St. Patty's Day snow...and Slingbox!

Well, so much for spring arriving anytime soon. I had read that it was supposed to snow yesterday but I was anticipating a few flakes, well...I was wrong. I was at school and at about 2:00 one of my kids said "teacher, it's snowing!" Well, 9 hours later it was still snowing, and last night coming home from school really did feel more like December than mid March. It has snowed so much here this winter compared to last year. This morning when I woke up though the sun is out and the snow looks really pretty. Here are a few pictures from my apartment. Also, as promised a few months ago here is a picture of one of our school backpacks. I think they are pretty cute, and they look sharp when I see the kids wearing them, much better than our old generic bags that were just powder blue with some cartoon character named Goorumi (yeah, I have no idea! HA). The bag said "if you're ever sad, just remember Goorumi loves you!" Wow, what a comforting thought there! But hey, the old bags were only 2,000 Won so you get what you pay for. I really like the new bags and Dana and I were pretty excited when we got them.
Ok, if you've never heard of Slingbox, you might be missing out on one of the greatest inventions ever. Basically it's a way to watch TV from a remote site (I don't care much about TV other then sports). So, my friend Jarvis hooked one up to his TV box in Florida, then I can access it through a website and I can watch his TV, just like I'm sitting in a La-Z-Boy at his house. I can even see the remote on my laptop, just as if I held it in my hand. So, he and I watched the whole ACC tournament (which, by the way Duke won!!) and were able to chat during the games using Yahoo Messenger. So, in effect he and I can watch games together now...it's amazing. I hadn't seen a Duke game in almost 2 years, so it was really exciting for me. The only problem was I had to watch the games at 2 AM here, since of course US and Korea times are so different, but...he can record things and I can watch them at my leisure if I want, but any of you that know me know that I would rather watch it live at 2 AM then recorded at 9 AM. Anyway...sorry for the ramble there, but I'm very excited to have access to this thing especially now that it's NCAA tourney time! Thanks Jarvis!

Party time!

First I want to start by wishing my big brother a Happy Birthday! I hope you have a great day man! :)
Well, just a few weeks ago I was certain that spring was just about here, but I was really wrong. Two weeks ago the weather was up around 60 and feeling great, well...it dipped back down and yesterday after school I was leaving and to my surprise when I walked out of the school the wind was howling and the snow was coming down, hard! I catch a bus each day, and there are a lot of buses so usually the wait is only about five minutes, well...of course yesterday on the coldest, snowiest day it's been in a while (and the day I only had my fleece hoodie on) it took about twenty minutes for a bus to come around. Ugh! It was awful, the wind was blowing so hard! So, spring is NOT here and I think dressing like it is won't make it actually come any faster.
Just an update on the school...things are going well, the new semester started here on March 2nd, we added ten new students last week, so there are kids running around everywhere in the school now. We had a slot that opened up and the first day (last Wednesday) we had four kids and by Friday there were seven new kids in that class. So, it's been awesome how well the school has done so far...I hope we can continue to grow.
Well, about a month ago we had a Lunar New Year (Seollal or 설날) party at our school for the kids, it was a lot of fun. The kids dressed up in traditional clothes called Hanbok and we had a party at the school. We made kites, which is a traditional thing for the men and boys to do on Seollal. Dana also made some little paper purses for the kids...they were really cool, but really detailed, so I just stayed out of the way, I can't fold paper straight, much less make a purse. Kids here on Lunar New Year bow to their parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, etc. and they give them money on Lunar New Year, so the kids could attach that little paper purse to their hanbok and their family could put money in the little bag. Some of the kids made out like bandits, one of my kids that's like seven years old got over 200,000 Won, or around $170! Not bad for a days work of bowing, eh?! HA! After making kites and bags we played a traditional game called Yutnori, it was a lot of fun. I will just put a link to the game here and you can read about it if you like, rather than me trying to explain it. Here's the Wiki link
We had a great time at the party...I forgot my camera, but fortunately Dana brought hers and she got some cool pics.