tongsaeng, onni and omma go to school.

Reunited and it feeeeels so gooood! is the theme song I'd like you to hum in your head as you take a gander at these photos.

Well, after a 12 hour flight alongside every unhappy Korean baby ever born, we finally made it to Seoul and were greeted by my leetle seester (my "tongsaeng"), and no one needs to worry: she is as pretty and cool as ever.

Our first stop this morning was to find out what she's been doing at school all year. Here she is, infiltrating the young, pliable minds of her Koala class with propaganda such as "The Itsy Bitsy Spider."

I suppose now is as good a time as any to start telling you funny kid stories, since I know that's why you're here in the first place. Allow me to introduce you to our new friends, June and Edward, who are the first two candidates to come home in my backpack. Amy informed us today that last week, she overheard a conversation in Korean between these two BFFs that, loosely translated, went something like this:
June: "Did you just fart?"
Edward: "Nope."
June: (crawls over to put his face next to Edward's backside) "Because it smells kind of bad here. I think you farted."
I don't even need to tell you how hard that made me laugh at lunch today, and even though these two didn't understand what the joke was, they giggled along with us with their sweet little faces all lit up. Oh MAN, I think I'm in love again!

So here's a universal fact: kids love cameras. They think you are really cool if you have one and they want to hang out with you. This brings us to the photography portion of the school day, when my Canon got hijacked by rowdy Korean 6 year olds. Here's a photo montage:


practicing their SLR skills in front of the mirror with Miss Amy's older sister ("onni").









lunch, as interpreted by Joon.










Mom ("omma"), as interpreted by Alex.








Checking out some shots of Bolivian kids their age with no idea what they were looking at. Perhaps you have noticed that I look like a bag lady in this photo-- that's because I'd just escaped from the Meysun Beauty Salon, which consisted of two aesthetics-minded boys who ran up to me and said "PLAY?!" only to promptly lead me to the plastic set of salon tools.
Here they are "curling," "drying," and "brushing" my hair and also putting on a full face of makeup with the plastic lipstick. Here's a quandary: how does a 6 year old Korean boy know how to do eyeshadow and eyebrow shaping? Not to mention paint his own nails for real? That's something to think about.







To conclude, an avant garde idea: does this pensive child look like he was born a chopsticks expert? It would appear so.














But closer review proves otherwise. Apparently you can purchase beginner chopsticks, like training wheels for Asian kids, that have little finger holes and spring-lock action. Does it get any cooler than that?!