Teaching English

Here I am at work!



By the way, for anyone wondering, I teach English at a school called Sesan Elementary in the city of Busan, South Korea.

Budha's Birthday

May 5th was Budha's birthday. Many Budhists and non budhist visit temples for this celebration. I visited Bomosa temple with some friends to check out what it was all about.

The paper lanterns are for whishes people make. They write their names on their wish on the piece of paper. Then, at dawn they light a candle and put it inside.


There were many small temple houses around the grounds, all with people inside chanting and praying.

There were also hundreds of people around the temples praying. The atmosphere was extremely calm even though the place was overcrowded.

Childrens Day

This Friday was children's day and also Budha's birthday here in Korea. So, on thursday, my school held a day of sports and games for the kids since Friday would be a day off.

Here are some of the kindergarten students I teach.

We had a bowling game,

this dart game,

ring tose, signing, and a relay race. They also played this shoe tossing game.

Hilarious.

All the students lined up and sang the school's anthem.

It was a really hot out and everyone had a really good time. All the kids went home for the afternoon.

Sesan Elementary Field Trip to Ulsan City

Ulsan is a neighboring city to Busan, where I live. My school took all the kids on an outing to visit some caves, a butterfly garden, and a zoo.

We visited an enormous cave that had many sections and went off in all directions like a maze. Inside the cave were installations, like a museum of Korean artifacts, as well as statues and exhibits of precious stones.

One sections of the cave had these ancient petroglyphs. They were created over hundreds of years from about 6,000 B.C. to 1,000B.C. and are considered a Korean national treasure.

While inside the cave we also witnessed a traditional Korean drumming show...

...followed by a very impressive Chinese acrobatics show.

Hiking During Cherry Blossom Season

The cherry blossom season is in full swing here in Korea. There are lots of beautiful trees and flowers to see. On Saturday I climbed the mountain behind my apartment to get a good look from above. I definitely did get a nice view. The hike up was also very beautiful.

Here are some old ladies walking by some cherry blossom trees. The mountain you see at the end of the video is the one I hiked up.

On the way up I saw some of these nice azaleas.

When I made it to the top (about 500m) I got a really nice view of one side of the city. This is the area I live in, called Saha-gu. I live near the bridge area, on the right side. My apartment is beside a university area called Dong-A. The river you see is called the Nakdong river. I cross it everyday on my way to work.

The next day I went hiking up another mountain that I hoped would reveal the other side of the city. Here is what I saw going up.

It's a bit hard to see in the video. There is a canopy of bright pink cherry blossoms covering a stream and waterfall. This is also where I took the picture at the beginning of this post.

I wonder what could be behind this little wooden hut? Click on "view video" and find out...

This is Nampo-dong, one of the city "downtown" areas. You can't make it out in the video, but you can see as far as the Gwangali bridge from this view point. If I kept panning right, and there were no mountains in the way, you would see Saha-gu again.

The city is built along the ocean, so it stretches out pretty far. In total, about 4 million people live in Busan.

See more videos of my hike to the top of Busan

New Job, New Apartment

Welcome to Sesan Elementary!

The school is surounded by these great cherry blossom trees...


...and statues.

Here is a picture of my new apartment building.

The sign reads "Haundea Castle". That's right, I live in a castle.