Our Grand Adventure: Our last and final update!

Now that we are in the last two weeks of classes, we don't have much to report on...

On Oct 30th we had a Halloween party and an English festival that the students worked hard on since the beginning of the semester. Each of our classes performed a play, song, or recital of some sort all in English. Jacob did "Going on a Bear Hunt", our coworker did a Pinocchio play, and I did Taylor Swift's "Shake it Off" song with a dance. Overall, our performances went really well and it was awesome to see all the students have fun on the stage!

After the English festival, we had our Halloween party. I put together trick or treat bags with the kids and made a chocolate/peanut butter dessert and cookies for all the students. Jacob bought stuff for apple bobbing and or coworker had a dance party in her class. It was a great afternoon for everyone!

On Nov 25th, we had an open class, which afforded the board of education, parents and teachers an opportunity to see all of us foreigners in action! We found out a few days before our class that the local news station was also coming to film us and were going to do a 5-minute segment on our English Center. The pressure was high! At the end of the class parents were asked to fill out a survey and Jacob got RAVE REVIEWS. All of the parents in his class loved it and thought he did a great job. I think it's just cause he's the white guy... always gets special treatment...

The next day, Thanksgiving, was so lonely! Since turkeys are impossible to find in Korea, I made a chili and mashed potato dinner. We curled up on the couch and watched Ant Man, and then I cried myself to sleep. Well, not really, but it was a sad and lonely Thanksgiving!

We are now officially into December and just finished our final exams, are finishing writing our evaluations, and preparing for our closing ceremony! We have a lot to get done before the year is over, but I think time is about to fly! We have even started selling all of our belongings that we acquired at the beginning of this year.

Our tickets home are purchased and we will be seeing everyone on December 26th! Our flight arrives at PDX around 3:30-4pm and we are counting down the days! Although we are sad that we don't get to spend the Christmas holiday with family, we are so happy with our experience here and wouldn't trade it for anything!

We will probably upload a video of our year in review with a link to a photo album of all the photos (including ones that we didn't post here) as our farewell/final blog entry! Be on the lookout sometime during the New Year!