Cosplay

Although Halloween is not till later this week, here in Korea we celebrated it this past weekend.  

In full force!

My record with Halloween is a solid 0-3.  With Halloween significantly kicking my ass every year!

And this year was no different.  

I would like to think that I put up a good fight.  Managed to stay… conscious… till the early hours of the morning.  But who really knows (sorry mom and dad!).  My text messages started to get a little wonky around 3am, so that's when I'm going to put the time stamp on my decline.  

But the night on the whole was another example of pure Busan-awesomeness!  

And my first go at cosplay!

Cosplay takes a lot of work!! 

I spent a good week assembling pieces for my costume, finding the right colors, getting the correct accessories together and a lonnnnng night in sewing just to make my costume.  I do have to admit - that I was really rather thifty and overall impressed with my craftiness.  Who knew the top half of tights could be turned into a cape?  

Not me! But I do now!!

Once the outfit was taken care of, it was time for the makeup!

We had all watched a bunch of anime makeup tutorials on Youtube - some making it look possible, others never in a million years.  

But that's where I lucked out.

One of my Korean friends, Yujin, is a professional makeup artist/makeup instructor at a vocational school, and she offered to do my makeup.  That was an offer I could NOT turn down!

getting started

Yujin was fantastic!! She brought over her whole kit to do my and Mallory's makeup and help us really kill our costumes!

The lashes were intense.  So dramatic. So fun!  I really need to learn how to put those on myself!

 finished makeup

It took about an hour to for Yujin to do my makeup.  She had asked me previously if we wanted our makeup to be soft, medium, or strong.  I told her STRONG!!!  We wanted it to pop.  And it definitely did!

My character has blue eyes, so I added cosplay blue contacts to fit the role.

While Mallory was getting her makeup done, I got my costume on and really started to transform myself.  

From Meagan…. into…. Sailor Mercury!

                

All I needed now was some blue hair.  Hellooo wig!

Once Mallory was finished, the fun really got started.  

Although we were dressed as part of a group of five, our other Sailor Scouts didn't get ready with us - so we had to head out to the Fireworks Festival alone.  We didn't stand out at all….

But soon we were united with the rest of our group of warriors and the Sailor Scouts were ready to defend the world from evil!

 Sadly I woke up with not a lick of makeup on and all lashes ripped off.  But the pictures are proof of my cosplay debut!
And how great we all looked!

More -er

My students had watched the "Daft Hands" version for the song 'Harder, Faster, Better, Stronger' by Daft Punk. 

They loved it.  So I took it one more step and showed them this video…

and asked them if they could do it.

I was greeted with a lot of no's.  Which is understandable.  The group of kids in the video are older than them.  And probably had multiple weeks to practice this song.  I was asking them to do it right then, same day.

But I'm not completely heartless.   I only asked them to do it with four cards.

In their groups (of four) each member would have a card that they would have to hold up when they heard their word - harder, faster, better, stronger.  They had heard the song perviously, we watched the Korean middle schoolers do it, and I showed them a version of the song with just the lyrics so that they could see their word when it was sung.

I wasn't asking too much!

Here's the results of how one class did...  

Not too bad if I do say so myself.  Only having heard it 3 times and never practicing.  I'm teaching a bunch of "geniuses"! 

Spelling Bees

was held this week for our fifth graders.

About 16 students signed up to compete to see who would be in the in-house champion.  

The winner would then go on to an area spelling bee, and from there - if they should win, I would assume they would just keep going up the ladder.  Never having been a champion speller, or even any good at spelling in general - I do not know how such events go on, but that is my best guess. :-P  

I made a list of 35 words, including 15 riddle questions, that we used to wean out the weak and find our winner.

Six students were left at the end

It was a bit difficult eliminating it further.  But eventually we got a winner, Min Seong (the boy in green on the end) was crowned and the celebration he displayed could have put any professional football player to shame in the end zone!! 

