10 notables from Malaysia

1. Reggae Mansion

This was the best hostel I have ever stayed at. They truly have thought of every need for travelers! Each person had their own bed space with curtains that kept out the sounds, so even though we were in a 24 person room, it didn't feel like it. Only problem was that I was on the top bunk, and the later was a really tough one! Free breakfast buffet was amazing! We were able to loan hair dryers/ adapters/ straightener. There was also a rooftop bar that had a good view of the city. It really was a great stay!

2. Kuala Lumpur City Tour

We went on the "7 wonders of KL" tour that was provided by our hostel. It took us around to many different sites around KL, which was perfect for us! 

 We went to Malaysia's national mosque. Pretty much the only people that were there when we were, were other tourists. It was a beautiful space to say the least. Some of the other mosques around KL were much more impressive to me though.

We also went to Thean Hou Temple, which is a 200 years old Chinese temple. 

Batu Caves was a cave that you had to walk up 272 steps to get to. The cave is one of the most popular Hindu shrines outside of India, dedicated to Lord Murugan. There was a massive statue of him outside of the cave. Sad to say that this was probably the dirtiest place we saw in Malaysia, but that could have been because we saw it right after a festival...

3. Fresh Fruit

I've been deprived in Korea with the lack of fruit. It is quite expensive in Korea, or at least most of it. At every opportunity I bought fresh fruit juices, smoothies, and actual chopped up fruit! It was so good! YUM!
I gained 4 pounds. This fruit and the milkshakes helped contribute to this!

4. Petronas Towers

These towers are also known as the Petronas Twin Towers, but I'm not really into calling them that, it seems weird. Anyways, these towers were the tallest in the World between 1998- 2004, and they still are the tallest twin towers in the World. We went and saw them up close during the day and then went to Sky Bar to veiw them as the sun set. At the base of the towers, there were many shops, and Emily even got some time in a Marks and Spencers. After some shopping we went to the Sky Bar for some overpriced drinks and a great view! We took out time and milked out one drink for 2 hours. It was nice. The sky was really beautiful!

5. Langkawi Island

Apparently this island is a very popular destination for honeymooners, and it was quite obvious... There wasn't a huge crowd of travelers our age. That being said, it was still a great place. There were nice beaches and plenty of entertainment! We stayed on a beach very close to the main one, and I'm glad we didn't stay on the main one. Our was a bit more secluded and quiet.

6. Parasailing

We found someone to take us para-sailing for 55 ringget. That is less around $15.... Good deal! Anyways we got a small boat that reeked of gas, and went to an island. There we were harnessed in and without warning found ourselves in the air. It was a neat way to see the island. Some of us had some interesting landing... I never knew you could para-sail without touching one once of water...

7. Swimming Monkeys (Mangrove Tour)

We went on a mangrove tour that included seeing eagles, potentially killer snake (didn't actually happen), caves, monkeys, fish farms, and the highlight in my opinion- SWIMMING MONKEYS! They would climb a tree limb that hung over the water and when our guide threw peanuts they would dive-bomb into the water and tread water to eat the peanuts. It was an amazing sight!

8. Mopeds...(again)

We rented mopeds again for a day to get around the island. We went to a waterfall, and then the next day I explored some of the coastal region next to our accommodation. Besides the fact that we were given scooter that didn't have gas in them, (Spent an insanely small amount to fill them.) and the guy tried to scam me and not give me my deposit when I returned the scooter, it was a great time! :)

9. Chinese New Years

We happened to be in Malaysia during Chinese New Years. There were so many red lanterns placed around the country.  Everything seemed more festive I suppose. We didn't notice an influx of Chinese until New Years Eve and New Years. It got a little more busy on those days. There weren't fireworks or anything but we did get to see some people lighting lanterns on the beach and setting them off over the water, which was beautiful.

10. Some tastes from home!

Malaysia was the first time that our eyes set sight on some of our comforts from back home. We got all sorts of this to take home and our bags were much heavier going back to Korea! We got spices, seasonings, candy, toothpaste, medicines, deodorant and other random little things! I made sure to stock up on reeses cups... It was quite the treat to get to eat some of our familiar things that we can't get in Korea!

10 notables from the Philippines...

