Happy 28th Birthday to Me!

I woke up this morning to the aroma of french toast filling the air of my apartment. When I opened my eyes, I saw that my wonderful husband was cooking it! I knew it was going to be a great day!

Today was an extra special birthday because it was also Teacher’s Day in Korea! It’s one thing to work on your birthday… It’s another thing when you go to work and are showered with birthday gifts and Teacher Day gifts! Who ever said working at an elementary school didn’t have its perks?!

I haven’t posted many pictures lately, so I made it a point to bring my camera along for the day! When I arrived at school today, all of the boy scouts and girl scouts greeted me with a “student tunnel!” They all yelled, “Happy Birthday Alexis” and pinned a paper carnation on my sweater. J (Sorry this picture is blurry… I forgot to switch it from manual focus to automatic focus.) I felt like a princess!

When I arrived at my first class of the morning, my 6th graders screamed “Happy birthday Alexis” and threw all these balloons in the air! It was quite the welcome!

When I got to my second class of the morning, my 6th graders all sang happy birthday to me...

*** When they sang happy birthday to me, they changed the lyrics and sang this: "Happy birthday to you... Happy birthday to you... We love you Miss Alexis... Happy birthday to you!" J

When I arrived at my third class of the morning, one of my 5th graders, Brandon, performed a taekwondo dance (set to Korean hip hop music) for Stella and I as our teacher day gift!  It was very cute!

These are two of my 5th grade girls who are really shy, but they gave me a gift; a bag full of candy! mmmmm.... (not good for my "summer body," but yummy none the less!)  They were so excited to see how excited I was about their humble gift!

Here's a picture of my 5th graders:

Here are some of the notes I got…  (Remember, I teach conversational English, NOT SPELLING!)  You can double click on these pictures to see larger versions if you want to read them.  They're all very funny!

This one is a picture of Stella and I. 






These are some of the notes written in Hangul.


This is from my vice principal.  I thought it was very sweet and thoughtful of him to buy my chocolate and put it in this nice little bag for my birthday!

I thought about it all morning, and felt so special!  When I got to lunch, he asked, "Did you enjoy my gift?  My daughter gave to me when she visit last time."  As you can imagine, my day dreams of him thoughtfully walking down the isle of the grocery store, choosing just the right chocolate and driving to the market to find just the right bag were completely shot to hell!  Oh well, he may have re-gifted, but I'm still happy because it's chocolate!

This is Stella holding my present!

In Korea, everyone and their mother has a cell phone charm on their phones - YES, even the men!  So since, I didn't have one, she bought me this one. 

It has green beads, silver bows, and a glass square with an emerald inside.  She said she picked this one because it's my birthday stone!  She told me she wanted to buy one for Kevin too, but didn't know when his birthday is.  Apparently couples in Korea have matching cell phone charms.  I'm sure Kevin is thanking his lucky stars right now that he never told her his birthday!  Can you imagine him walking around with this charm on his phone?  Everyone already thinks he's metro!

Tonight, Kevin has planned a surprise for me!  I have NO IDEA what it is... but I'm really excited!  And as a gift to myself, I think I'll take a taxi home from work today... because I think birthday girls should never have to ride the bus or walk home from work!  Haha! :)