School!

Summer vacation has ended and it took 3 weeks to get all 3 girls in school but we are in school!
Sophie was the first to start. My signs did not work as well this year, oh well. Sophie is in 3rd grade and is so happy to be back in school (even though her homework is hard sometimes). Sophie's teacher, Ms Aubel, is really nice. Sophie actually had her last year for language arts (Ms Aubel was a 2nd grade teacher and offered to let Sophie go to her class for that one subject before Sophie was advanced).
Sophie's second day of school was canceled due to a typhoon, crazy!

Sophie looking cute on her first day of school

Walking in to class.

Kindergarten starts a week after everyone else. This gives the kindergarten teachers a chance to do a home visit and to learn a little bit more about who their students are (school classes are decided at the last minute due to all the changes that come and parents can't register until in country). Elanor was selected to be in a Korean immersion kindergarten class. Around week 6 or 7 her teacher will introduce Korean and she will learn to read and write it and do at least some science in Korean. I am excited for this challenge. Elanor will still have all the same specials as the other students and will actually get some Spanish also. I am hoping this will help her not be bored when the other students are learning to read.

First day cuteness.



Andrew takes the girls to school and got a glimpse of her class

And last of all was our cute Charlotte, she is going to preschool twice a week. We are doing a co-op with 4 friends from church. Each of us takes a turn being the teacher and hosting preschool at our house. After the first day of school Charlotte declared it too short. The next day she was ready to go again but she had to wait a few more days. She loves preschool, loves her friends and loves learning. 

Preschool cheese!

Days 6 and 7: Gyeongju and the drive home

Andrew has some good connections, we were able to stay in a nice resort for 2 nights and it came with 6 passes to their water park/spa. Plus the price was pretty cheap. His connection was also trying to get us on a bus tour of Gyeongju to see all the main historical sites. The nice thing would be we wouldn't have to drive but the downer was we wouldn't be able to understand anything since it is all in Korean. We opted to cancel our reservations on the bus tour and just figure everything out using google maps on my phone and a print out map of the area. We succeeded and had a great day. We were able to call it quits when we were ready. The main attractions were Bulguksa temple and Seokguram grotto. We also did some shopping and purchased some serving platters.

drinking the water to "add years to my life"

cool fish

lanterns

 



the hills are burial tombs



 

The last day we stopped at one last stop to see some burial mounds. Then we had a leisurely drive home. Our vacation was fun and full of right decisions.



Day 4 and 5: Travels to and from Daegu

Random picture from the expo. Thought it was cute and wanted to add it :).

The nice people who owned the motel we stayed at prepared us breakfast this morning. It was frosted flakes, toast, jam, orange juice and cherry tomatoes.

Charlotte sitting on our bed

We packed up all our things are headed northeast to Daegu where there is a military base to refuel (much cheaper than getting on the economy) and to stay at a westernized hotel with very comfy beds. Andrew has already traveled to Daegu a time or 2 for work purposes and stays at this really nice hotel. After 3 nights on a korean hard mattess (or on the floor) we were ready for something comfy.

view from the bathroom, there was a door that slid closed to get privacy

view from hotel window

the toilet was in its own shower stale, the shower was in a different one

We went out to dinner with some of Andrew's coworkers to a really yummy korean bbq place down an alley way. But I have a whole post idea on the foods we ate (hopefully it will get written sooner rather than later:)). Then on Sunday morning one of Andrew's coworkers took us to see a huge Buddha statue and a buddhist temple.

This statue is new, I think it was build in the early 2000s. Underneath was an area people worshipped, no cameras in many of the places we visited these last few days.

Pagoda

kissing a lion

cute girls

bell :)

Buddha

throwing coins and making wishes

 

We had a great day seeing the temple and taking a hike. Then we drove to our next destination, Gyeongju and the beach. It was fun to take Beckie to the western, southern and eastern shores of Korea. The benefit of going to the beach with a native Korean speaker is you get chicken delivered on the beach (it happened so quick I didn't get a picture of it).

Beautiful sunset

 

showing off chopsticks that came with our chicken

 

playing in the water