1. Puerto Princesa

After 3 flights, we finally made it to the island of Palawan, and the city of Puerto Princesa. We were all quite tired after our over 24 hours of traveling and no sleep. We took a nap and waited for the boys to join us at out hostel. We stayed a Dallas Hostel, and it was great. I mean great for the price. We paid under $10 a night to stay there and it was perfect for what we needed it for...sleep... While in Puerto Princesa we had our first glimpse of tricycles. These are just modified motorcycles with a side car! :)

2. El Nido

We got to the northern part of Palawan to a town called El Nido after a 6 hour van ride on a road that was sometimes paved and sometimes gravel. It was a long journey, but El Nido was worth it. We spent most of our time here while we were in the Philippines. It was not built up and touristy, but still had many things for tourists to do, so it was a perfect location for us. All five of us stayed in one room, which was tight, but we didn't spend a lot of time in our room when we had paradise right outside the window... 

3. Island hoping tour (tour A)

We went on a day long island hoping tour that took us to 6-7 locations. Many of these locations were beautiful lagoons with magical blue water. We were able to snorkel and swim in these places and just enjoy the scenery. We had lunch provided and I even ate some of the tuna fish with the eye balls still on it! Emily and Sian managed to get quite sunburned and my paranoid self did not! Wahoo! We went with Spur Travel and our tour guide group was awesome! So much so that we booked a second tour with them as well!

4. Eating Seafood

I don't eat seafood in Kansas. I don't. So, when I am in locations that are actually near to the sea, I do find myself eating some seafood. I took it to a new level though this trip! By the second day, I was purposefully ordering shrimp! This has never happened before.... It was so good. Also had some great fish fillets and other interesting things. I wouldn't say that I am an overall seafood lover....but I will say that I've made great strides!

5. Massages

The massages in El Nido were very cheap. They were around 350 to 400 pesos, which equals out to about $7. This was for an hour massage! I felt a little bit like Goldilocks though... the first one was too soft, the second one was "just right", but the third one was too hard! Overall though, they were really good and a great way to end the day! A lot of the group got a "sunburn treatment" massage, where they took aloe leaves and rubbed them all over the sunburn. Poor Ben had an allergic reaction to the oil, and it made him break out everywhere! There also was a notable massage time that the Filipino masseuses figured out that Ben was part Filipino and they were oohing and ahhing over him. He probably could have gotten a wife in that moment....and I'm not even kidding.. ahah

6. Mopeds for the day...

Our moped experience was interesting to say the least. We rented mopeds for 2 different places in El Nido. After we picked them up in the morning we took them out for a ride. On this first ride the boys lost the girls and when we finally doubled back to find them, we found Emily and Sian sitting in the ditch. Emily had flown off her scooter when the highway had surprised her and turned to gravel... There is a before and after photo of her above. She had a scrape on her leg, and a fat lip, but she was pretty good considering. AND, it could have been much worse.
I had chose to ride of the back of Ben's scooter for the day, so I could take pictures. This turned out to be a good thing though, because Emily was not going to drive a moped again! I ended up driving ours back into town and Ben took Emily on her scooter. I have to admit...I really did enjoy driving it for a bit though! We dropped off Emily's scooter, cleaned her up a bit, and continue to adventure around. We found a beach next to the Orange Pearl, which is where some of our friends were staying, and stayed there for most of the day.

7. Beaches

We found some beautiful beaches in the Philippines, and some were quite secluded. The weather held up for us as well. We only had a few hours of really cloudy weather... I had a great opportunity to do my beach photo at the beach next to the Orange Pearl.

8. Sunsets

Unfortunately, for some reason or another (usually getting a massage), I didn't see enough of these sunsets, but when we went to the beach that was recommended for sunset, it didn't disappoint! It was beautiful! :)
The line that you can see in the sky is a zip-line that will be ready for use in a month or so! Wish is had been ready now! :)

9. Island Hopping (Tour B)

We were wanting to go on "Tour C" but were unable to go on the day because of the rough waters. Apparently for that tour you have to cross more open waters or something...Anyways, we found ourselves on Tour B, and too be honest, I thought it was still great! This tour not only had islands, but we walked across a sandbar on Snake Island, and we also go to go inside a weird cave. It was really neat!

10. Monkeys 

I'm not used to monkeys out in the wild. I find that a crazy concept! And to be completely honest, they scare me! I've heard they like to steal your stuff and eat your food. This monkey was given a banana and I wanted to take a picture of it, so I got semi-close. If you could see the next shot on my camera, you would see the monkey coming after me! ahah! As I was running away a girl tells me, "They don't like it when you look them in the eye..." So...no eye contact ever again with me and monkeys....

Oksan Winter Camp- The Rainbow Fish...

4th Grade:

On the last day with the kiddos, I got an 80 minute block with each of the classes. This allowed me to do a longer lesson, which when doing art is sometimes the easiest to do.

