Hospitals and Christmas Countdowns

Hi everyone,

Another week passed and now we're only about 12 weeks from coming home!

There haven't been any significant developments between North and South Korea - it seems to have blown over for now.

School is the same as ever - nothing new to report. The weather here is pretty mild compared to how early December usually is back home so we're enjoying it while it's lasting. We had one light dusting of snow which didn't last long but that's all so far.

This weekend, Jesse and I made a massive subway trek to Gangnam, a city South of Seoul. We went there because one of Jesse's favorite students, Hanseul, was in the hospital and we wanted to visit her. She's 7 years old and needs a walker to get around so, from what we understood, she was getting surgery on her legs to either help her walk better or to prevent further problems. Anyway, the poor little girl is out of school for three months and both her legs were in pink casts when we got there. We brought her some English books because she loves books and speaking English and wants to be an English author one day. It was actually really nice to visit her. She's cute as a button and super smart and we just chatted with her for about 40 minutes about all sorts of stuff. I think she was really happy to have visitors and she loves Jesse, clearly.

After that, we headed into Seoul where our friend, Jen, from South Africa, was having a goodbye party. She's been here for a year and a half and is heading home on Tuesday. It was at an Irish pub called the Wolfhound and it was good to eat delicious food and hang out with everyone for the evening. Jen is awesome and it will be sad to see her go but her replacement was there and she seems really cool.

On Sunday, Jesse did his homework for his AQ course and I did some Christmas shopping - nothing exciting.

We're still doing our Korean lessons but I'm losing patience with myself for not learning it faster. We showed our text books to Hanseul and she said "too easy!" and laughed her guts out.

Anyway, that's about all that happening for us right now. Christmas is right around the corner and everyone is getting into the Christmas spirit. I have my students learning a million Christmas carols and making all sorts of decorations for our classrooms.

I hope all of you are also feeling merry these days,

Talk soon,

Ali and Jesse