A good laugh...

This is to hold you over until I have time to type up my latest thoughts!

My co-worker found this blog and I'm in love.  Whoever wrote it gets it just right.  This is really how it feels being a foreigner in Korea sometimes!  And the visual element just makes it...perfect.

http://kikinitinkorea.tumblr.com/

Much love to everyone!

KPop

Ahhhh K-Pop, how do I explain our relationship.  Well, first of all, you hear these songs all over the place.  Second of all, they are super catchy...even when you don't know what they are saying.  I'm actually developing a genuine affection for these songs.

First up, is Big Bang.  Big Bang is a boy band that is super hot right now.  Most of my girl students have crushes on them and know all the words to the songs.  "Fantastic Baby" is one of their big songs right now and all my students like singing the chorus...and even the parody "Fantastic Chicken."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AAbokV76tkU&ob=av2n

Enjoy the costuming and hairstyles...No, I don't know what this video's about, sorry^_^

While Big Bang is my newest find, the Wonder Girls will always be my first KPop love.  This song was really popular this winter.  And I love it.  It's just so peppy.  I think Wonder Girls are actually trying to cross over to the West with all the tweens.  Good luck to them!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3fy4cqWMhyI&ob=av2e

Don't bother with their all English version though...it's not as good.

Enjoy this little cultural exchange!

Moses Miracle at Jindo

In March, we went to see the "Moses Miracle" at Jindo.  I'm pretty sure that's South Western Korea...I just paid my money for the tour and went where they told me!  These first few pictures are from a town that's famous for it's Japanese plum blossoms.  Apparently, the light pink/white flowers are for plum trees.  Who knew??

If we had been a couple of days later, they would have all been in full bloom and this whole mountainside would have looked like a big fluffy cloud...but you take what you can get right?

Some traditional stuff...

Don't you want me to teach your child?  I'm especially great with bronze children...

Our next stop was the green tea fields.  Again, we were a little earlier.  They are best when they are really really bright green...but I still thought they were awesome.

I climbed this.

Sneak attack!! An adorable father daughter moment.

View from the top!

Photographic evidence that I was actually there.

Then we went to the festival at the beach in Jindo.  These are drunk old Korean people dancing in the street and drawing in some Western guys.  My friend later got whisked away by a suave Korean dancer.

The full view of the festival.  Selling lots of Korean products like ginseng, seaweed and other stuff.  And lots of street food.  And Soju.

Time for the parting of the sea!!

So people didn't really walk across to the other island.  They mostly walked a few feet and then started digging for mollusks.

There was some nice sun action.

My first star fish sighting!

One of my best pictures from the day.  At this point I was pretty damn cold and exhausted...and we still had a 5 hour bus ride home...

4/20/2012

I wrote this blog in a notebook about a month ago.  I was going to post it...and then Maeve was born and I spilled water on my keyboard when Rosanne Skyped me to tell me the news.  I haven't been able to type a's or delete for a little while now but I just bought an external keyboard so get ready!!

Until now, my blog has been primarily about what I’m doing over here in Korea.  At first it was just about my daily life, the little things and some really big things, that make up my days.  I wanted everyone to get a vague picture of what I was doing and where I was doing it.  Then the holidays came, which provided new experiences.  A vacation adventure to Jeju Island gave me my next entry, but I’ve been quiet lately. 

I’ll admit, part of it is laziness and procrastination on my part.  Maybe that’s a big part of it.  Part of it is that I’ve fallen into a bit of a routine here.  A part of me likes and enjoys the routine.  It makes this whole living-alone-in-a-foreign-country thing feel more homey.  But sometimes I’m ready to jump on the train and get out of here, and I often do just that.

One of the things my life here provides is LOTS of time to think.  Before I left, a certain brother of mine cautioned me about over thinking things.  I suspect this might be a family condition; there is no known cure.  But there are distractions and good friends who tell you to stop letting your brain run around in circles.  Many thanks to all of you. 

