Visiting Little America

The weekend is half gone and it's been busy so far!  My typical Friday routine is to leave school right at 3:00 and head to Homeplus with Ruth to pick up groceries for the week (I know, sounds exciting right?!).  I also forced myself to tackle the pile of laundry that has been accumulating over the last couple of weeks...well, some of it anyway.  So, theoretically I'm ready to start packing for my trip to Hong Kong.  I spent the rest of the night catching up on old episodes of Burn Notice (new to me this year and pretty good!) and The Closer (love Kyra Sedgwick).


I usually sleep in on weekends until at least 9 to try and make up some of the hours lost during the school week, but today I was up and out the door by 9 to meet up with a fellow Oregonian for some fun on the military base!  The population of students at my school is pretty diverse--some are ethnic Koreans, many are children of people who work for international companies, and some are embassy kids.  It just so happens that one of my wonderful students from last year is an embassy kiddo and her mom invited me out for a visit to the base.  We started off the morning with American style breakfast at the Navy Club (waffles--yum!).  From the outside the base doesn't look that big, but once we started driving around you discover that it's massive!  We drove around the base to see some of the structures that are still here from the Japanese occupation, passed by the tent city (yep, some guys do actually live in tents), passed the elementary/middle/high school buildings, cruised by the commissary (think large American grocery store), and I got to see the houses that the embassy folks live in.  It sort of reminded me of a small American town, which is strange to see in such a big city like Seoul.


After the tour, we made a stop at the thrift store and I was very happy to see $1 books--in English!!  Did I mention that most places on the base only take US dollars...next time I'll know better and bring my cash!  There was a bazaar at the high school, so we stopped there too for more shopping before heading over to Dragon Hill Lodge.  This is the military 4 star hotel and it's got lots of other things inside--restaurants, hair salon, clothing shops, and the PX shopette.  For a girl who hasn't seen American food items in over 4 months, the shopette is heavenly!  I found all sorts of great stuff...like Fruit Loops, Tostito's mild salsa, apple sauce, Skittles, Starbursts, Mike&Ike's, peanut butter m&m's, and more (don't worry mom, I won't eat them all in one sitting!).  Check out the photo of my exciting base finds:)

In the afternoon we went to a mat weaving class and learned how to weave grass reeds into fun little mats from an incredible artisan.  He promised to email the photos he took from the class today to us so if they show up I'll post one on the blog!  


I had just a couple of hours when I got home to eat, take this week's online chemistry quiz, and rest before the APAC (Asia Pacific Activities Conference) Dance performance.  For the last three days, dancers from various schools in China, Hong Kong, and the Philippines gathered in Seoul with our students for a dance festival of sorts and tonight was their culminating performance.  Those ladies and gentlemen rocked!!  The teenagers I am surrounded by on a daily basis are incredibly talented little humans and events like tonight give them an opportunity to showcase their creativity--plus it was cool to see kids from eight or nine different schools performing together in collaborative pieces that they put together on Thursday and Friday.  It's still early so I'm going to try to get through a pile of grading before I call it a night.