Day 165: Hisayo! Well we've had another awesome few weeks here in Korea. Our schedules have been a little nuts lately due to the swine flu. Our school had to shut down for a week about two weeks ago, and so we had a nice welcomed break. Although, now we are working Saturdays to make up the days we lost and it's pretty tiring! Brandon brought his guitar in last Saturday to play for the kids. We've been teaching them fun songs like Twist and Shout and In the Jungle, and hearing them sing with their little Korean accents is hysterical! We play them the Ferris Bueller video for twist and shout and they dance around the room, it's too cute! We are also teaching them Christmas songs- my pre kinders have mastered Walking in a Winter Wonderland. I taught them the Jason Mraz version and they scat and everything, it's amazing how quickly they've caught on to it.
So since we haven't had much free time since our week off, I thought I'd share some photos I took of my friend Jenny. We went to this place we found called Fantastic studios, where they have recreated old Korean movie sets. It only cost $3 to get in and it looks like an old deserted run down town filled with old bars and movie theatres, but it was actually only built in 2008.

We were the only ones there for most of the day and we had so much fun just running around and shooting away...She made my job easy, she's gorgeous!

We had such a good time, and we kept each other laughing all day long! I love her!



As always, we love and miss you all! Oh and we booked our trip to Phuket, Thailand for our winter vacation, which we are super excited about! We have a great hotel and we are planning all sorts of fun excursions :) We can't wait to get to the beach since we are supposed to have our first snow tomorrow! Hugs and Kisses xo

With love from South Korea,
Shayna & Brandon

Day 154: Hope you all had a fun Halloween! We celebrated at school with the kids and had tons of fun. Koreans don't celebrate the holiday, so the kids were very excited to be able to dress up, get scared, and to eat candy of course :) For the younger kids, they had a bunch of activities to do like making masks, carving pumpkins, and playing the toilet paper mummy game. We also made a pretty awesome haunted house in the library for the kids to go through. We were both assigned (along with 3 other teachers) to be in the haunted house and try our best to freak their freaks! Brandon wore a pretty scary pumpkin mask and popped out of a grave which made all the kids cry- and gave them a Halloween they will never forget. Here's just some of the cuteness from the little ones...
Oh right, we dressed up too- Brandon was a cowboy and I was an Indian :)
JD and Jamie were vampires! And Jenny was a character from Harry PotterThe older kids were pretty cute in the afternoon, and they had a costume fashion show that was pretty fun- check out our grade 2's below in all their cuteness...awww.....

That's all for our quick update, we'll share more soon. Miss you all!

With love from South Korea,
Shayna & Brandon xo

Day 144: The last two weeks have been great. Last weekend we went into Seoul with some friends to look for Halloween stuff - Brandon's going to me a cowboy and I'm going to be an Indian. Since Koreans do not really celebrate the holiday, we didn't have much luck, so it looks like we'll be getting creative with the art supplies at school :) We also went to Yongsan with our friend Jenny to do some shopping. Brandon bought a video game called Uncharted 2 and I got a pair of fall/winter boots. We ended our day of shopping with a lunch at a trendy restaurant that overlooked Seoul.
This weekend we had beautiful weather, so we took Jenny to the zoo, since she hasn't been there yet. Plus I love any excuse to go to the zoo...Anyways, we couldn't of asked for nicer weather and the leaves were all such beautiful Fall colors as you can see...
And of course, the animals were beautiful and fun to watch as always. Since we have been to the zoo a few times already, I took Jenny around to the animals while Brandon took a hike through the mountains that surround the zoo. Here are a few of the photos I snapped as we walked around....

We met back up with Brandon just in time to go watch the lion feedings. They have about 9 lions and they are so awesome to watch, especially when they are being fed. We showed up a little early and got to see the four big males all cuddling and relaxing together which was pretty amazing. We watched them jump and fight over raw chickens that were being thrown to them by their trainer. At the end of the feeding, there is one "extra" chicken that gets thrown and they have to fight for it and there was a chase scene which was pretty epic.

Then on Sunday, we got together with our friend Dennis and his new baby girl Iris. He had asked me to take some photos of the baby for him, which I gladly agreed to do. She is so adorable and has the most stunning dark green eyes! I'm still working on the shots, but I'll share them as soon as they are ready. That's all for now, we'll update you again shortly.

With love from South Korea,
Shayna & Brandon xo

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