Field Trip and Baseball Game

On Friday the preschoolers went on a field trip to a cucumber farm!!! It was outside Seoul, of course, and it took about 45 minutes to get there. Here are some of my kids on the bus.

This is Julie K.(The same girl I almost lost in the first few weeks of school. I found her in the bathroom.) In the background is Laura relaxing on the bus ride....

This is Han-Bi.

This is Allie, Albert, and Christina. All of the kids wear hats on field trip day.

We got a little lesson on how to pick cucumbers. You have to twist them ten times and never pull them! And we were only allowed to pick big cucumbers, although some of my kids didn't know what a big cucumber was so in our bucket we had many cucumbers that were more like pickle sized. The kids had to wear gardening gloves when they were picking the cucumbers. Another class had two kids bring in wool mittens instead of gardening gloves. I guess their parents didn't know what they were for when they sent them in with their children... They looked so funny picking cucumbers in winter mittens.

After we picked cucumbers for about 10-15 minutes in a boiling hot green house, the kids had to line up to get their pictures taken. The kids were all hot and whinny and the last thing they wanted to do was wait around to get their pictures taken. Another teacher had the idea to bring a spray bottle full of water, so while they were waiting for their pictures I was spraying the kids in the mouth with water from the bottle. They loved it and it kept them occupied for a long time!
These were the posed pictures that every class had to do. The kids really don't look happy but I promise they had a good time!!!

Amy, Allie, Coral, Julie, Julie K., Kayla, Justin, Alvin, Han-bi, Michael, Tony, and Cherry

These are the girls from my other preschool class:Christina, Alice, Sally, Laura, Lucy and Mi-Jin.


And the boys.... Albert, Daniel, Andrew, Alex, Jake, and Alexander.

We went on a tractor ride, ate lunch, and then went back to school. I love field trip days!!!

On Saturday Liz, Jamie and I went to this island in Seoul called Yeouido. It's only a few subway stops from us, and we were planning on renting bikes and then having a picnic, but when we got there were found this nice little floating convenient store with picnic tables, and we just hung out there and drank some beer and played cards for a really long time. Liz is babysitting a dog that belongs to one of the girls who worked at the school that was contaminated with Piggy Flu, so we took the dog with us to the park. (Liz just found out that the girl is getting fired because she left the country and now isn't allowed back in because she has to be in quarantine. So Liz might be babysitting the dog a bit longer because the airline said that it's too hot to ship the dog in the normal cargo area, and the owner isn't allowed in the country.)

The dog looks a lot like Riley, but is smaller and VERY well behaved out in public! She doesn't jump up on anyway or try to pull away. She lived in New York City before Seoul, so I guess she is used to being a city dog. Even on the subway with tons of strange people and new smells, she was just laying down relaxing. It was so cute, every time the train stopped or started she would slide on the floor and Liz would have to slide her back towards us.

Here is a picture of Liz and the dog on the subway.

On Sunday we went to a Baseball game. The stadium is so close to us, it only cost us 5,000WON($5) in a cab. We got there super early because we didn't know if the tickets would sell out and we wanted good seats and it was a beautiful day. The tickets were only 9,000WON($9) and they weren't assigned seats. I'm not sure how games in America are, but the field is divided in half, and one sides cheers for one team, and the other side cheers for the other team. Since we didn't know either team, we just found good seats, and then we figured out which team we were cheering for.

We were sitting right above the dugout on the side of the Heroes. At one point someone came around with a box full of those sticks you blow up, and bang together to make noise. They said the name of the team on them. The beer was very reasonably priced, it was 2,500WON for a car of mekjew(beer).

Baseball fans in Korea are CRAZY. Everyone was so into the game it was unbelievable. Every time the Heroes were up to bat, 4 cheerleaders and this man who called the Spirit Conductor, would come out and lead the fans in cheers. The Spirit Conductor wore a baseball uniform and white gloves(which reminded me of a crossing guard), and he had a whistle and he was so animated and would get so into the cheers. He had these whistle blows for each chant, and all the fans knew what to be cheering. Just like at the soccer game we couldn't understand what everyone was chanting, but we just made up our own words and banged our noise making sticks together. When the other team was up to bat they had their own cheer leaders and Spirit Conductor to lead their chants.

This is the Spirit Conductor....

During one of the breaks in the game, they had a pizza eating contest. There was even a foreigner in it, but we think he was European. He lost.....

At another time in the game this Hite truck just pulled out onto the field and was driving around for no reason. Hite is my favorite Korean beer so I was excited to see the truck!

We were eating popcorn at one point during the game, and Liz offered the some to the young Korean couple sitting next to us, and they were grateful, and then later in the game they handed us a shelled egg. Liz took it with some confusion, not really knowing what to do with the egg, and then guy laughed, and smashed the egg against his head to crack it. It looked like a hard boiled egg, except that it was a dark brown kind of transparent color, and then inside wasn't yellow, it was brown. Since the couple gave it to us we couldn't NOT eat it, so we all took a bite until it was gone. It was really really gross and tasted nothing like a hard boiled egg. Luckily we had beer and popcorn to wash down the gross egg taste. This morning I mentioned it at work, and someone said it is called a 1000 year old egg. It's basically a rotten egg soaked in some gross things and left for a long time. You can read about it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Century_egg

That has by far been the strangest ball park food I've ever heard of!

The baseball game was SO much fun and we will be going back for sure every Sunday!