Unfortunately I'm not Irish

It's so strange how you can be an integral part of a child's life everyday for almost a year and then never see them again.  Being a teacher is way different than being a parent, but I still feel like a second mother to the kindergartners that I had last year and it is such a strange feeling not to see them everyday and that I will probably never see them again.

I have noticed something very strange as late, as I am trying to find new spring/summer work shoes:  Koreans have a fascination with really nice, name brand sneakers and they are readily available, but when it comes to nice dress shoes that don't cost an arm and a leg, Korean stores are severely lacking.  Cheap dress shoes are plentiful, but often these very poor quality and not comfortable at all, especially when they have heels.  When it comes to shoes, it is very important to me to buy well made, good quality dress shoes.  It can really screw up your feet if you are wearing ill-fitting, uncomfortable shoes as well as making your day worse because your feet are killing you.  I'm going to need to go on a good shoe spree when I get home.  Le sigh.  I miss TJ Maxx  and outlet stores.

I took a little adventure for St. Paddy's Day.  I went on a booze cruise with Erik, Brittany and a Korean helper teacher who has been wanting to work on his English.  It was fairly entertaining.  It had the best beer that I've had in almost a year.  Have a mentioned that Korean beer is all very light and has no real flavor?  It's no good in my opinion.  There were people walking up to the boat carrying their own bottles of everything you could imagine.  I personally found this strange because it was an all-you-can-drink cruise that you had to pay for so I don't understand why you would want to pay for alcohol to take onto the boat full of unlimited alcohol that you had already paid for.  The food was pretty good too.  There was a pig roast and a variety of wraps to choose from.  We made a stop half way through the three hour cruise at the dock again to "buy more alcohol and use the bathroom" but I really think it was to see if some of the drunk people would wander off and never make it back to the boat which was ridiculously crowded.  St. Patrick's Day is a very strange holiday to explain to Koreans, as well as being a strange holiday to celebrate at school considering we don't celebrate Independence Day or several other more meaningful American holidays.  How do you explain to small Korean children that the holiday we are celebrating is about some guy who lived a long time ago and we wear green and drink lots of alcohol to celebrate?  It just doesn't make sense.

So instead of explaining, we just painted their faces and made shamrock crowns.  Two of my kids wanted to be painted like a tiger and a cheetah.  It was adorable.