Thanksgiving in Korea Part 1

Posted on June 26, 2012 by Meagan & Dave | HappilyEverExpat.com

I had two Thanksgivings in 2011. The first was a potluck with a large group of friends the Saturday before Thanksgiving. Our group was made up of people from seven different countries. The food was delicious and the company was great. I even brought the game LCR and it was a big hit. (Fun Fact: This was the night before Dave and I went on our very first date.)

Saturday, November 19

Grace (England) was our gracious host. I’m not sure what she made. It was a dessert of some sort.

Nicola (Ireland) brought soup.

Jennie (England) brought pigs in a blanket.

Cilla (New Zealand) brought brownies.

Vlad (Canada) brought a salad.

Justin’s (Canada) stuffing was soooo good!

JuHye (Korea) made gnocchi and roasted veggies.

Megan (Chicago, IL) brought sweet potato casserole.

I brought broccoli, rice & cheese casserole.

Everyone brought a dish and everyone voted for the best one after we ate.

Look at all of that food!

More food!

Thanksgiving spread

Making a toast

Fall napkins

Thanksgiving dinner

Already in a food coma… halfway through dinner

Thanksgiving dinner – After

Alex (England) won the “Good Effort Award” because he brought wine rather than cooking.

Beth (England) won the Best Dish Runner-Up Award for her chili.

Stella won the Top Turkey Award for her Clam Chowder.

After dinner we played one of my favorite games, Left Center Right. And the lucky winners of the games took home lots of 1,000 won bills, y’all!

Ready to play LCR

Playing LCR

Ashley’s (California, US) money

Vlad was really getting into it

Taking a time-out for Shots

The LCR prize money

Chris was the first LCR winner.

LCR victory dance

He made it rain.

LCR winner

It was such a fun night! We all had a great time.

Hanging around

Sharing a chair with Jennie

Jeff (Arkansas, US) lounging around

Post game chatting

Group photo

Check out my post about my second Thanksgiving celebration.

Pepero Day

Posted on June 26, 2012 by Meagan & Dave | HappilyEverExpat.com

Pepero Day is celebrated on 11/11 because Pepero (known as Pocky in Japan) is long and straight and if you hold up 4 sticks it looks like 4 1’s. Usually kids hand out Pepero to their friends and teachers, but my school banned it because it’s a commercial holiday. 55% of all Pepero sales are in November every year.

My friends and I decided to celebrate Pepero Day by having a big Pepero making party. We bought meltable chocolate, plain cookie sticks and molds. It was a great night.

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Beomeosa Temple

Posted on June 26, 2012 by Meagan & Dave | HappilyEverExpat.com

Beomeosa Temple is one of my favorite places in Busan. It’s so pretty and peaceful. Here are some photos I took last June.

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Halloween

Posted on June 26, 2012 by Meagan & Dave | HappilyEverExpat.com

I’m trying to catch up the blog so here’s a post from way back when.

I introduced Halloween to my students on Friday’s English Broadcast. I also invited them all to go Trick-or-Treating in the English classroom after lunch. The Trick-or-Treating turned out to be chaotic. I was passing out candy and JuHye was painting faces… and the other two English teachers never came. Actually, my head co-teacher did show up about 5-10 minutes before it was supposed to end. That was quite helpful because she was able to regain order. The kids go crazy for candy! They also really loved the Halloween goodies that Mary sent me. I had students begging for spider rings and bats. One boy kept begging me for a dragon and I had no idea what he was talking about. Apparently he thought the bats were dragons and he was not happy with me that he didn’t get one.

Thank you, Mary, for all of the wonderful Halloween goodies you sent for me and my students!

After school I whipped up a delicious meal for Shanna and Jamie, the girls in my neighborhood. Thanks to care packages from home, Costco and Mega Mart, we had fajitas, tortillas, REAL cheese, salsa rice, Pace Picante Sauce and Dr. Pepper! It was so so good and tasted like home. I always loved to cook for other people and now I plan to do it at least monthly.

A year in photos – Day 120

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Sunday, June 24

Drivers and pedestrians have to be really cautious because it isn’t uncommon for cars to run red lights. It seems like red lights are optional. There’s really nothing that stops people from doing this… Police don’t seem too bothered by traffic violations.

A year in photos – Day 119

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Saturday, June 23

I had a really great weekend in Ulsan with Dave. I hadn’t seen him for almost two weeks because he had been back in Australia so it was nice to be together again.

We had planned to have a really relaxing weekend, but we ended up being very productive. We completely made over two of the rooms in his apartment. Now instead of two rooms that were quite cluttered and basically non functional, he now has an office and a bike room. We are both really happy with the results. And we had a lot of fun doing it.

A year in photos – Day 118

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Friday, June 22

I had to judge an English speech contest at my school today. The students all turned in scripts and I was able to read them over yesterday. This was my favorite speech. I thought it was clever and cute.

There were a lot of really impressive scripts, but it turns out that a lot of them didn’t live up to the writing. It was probably a mixture of nerves and the fact that the speeches were either written by or heavily revised by someone with a much higher English level.

I was really impressed by one 4th grader in particular. Yesterday when I read the scripts, I didn’t think much of hers. It was really simple. She wrote about I can/can’t.

She nailed it! She exuded confidence and memorized her speech perfectly. The great thing about it was that she probably wrote the entire thing herself. It was simple, but it was on her level and she did a fantastic job.

She won… the 3rd/4th grade competition. And both of the other top 3 had lived in the States for 6 months.

A year in photos – Day 117

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Thursday, June 21

A while back I posted a pic of a man pulling a trash cart. It wasn’t a great pic… The cart wasn’t very full and it was pretty far away. I feel like you didn’t get the full effect.

This hunchbacked woman pushes trash all through the neighborhood. They are out when it’s hot, cold, rainy, you name it.

A year in photos – Day 116

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Wednesday, June 20

Yards aren’t very common here so a lot of people have rooftop gardens. This is one that I find particularly impressive. Its located right across the street from the back of my school.

A year in photos – Day 115

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Tuesday, June 19

What’s that? Oh, it’s just my feet in bags.

Beauty stores are HUGE here. They are about as common as Starbucks in NYC. They are on every corner.

Nature Republic sells these awesome peeling foot masks. You wear these plastic baggies over your feet for 60-90 minutes and 5-7 days later your foot starts shedding all of its skin. I’m planning to bring some back to Texas with me this fall. Let me know if you want one.