Winter Camps at Chopyeong

So my school days at Chopyeong were officially over on December 18th but I still had three days of winter camps from Dec 26~28th with the kids. Chopyeong is very easy going with my winter camps and I have full control over what I can do so I usually try to make it more fun rather than academic since they kids don't necessarily have to attend but they do because their families are busy or they have nowhere else to go during winter break.

I decided to focus on a winter/Christmas/New Years theme since the holidays were just over and the new year was just around the corner.

Christmas is one of my favourite holidays so we started by going over Christmas vocabulary and key phrases and launched into making Christmas cards:

Making the cards.

Writing a Christmas greeting.

Finished cards.

 Then we made a Christmas decoration that I remember making in elementary school and absolutely loving: Christmas stained glass windows!

Cutting out the stencils.

Cutting and pasting on cellophane.

Finished product looks great held up to the window!

For my summer camps last year we made french toast and pasta and it was loads of fun, so I definitely wanted a cooking component to winter camp as well. I decided on making a traditional winter drink for them: apple cider! Hot, spicy, just the right thing for a cold day. I had planned to make it together as a whole class and go over ingredients and a recipe in English but the stained glass took a lot longer than expected so I made it for them on the side and served it:

Setting up.

Slicing up the apples, ginger and orange.

Infusing fruit and cinnamon with apple juice.

They liked it!

Then we had our New Year's class. I taught them some vocabulary and phrases related to New Year's Eve and then we got ready to have a mock new year's eve party. We made paper plate party hats, toilet paper roll noise makers and balloon poppers. After everything was made we had our countdown!

 

Overall, it was a great way to end my year at Chopyeong. I will really miss these kids whom I've gotten to know on a first name basis and would love to run into one of them years later and see how they've gotten along.

Yeongdeok Cultural Trip

Happy new year! So I know this post about my cultural trip is coming in a little late but the holiday season has been crazy, so excuse the unpunctual updating.

In the TaLK program, we get "cultural money" which means we can spend it on things that allow us to experience or learn about Korean culture. This semester my coteacher Bella and I had no idea what we wanted to do so it was left up to the decision of our mentor teacher Anthony, and he made a great choice. We rented a car and drove east to the province of Gyeongsangbuk-do to the fishing town of Yeongdeok along with another TaLK scholar and his mentor teacher and coteacher from a school in our area. The journey took about four hours each way but it was worth it! The town seemed relative small but when we drove down to the main harbour - holy smokes! It was a beautiful day, we were next to the ocean and there were seafood shops everywhere.

And what kind of seafood is Yeongdeok known for? Crabs. A lot of crabs, especially snow crabs. It's even the town's mascot and there were statues of  crabs everywhere. Let me allow the pictures to do the talking:

Giant crab statue over a crab restaurant.

 

Massive seafood market.

View of the harbour from our restaurant.

This is the massive shopping basket of crabs we picked to eat

Bring on the crabs.

The devastation after we ate.

The snow crabs we got were delicious - they were so fresh and sweet and thinking about them now is making me want more. We didn't have too much time to spend there since the commute was so long but we did go to see a lighthouse with an iconic crab claw after we ate and took some pictures next to the beautiful east coast of Korea.

I'm really glad I got to visit Yeongdeok as part of my culture trip this semester. I don't think I would've gotten a chance to go there on my own since I had no idea what it was about at all. We have plans to try and go down there again to eat snow crabs before I return to Canada. If you are on the east coast of Korea and want to try some amazing seafood, definitely visit Yeongdeok - you won't be disappointed!