I introduced new color words to the kids like I had with the kids at my school camp, but this time I had found colored paper in the colors that they were learning. I made squares of the colored paper and gave each student the collection of squares. Then, they had to find the colored square to match the color, glue it into their sketch book, and write the name next to it. I thought it worked out well. It gave the students something to do, and kept them on task while learning new vocabulary words.

The colors that they learned: 

burgundy, scarlet, salmon, fuschia, hot pink, coral, peach, rust, amber, vanilla, mustard, chartreuse, mint, olive, navy, teal, indigo, violet, lavender, eggplant, caramel, beige, and bronze.

My example rainbow fish...

   

             The project: The Rainbow Fish
I first started this project by reading the book. Since this school had a large budget to work with, I was able to order in 6 copies of the books for the kids to share among themselves. After the first 2 classes though, unfortunately I recognized that they were not able to understand the vocabulary of the book, so I used a power-point with easier vocabulary and it worked great!
After the book, we went over the parts of the fish. (fin, body, head, tail, eye, scale....) Then it was time to start the project... I gave them some fish shape ideas to encourage the students to use their imagination and create their own fish shape!

fish body ideas...

I had the students draw an outline of the fish in pencil first and trace over it with black marker. Then they colored in the head and tail with their colored pencil/crayon type things (I still haven't figured out what to call these in English).

I let the student pick out different colors of shiny paper that they would use to cut out the shapes that would end up being their scales. Most kids choose multiple colors. This was most likely because of the example that I put on the board....

They they were able to cut out their scales and start to glue them on their fish! It was really exciting and rewarding to look at all the different types and colors of fish! I love individuality! I had students that drew fish with extreme teeth. I had students that made small fish. I had students that made sharks. I even had a student that made a fish with a 6 pack... (more on that later...)

After they finished their fish, I had them cut them out of the paper and glue them into their sketchbooks. They also were required to drawn a scene and without prompting, I was excited about some of the creativity that was displayed! The fish bowl was pure genius! Why can't I teach these kids all the time again? I was impressed to say the least!

Now back to the abs... This is actually a funny story.
At the beginning of the week, I was warned that there was a student that likes to make everything very muscly! Jake told me that anything that the student was required to draw would end up with a 6 pack and tons of muscles. I forgot about this, and which student was the muscle-crazed one until class on Thursday! All of a sudden I put 2 and 2 together when I looked down and saw a fish with an amazing set of abs and pectoral muscles. I had to take a picture to show Jake that he was correct with his prediction!

Jinbo & Andong Ice Festival

Ben and I both had an extra vacation day that we weren't using for our upcoming Philippines/Malaysia trip so we took off the Monday from school and had a long weekend. Originally the plan was to go up to Jinbo for one night and then we would go on to Taebek,  home of the Taebek snow festival, but that all changed.

We found some things to do in Jinbo while we were there. We went for a walk down to the river. It was frozen over, so we made our own ice festival there, and called it Jinbo Ice Festival...

We slid rocks along the ice and tried to hit other ones for points. I lost. I wouldn't think of Ben as competitive, but he doesn't lose very often at things. I also don't lose very often, but I am finding myself losing much more often since I met this guy... (We played poker a few weeks ago with a group of 10 and we came in first and second- don't want to say who came in second...;)

The highlight of our Jinbo Ice festival, was when Ben carried a large rock to the top of the bridge and threw it off to see if the ice would crack. It didn't. The rock lodged itself inside the ice. Oh small town life. The things you do for a little entertainment...

When we finally managed to persuade ourselves to go to Andong to get the bus to Taebek, it was too late. The bus was sold out and the next one was not for 8 hours and would have not given us enough time there...soooooo, we stayed in Andong.

Ben had heard of an Andong ice festival, but it was not advertised very much. We managed to get enough information for various people and took a bus to the location. (it was a bit out of town)

There we found a river that was frozen with hundreds- maybe thousands of Koreans standing/sliding/gliding/falling on the ice! There were metal ice sleds that you could rent and scoot yourself around on the ice. I couldn't believe it but they gave everyone (including toddlers) wooden sticks with nails coming out of the end to stab the ice to propel you forward! I was expecting to see a bloody massacre and whole in feet everywhere, but I didn't see any blood!!!???

We did see a couple of remote control cars pulling kids in sleds on the ice...lazy parents!

There was also ice fishing at this ice festival. Many people were squatting down around these tiny holes in the ice trying to catch their prize. I was so interested in what they were actually catching, but come to find out- they were catching fish the size of minnows! So they were just squatting there for hours to catch minnows, to catch more fish maybe?? I don't know...

