awesome, the place has all the rides of a sweet amusement park, plus the animals of a kickass zoo. This is us in front of the main garden area, trying not to get wet from the water fountain.
We came across these apes early in the day, and it was good we did because their playful and sometimes hilarious nature really set the tone for a fun day.


This chimp was lost deep in thought, pondering all of life's big questions and probably some we've never thought of.
This golden blue faced monkey didn't even look real. Brandon bought some monkey feed and was able to get them to catch the treats mid air. Our friend Patrick even got to pet one while we were off checking out the orangutans.
This is what the polar bear thought of us, apparently he had enough of us taking his pictures of him. After checking out an animal safari, I (Brandon) went on the worlds biggest wooden roller coaster which was awesome, and we also checked out the bumper cars, and tons of other fun rides. It was a great day!
These pictures are from the zoo in Seoul Grand Park, when we went there with our friends JD and Jamie. We had great weather, and it seemed like we had better timing than the first time as we got to watch a lot of the animals during thier feedings while they were nice and active. The lions were particularly intense, fighting each other for territory and leaping high in the air and devouring raw chicken in one bite. We'll try and post the videos of that later.


Here's we are at T.G.I.F.'s near Bucheon station, celebrating our "1 year till the wedding" anniversary. This is from last weekend when we ventured into Seoul to go to Coex mall. It is a great place to go to spend a rainy afternoon and it even has a huge indoor aquarium. We were really impressed with the huge shark tank that housed some rather large and deadly sharks, and especially impressed with the guy swimming in the tank with them!!
They had some cool lighting in the jely fish tank which made for some cool shots ...

There was a conveniently placed photo opportunity, with a Korean village theme in the middle of the aquarium which we couldn't resist.

This turtle was massive, probably one of the biggest I've ever seen, hanging out in a tank with about a million sardines.It took a couple passes but we finally got a shot that would do him justice.
Besides all that, the second semester of school started today, so things have been pretty hectic. We both have gotten some new kids in our classes and once we get settled we'll make a new post with some more photos of them. Hope you all enjoy what's left of the summer.

With love from South Korea,
Brandon & Shayna