More Hiking Adventures

     Yikes, I tend to keep promising constant posts that I don't live up to.  In my defense, it was an amazing weekend in Seoul that I just had, and I'm still coming down from that a bit.  Now that I think about it, my blog is starting to resemble "How I Met Your Mother" in that there's this constant promise of a story soon to be told that might never actually be told.  I can promise you that I'll get to everything in good time, and I'll throw you two quick posts about various hiking trips with my schools in the fall.

     So let's get that started, so I can move onto my first trip to Seoul, which will come soon.  Now we move into the first week of October, which saw Jeollanam-do looking as beautiful as ever as the colors began to change.  Lots of schools tend to want to go hiking with their staff and students, and Sonbul Seo, my Friday school, was no exception.  This particular hiking trip was to the same locale as my previous post/hike, with my Sonbul Elementary staff: Yeongchonsa Temple, in the northern part of the county.  It's only about a 15 minute bus ride from Sonbul Seo, so that was nice and convenient.  Here is a little bit of documentation from the day:

Here are the 6th grade boys of Sonbul Seo, all 4 of them.  Keeping in mind that this school has 49 total students (or thereabouts), it tends to function as one big family, and that's really cool.  From left to right: Bond, James, Harry, and Ricky.

A nice little bridge we crossed on the early stretch of our hike.

Here's a nice shot of Hampyeong's official flower (that I promise I'll learn how to spell, starting tomorrow at school) that I still cannot spell or pronounce correctly to save my life.  But it's beautiful, isn't it?

Two really cute 1st grade girls, who were happy to pose for a picture with me.  I can't stress enough how sweet these kids are; as mentioned before, it being such a small school, everyone seems to get along really well and look after one another, so even the particularly young students are more or less happy and humble (sometimes even shy) kids.

Lots of ups and downs walking through the woods, but lots of shade and beautiful flowers everywhere.

And here's a whole patch of them.  These things make snapping pictures too easy.

A nice patch of the beautiful flowers catching some sun.

Students all bring backpacks, like so, for field trips.  It's one of those days where cafeteria food isn't going to be an option, so teachers tend to let students run wild with soda, candy, and all kinds of snacks.  The one rule, often, is that Sam Teacher gets to sample everything.

Here is a picture of my co-teacher Colleen, myself, and two of the previously mentioned sweet 1st grade girls.  

Here are my sweet little 3rd grade students.  Eric, the one in the middle, seemed to be the only one who got the memo to look like he was happy to be away from school for the day. 

Cool kids.

Here's a nice picture in front of a cool little lake in the middle of the park area.  From left to right: Bond (6th grade stud), me, Bond's Mom, and a co-teacher of mine at Sonbul Seo, Janet (nicest lady, away from her home of the Philippines for many years, but she gets to go back during vacation in a month!), and my co-teacher Colleen.

Kindergarten kids being cute and awesome.

Running around in the park.  Big game of tag was on, and Sam Teacher seemed to be dubbed "it" just about every time.

One of the few flowers in sight that wasn't actually one of the brilliant red ones. 

Janet really has some quick hands.  She caught this dragonfly out of mid-air!

6th graders hopping around on the rocks in the lake.

Having some snacks with Carl, a 5th grader, and Mark, a 4th grader.  Really cool dudes, but it's unbelievably difficult to get them to smile!

     So that's a short one, I know, but I'm at that point where I ought to just start grinding out multiple entries per day in order to keep things moving.  I'll throw another one up if I have time tonight, otherwise I'll add some pics and chirps about the 3rd major field trip, which was the following week with Sonbul Elementary, my Wednesday school.  

     Thanks for being patient, and thanks for reading!  Lots of love to everyone back home, can't tell you how weird it will be to be away from Christmas this year.  Thanks for all your kind words and support.

All the best, and love to all,

Sam Teacher