Settling Back In

Our first few weeks back in Korea have passed in a blur. The kids went to their first day of school the Friday after we got back. Sasha had PE for her first day so she did not get to wear "something beautiful" but had to wear her PE uniform instead. I don't think she's over this yet and the fact that she had to pose for first day of school pics only added insult to injury.

 Teddy on the other hand was just thrilled to be going to all-day school and bringing his lunch AND riding a school bus from the main school to the EYC (early years center) where he goes.

Both of the kids love their teachers and have settled in so well. The cats are also thrilled to be adjusting to the return of their people. Max usually goes to bed with the kids. Of course a mere bed isn't enough for him so he usually picks a kid and then settles down on their pillow. That person is then kicked off their pillow for the duration but the kids don't seem to care.

When I check on them later all 3 of them are fast asleep, but Max usually looks up like I am totally disturbing him. Sorry Max...

Sasha lost her other top front tooth and now has the official 1st grade gap-toothed grin. She is of course thrilled and proud to be counted among the toothless:

She looks adorable except when she gets mad or upset and then she kind of looks like a mini-vampire which is pretty freaky. You can kind of see what I mean in this picture. A bit fang-like eh?

The school has been gearing up for Pirate's day (which warrants it's own post) and the kids at the EYC actually got to dress like Pirates for school a week after we got home. Teddy was stoked, and made an awesome Pirate. His "Yo-ho, yo-ho" is top notch, and we downloaded the track from the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disney so he's well on his way to belting that one out.

Jeff and Sasha love to get into things together. They are both sooo creative which is great, however I do have to remind them that if they are going to paint/make boxes/papermache/paper airplanes/plant things, ect. that there is also clean-up involved. Here they are doing "chop-stick lessons" one day when Teddy was sleeping.

And the day they decided to make a paper mache dinosaur. Teddy was done with THAT project in about 30 minutes and I wanted no part of it from the get-go but Sasha stuck with it for the whole 3 hours. Now I have a funky, paper mache Spinosaurus on my sun porch. Awesome. It'll stay there until I toss the thing in a few months and then they'll both freak out and go "we were gonna paint that!!" ect. And then they'll come up with some other messy random project. It's a repeating cycle...

Jeff brought the fondu pot to Korea and we've been having lots of fun with it. Teddy is the one who gets covered in chocolate and Sash stays relatively clean so that's a shocker.  Of course I am a natural when it comes to chocolate fondue. "You need what you say? A plate of random things that can be dipped in chocolate? This is a mission I have been waiting for all my life. You have come to the right person my friend..."

 

 The crazy people we live with continue to astound. Zoe and Julian had a B-Day BBQ for a friend in the compound. Now Zoe and Julian have recently moved into a new bungalow. The Korean tradition is to bring lots of toilet paper as a house warming present when someone moves into a new dwelling. You remember the stack we got? Yeah we've barely made a dent it in. Well some of the dads thought that TP'ing their house would be soooo much more fun than just giving them packages of TP. Then it turned into a TP'ing lesson for the kids, which of course was a HUUUGE hit. 

Here's the adults carrying on like nothing has happened. Yeah, just a bit of madness and now I'll have another drink thanks. Meanwhile the kids have taken the ball and run all the way down the field with it. So when you look at this picture imagine screaming and TP rolls flying in all directions as the adults are just hanging out and talking.

Sasha thought this was like the best BBQ EVER! My kids are going to have such a skewed perspective on "normal"! (like they wouldn't have already with me as their parent....)

All I was thinking was "who's going to clean all this up?" but the same Dads that started it ended up paying the kids 10,000 won to clean it up. Of course first they had to drape themselves with it and be mummies.

See why I'm always so tired? It's like "We're doing What? When? NOW?!? Aww man, OK, OK, I'm in...."