On the other hand, I’ve reflected on things like friends, family, the future, the past, and what I’m learning, in really positive ways.  One thing I really enjoy about the “real world” is that I generally get to leave work at work.  There aren’t projects or papers or homework (well sometimes there is, but they don’t take me weeks to do).  So when I pass an hour or two in a coffee shop, or in bed, thinking, reading, writing or browsing the interwebs, I have very little guilt about what I “should” be doing.  It’s a little delight to have thinking about stuff as one of my priorities, and in a relatively low stress way.  Maybe that’s a little narcissistic, but if not now...when?

Being out of school for almost a year now (wow) and having a full time job for about 6 months now (wow), I’m getting an inkling of the differences between student life and 20-something not student life.  One of the biggest things I’ve noticed, credit to my older siblings and their families, is that life only gets busier.  Busier in a crazy-awesome-exhausting way that I can’t fully comprehend at the ripe ol’ age of 23. 

Because of that, I’m going to enjoy lounging in bed for two hours pondering and reading and listening to music.  If I ever reach that level of crazy-awesome-exhausting-frustrating busy that I see everyone else in, I better love what I’m doing.

So what has all my deep introspection gotten me so far?  I know you are all smiling and shaking your heads as you read all this stuff you already know…but here goes.

1.     I still have no real career plan.  It’s ok...I think.

2.     Cleaning a kitchen and an apartment as well as preparing meals and doing laundry and organizing all that stuff takes a LOT of time.  And my apartment is tiny!  And I’m only one person!  Is it wrong that I sometimes base my dinner menu around what will make the fewest dishes?!

3.     I’ve been really blessed to make so many amazing friends throughout my life.  All the love and support I got in the time before I left for Korea, and over the years, was awesome.  Thanks for all the letters, the care packages (expensive, I know) and coordinating Skype dates.

4.     I know more than I thought about working/”the real world.”

5.     Compared to a 90 year old, I know practically nothing.  I’m ok with that.

6.     I really didn’t think I’d miss home that much.  I’d been away for long periods of time before and it wasn’t that bad.  Honestly, there are a lot of things I don’t miss (the news, overhearing stupid conversations, the news, advertisements I understand, overpriced crap).  But I was totally unprepared for how much I miss my friends and family.  Much like grief, homesickness hits at the oddest times: when I’m traveling, when someone asks me where I’m from or when a student grabs my hand to tell me a story.  I’m doing my best to keep in touch, with mixed results.  I hope you all know that you are in my thoughts on a daily basis.

7.     On a lighter note, I’m learning more about English grammar than I ever did in school.  Mostly because I have to look things up to explain exercises to the students.

8.     There is a bakery near my apartment called “Jean Valjean’s Pain.”  The pun makes me chuckle to myself EVERY time we go by it.  My friends have even started to laugh at me laughing at it.  But the big question is, does the owner know how good the pun is???

9.     Despite language and cultural barriers, I’m really enjoying spending time with the Koreans I meet.  We are able to share laughs, kindness and language tutorials.  How could I not enjoy myself?

I’m going to stop there, since I don’t want to sound like too much of a know-it-allJ

Immersion Learning

This post is LONG overdue, but I will do my best to do the subject justice.

I’m pretty sure it was the first full week we were back at work after Lunar New Year.  We got a message Sunday night from our head teacher that we needed to wear black because we would be going to a funeral after work.  Ooooookkk….  Upon arriving at work we found out that the mother of one of the Korean teachers at another branch of the haegwon in Daegu had passed away. 

After work we all shuffled downstairs and packed into a few of the Korean teacher’s cars.  I have to admit, I got a good car.  I talked with one of the teacher’s about beer, we played some cell phone games and got a little lost.  It’s really nice to spend time with our co-teachers outside of the office; they’re much more relaxed. 

Despite getting lost, we were still among the earliest to arrive at the hospital.  I can’t say I know much about Korean funerals except what I observed that night and the little bit that our head teacher told us.  We parked and then went into a large hall at the front of the hospital.  It’s basically a big not very private funeral home, conveniently located next to the hospital.  We lingered in the front hall for a long time, trying not to laugh or do anything inappropriate.  But we were waiting about half an hour for the rest of the branches to arrive. 

