palace

After going to the markets in Seoul we visited a palace. It was really interesting to see the palace in the middle of a city area. It kind of reminded me of the Forbidden City in Beijing.

entering the palace area

the girls: sun, mulan, me, melanie and julie

side of a telephone booth

cute couple

i love this with the mountain behind it

julie, me and melanie

a Korean wedding modeled at a palace museum

This was a great day and we are excited to hang out with the girls again. In May we are planning to go to an island together to visit some of Mulan's friends! The week after this, we went to the cherry blossom festival in Seoul. As soon as the photos are edited, I will write a post about that.

Not much else has been going on. The weeks have been slower lately for some reason. I was finally able to get some different things for my apartment, like a bookshelf, night stand, and best of all, a toaster oven! I can finally bake--as soon as I find some vanilla extract... it is pretty much nonexistent in Cheonan. I checked at a gourmet grocery store last night that has an international foods section and didn't find any, although I did find a $7  box of Cheez-its (no, I did not buy it!) Anyway my room is starting to feel like a home, so that's good! I'm actually surprised at how clean I have been keeping it :)

Next month I am looking forward to a couple of days off for Children's Day and Buddha's birthday, and then in June my mom and sister are coming to visit! So there is a lot to look forward to. And of course I have my sweet kids to look forward to every day :) Sometimes they are crazy and frustrating but most of the time they are really great! It's fascinating to see them learning to communicate with their growing vocabulary. A lot of times when they talk to each other in Korean they intersperse English words that they are learning (almost always with colors, they say the colors in English!) so that's interesting to see.

My second graders have been a bit better recently which is definitely a blessing. I hope they continue to be calmer and listen more. We have tests every month and I still have a couple of classes lagging a bit on the tests so I need to work on helping them understand better. Of course part of the problem with not understanding is not listening in the first place...but we are working on that!

On Friday we are having our April birthday party and I have three kids (Sophie, John and Eric) with birthdays this month so that should be a fun day. Hope everyone had a great Easter/Resurrection Day!