He's now studying up and with his already high English skills, he should stand a really good chance in the next competition. 

Good luck Min Seong!!

-er

Taller, faster, stronger, bigger, -er, -er, -er…

My 6th graders are currently learning the art of comparing two things*.  Which they seem to understand, but only choose to answer by shouting out one word answers.  :-/  English fail. 

So in order to make things a bit more lively, a bit more fun (comparing pencils and book bags can only take you so far) I planned for a Class Olympics today!

After a short review - two pages of stimulating textbook work - I explained how the Olympics would work, was greeted with happy smiles and eager head nods from my students; we headed outside to get the games started!

We compared: 

 height - taller

 speed - faster

 strength - stronger

size - bigger

Besides the craziness that ensued, it was a highly successful day!  

*We tried to compare 3 things, but they couldn't quite pick up the difference between -er and -est.  So we decided to not push our luck.  Test scores are what matter here anyways @.@

Weekend Update

Only just back from the dead and really taking time off.

  

You would have thought a 3month hiatus was enough to recharge all the whatnot and get things going again.  

Good grief!

But to go slightly easily on myself, the weekend was an uneventful-eventful few days.

Friday night was spent in. Relaxing and watching a Disney movie or two.  Every since our trip to Tokyo Disney (post will come eventually!) I have set myself the challenge (thanks to the idea from Zac) to watch all the Disney movies is order of their release date.

And I know! You're thinking… 

"Meagan, you are a Disney freak! Surely you have seen every Disney movie!" 

Which, to my dismay, is not true. Oh the shame!

There are either a few films I never saw, or saw so infrequent and so long ago that I don't remember them.  So I'm enjoying going through them now!

Saturday morning I went to the dentist for the first time in a bit too long.  But I am thankful I went to the dentist here, instead of back home like I was going to do when I was home for a month this summer (post will come eventually!).  

Why?

Because, despite being a bit more painful than I typically remember the dentist being, it only cost me 13,300 won (= $12.56) compared to the ~$250 they wanted back home! 

Bam. Winning!

I even made another appointment to go back and have my one silver filling changed to a clear one.  For only 90,000 won (= $84.97) 

Baaaammmm!!

Saturday afternoon/evening I went around with Kelly to find things for our Halloween costumes.  We were highly successful and managed to head home that evening with almost everything we needed.

My shopping bag that night included: a blue wig, blue tights, and a giant light blue bow.

Kelly, myself and 3 other of our friends are going as the Sailor Scouts this Halloween. It's going to be pretty awesome if I do say so myself.  

I was up till 3am Saturday night hand-sewing my Sailor Mercury costume together!  I'm really happy with it!  Can't wait to show it off this coming weekend. 

Sunday was a week post Canadian Thanksgiving, but since it's never to late to celebrate… anything! we had a potluck Thanksgiving dinner fit with all the fixings!  Ham, mashed potatoes, green beans, carrots, pasta salad, cranberry sauce, stuffing, beverages of every flavor, pumpkin cookies, pumpkin pie and other foods to snack on while the day was getting started!  

Everything was delicious.  

So much so that we were all pouting of overstuffed tummies and the need for roomier pants!  

But it was definitely worth it! 

Not the most exciting post to bring the dish back to life, but I wanted to get something up…

 so that I did get something up.  

I'll get back in the swing of it! 

Don't worry.

Alive

Well that was a bit of a break.  Worst I've taken yet!

But I feel like it is (well past) time I get back at it.

What's the point of taking pictures thinking "This will be a good story for the blog" and then never posting it!? 

I'm still here.

You're still out there.

But at this point you've probably stopping coming round.

Wait!! Come back!! I'll do better!! I'm going to start again!!  

Don't go! 

I have LOADS of crazy, head shaking, misadventures to share! 

The dish isn't empty.

"Stories… lead us back and forth across time and space and connect us to the entire universe, to people and beings we never see but who we feel exist."

- Vaddey Ratner, In the Shadow of the Banyan Tree