Okay, we had to try out the ice sled... It was a must! With both of us working together we could go pretty fast. Ben got to the point where he could spin up around pretty fast. With more time I think we could have gotten pretty efficient with our travel! :)

What are you lookin' at???

Some days it bothers me more than others...

This weekend I had a day that the stares and the looks just got to me. I really should be used to it by now. I know when people are looking at me, and I can feel the stares most of the time when I am out in public. Especially if I am doing something that is not the cultural norm here like running outside. Or I guess just running in general...

This day in particular, people were watching me like a hawk! During lunch out with co-workers from another school's camp, everything I put in my mouth was noted. My chopstick skills were critiqued, even after I had just cut out a bit of kimchi pancake in two swift strokes. I thought I had just aced it, but instead was told I was "like a baby..." That gets old... After it was also noted to all that I wasn't eating the huge parts of fat on my meat, I was then told that I didn't eat enough and more food, that I wasn't particularly fond of was placed on my plate...

Then later traveling on a bus to Andong, I spent a good 40 minutes with a very strong stare placed on me from an Ajumma lady sitting across the isle. Not sure she looked away the whole time....In those situations I just want to do something really outrageous to really shock them. I feel like an caged animal that has escaped...

The next bus, I was enjoying some of my homemade chex mix that I had made. The lady in the bus seat behind me was so curious what I was doing, that she stood up in her seat and just starting peering over the seat! WHAAAAAT do you want??? Seriously?

These were just a few of the main instances. All days have MANY minor encounters at all moments of the day.

Most days, I embrace it, and think about all of the annoying things that I most likely do, that I don't even realize. Some days, it gets to me.

This comic I stole says it perfectly... :)

Oksan Winter Camp- Pop Art & Scratch Art

4th Grade:

I was asked to do a friend's school camp, and since it provided a little bit of extra cash and I would have been sitting at my desk at my school most likely doing nothing, I decided to do it...

I'm glad I did because this school is RICH! Unlike my school, the funding for camp had not been cut, but instead they had a huge budget. I was told that I could get whatever I wanted in terms of supplies. Because of my art background, I got to teach art as well. Other subjects offered in English were math, science, music and P.E. 

So...there were 4 classes of about 18 kids who would go to each subject each day. Quite the camp experience... I would say that these kids should consider themselves lucky! 

First day I taught the kids about Andy Warhol and the Pop Art Movement. I used the same lesson that I had just used with the 5th grade camp at my school. I knew that it took some time, so I rushed through a lot of the information so the kids would have time to work on their art. 

The next day I taught the kids about patters. We went over the vocabulary: stripes, polka dots, checks, plaid, floral, paisley, zig zags, and animal print. Here in Korea, my co-teacher told me that they don't really have distinct names for a lot of the patterns so I knew all of these words would be new to the kids.

After doing a worksheet in their custom made printed out workbook, I introduced scratch art to them. Now, I would have thought that they had done this before, but from their looks of amazement...this was not the case.  I had them section off 8 different spaces that they were to then make the patterns in section. 

This activity worked like a dream! I was bored out of my mind. I talked for the first 10-15 minutes and then let them work. They worked so hard, and basically silently. It is hard to explain how insanely great this worked. I would stand up ever few minutes to walk around and make sure everyone was on task and doing okay, and they were always doing great, no questions, and just scratching away! Dare I say I checked my facebook during class as a result of this great participation? 

Towards the end of class, most of the students weren't quite finished and I would tell them that they needed to start cleaning up, and no one would move. They wanted to finish so bad. They even used their 10 minute break in between classes to work on it. Sue, who was in charge of the camp walked in at one point and started laughing because she caught me say, "Ok, guys you HAVE to go. You HAVE to put your sketchbooks away and go to the next class!" ahah! I think that means you found a good lesson!

I definitely will remember the excitement that the scratch art brought. It wasn't too expensive when you think about it. Each students paper cost about 500 Won, which is about 50 cents. For regular school, when you have 150 students in each grade this could be a problem, but for camps that have a limited about of students, I think it is a great activity!

SUCCESS! 

2014...

I have no idea what 2014 has in store for me, but by golly I am sure looking forward to it! I have been blessed with such an incredible opportunity to live and teach in Korea, great friends new and old from all over the World, a very supportive family, and people I really care about in my life!

I've made my Korean bucket list and have started to cross things off! I plan on crossing them all off in due time!  

BRING IT ON! :)