Lofgrens Abroad

Hi everyone! Welcome back to our blogosphere. The other blog started requiring me to pay them to post photos which is ridiculous since Facebook and Instagram are free so... bye bye WordPress... I am so sad that I haven't had or made the time to blog in months. Weekdays after school I'm too tired to do much of anything and the weekends are spent playing catch-up from the week. I have been completely consumed with work. December was a whirlwind of crazy responsibilities and expectations. The Christmas Concert production (and organizing parts of the staff Christmas party) fell on the shoulders of the Christmas Committee (which I was on) to make sure everything was executed well. Each class was in charge of their own contribution of the concert but all the behind the scenes and making sure all moving parts were aligned was left up to us... the majority being new people who had no idea what to expect or how to manage all of this. And in the midst of the chaos we also had parent ...

Since we've reached the point where we actually feel like we live here and aren't just staying in a hotel, I figured it would be fun to give you an overview of an everyday in the Lofgren household. School day Morning The kids have been sleeping until about 7 so Brett and I are usually up around 6:30/6:45. We make coffee, have breakfast, and wake Finn up-despite the fact that his alarm has already been beeping for several minutes 😂🙄. If Lucy isn't already up, we'll wake her up too. Lucy tends to pop out of bed a bit easier than Finn and recently has asked to get dressed almost immediately. The tricky part is she wants to wear her own clothes that she picks out but unfortunately she has to wear her uniform. Most of the week she wears her PE uniform which isn't very exciting so the other day when she picked out a colourful flowery shirt, she wouldn't let me take it off so our compromise was to put her PE shirt over it. Luckily her school is a bit more relaxed...

Sweater Weather Greetings folks! Things at school have definitely picked up and we are halfway through Term 1! Exciting but we definitely do not have any breaks between now and Christmas. However, the year 2 classes are going on a field trip on Wednesday to give us all a bit of a break. We are going to a place called the Zooarium where we all get to pet various types of animals. Should be interesting! We have gotten more into a rhythm of work and weekends so we have been living a more normal life rather than doing too much sight seeing. It is nice that the weather is changing--seeing all the changing leaves is always such a pleasant sight and the cooler weather is quite welcome after such a hot and humid summer. The one downside is we are having to pay closer attention to the air quality and we get alerts when it's bad. The students aren't permitted to be outside if the air quality is at a certain level. Here are some things we did over the last few weeks: Some delightf...

As many of you saw via the plethora of photos on my Instagram story (sorry not sorry 🙈) we spent some of our Chuseok holiday in Sokcho! Sokcho is a little beach city on the East Coast that is also nestled into the grandiose mountains of Seoraksan National Park and only about 2.5 hours by bus from Seoul! (And only an hour or so from North Korea! Which means... Lots of interesting history! (You thought I was going to say we went to North Korea, didn't you?!)) Anyway, we had tossed around the idea of going somewhere new (we had a week off for Chuseok so we had time) but we just love the place so much so why not go back? So glad we did! Day 1 Our hotel was in the National Park area so we were only about 10 minutes from the entrance and about 20 minutes from town (btw, all my measurements are in times by bus) so we were really out of the city and plopped right into nature--exactly what we wanted. Our hotel, which was more of a hostel/guesthouse, was super cute. Nothing fan...