When all three branches were present, we headed upstairs.  Somehow, I ended up in the front.  Thankfully, we were very close to two of the guys that have been working at the haegwon for three plus years.  We got shuffled into a smaller room and, of course, we had to take off our shoes.  To our left, about fifteen people say eating food.  To our right I could see and empty room and hear crying.  Meanwhile, my friend and I were frantically trying to blend into the crowd because we had no idea what was going on.  I wasn’t trying to avoid the situation, but I was concerned about making a horrible social gaffe.  Luckily, some of the managers came through and went first.  They did some very formal bowing (kneeling and touching their heads to the floor).  Meanwhile, the woman’s son and daughter stood in traditional Korean clothing sobbing and wailing.  With some quick whispering we learned we were to go in, bow to the picture of the mother and bow to the sobbing family members, no kneeling necessary.  We did this, squeezed out and passed the info along to the other bewildered Westerners.

Thinking our duty was done, we put our shoes back on only to be ushered across the hall to another room (shoes off again).  We all took seats at tables as the staff brought out trays and trays off food and drinks.  It seemed never ending.  Part of the tradition is for mourners to stay and have a meal with the family, who aren’t allowed to leave the deceased.  There’s a traditional beef soup that goes along as well.  Again, we all tried to eat and not do anything disrespectful.  I think we sat there for at least 45 minutes, all kind of wondering when we could leave.  This was during our intensive lessons, when we taught from 9am to 7pm every day with two hours of extra classes.  Then the big bosses come in, so we all have to stand and bow.  Then he had to go talk to the teacher and pay his respects and then he had to eat.  So we all just sat around like bumps on a log trying to make conversation.

Eventually he thanked us for coming and we were allowed to leave.  I couldn’t wait.   But  that was not the last of our encounters with the Big Boss.  In a belated New Year’s celebration, he decided to get us all lunch.  So on Wednesday, of the same week, we all came in early again and boarded t he school bus.  We were taken to an old middle school (the kids were on vacation).  Because the room was too small for all of us to eat at once, we had to eat in shifts.  So while we waited for our shift the rest of us waited on the floor of a locker room.  Luckily, the locker room was far cleaner than any locker room I have ever been in.  The soup we had is a traditional New Year’s soup that has rice cakes and beef in it.  When you eat it, you become one year older.  Try it, you’ll see. 

Vacation Destination: Jeju Island!

Lunar New Year in January brought about my first vacation.  At one point, I was considering a trip to Malaysia or the Philippines.  Unfortunately, all of Asia was also looking at those destinations, which drove the prices up.  Instead, a friend suggested a trip to Jeju Island here in South Korea through a tour company called WinK.  The price was right, and I’d been interested in visiting Jeju since I saw a back packing blog post about the beautiful island.  Here’s the link to the Wikipedia site if you’re interested: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeju_Province.  Jeju is best known because it has UNESCO World Heritage sites from its volcano.  I think it was recently voted one of the 7  Wonders of the World.

Traveling to Jeju was almost as much of an experience as the visit to the island itself.  We planned to meet the group at the ferry in Mokpo since we were traveling from the East and not the North.  We left on a 10:30pm bus from Daegu and traveled three hours to Gwangju where we discovered the next bus to Mokpo wasn’t until 5:20am.  To be fair, we were expecting this to happen.  But still, waiting for three hours in a bus terminal in the wee hours of the morning wasn’t exactly thrilling.  After failed attempts to store our luggage in a luggage locker, we decided to head out for a walk and look for a place to sit and relax for a while.  We were rewarded with a coffee shop that stayed open until 5am.  Thank you Korea for your caffeine addiction.  It wasn’t long after we settled in that we realized we had a full view of the entrance to a nightclub next door.  I couldn’t have asked for better people watching.

After a minor language barrier with our taxi driver, we made it to the ferry station in Mokpo.  And after we waited there for a little over an hour, we made it to the ferry station where the rest of the group was.  In our defense, we were running on about 1 hour of sleep.  On our way, Ashley and I had been musing about what the ferry would be like…crappy or really nice; it’s usually one way or the other here.  We got to the rooms to which our group was assigned and there was…(drumroll) a  floor.  Even after living her for a combined total of 8 months, we had not considered this option.  So, we laughed and tried to curl up and sleep.  Eventually, we spent most of the ferry rid in a café on the upper level.  I literally fell asleep on the table three times.  It felt like the longest ferry ride ever.

Our guides were a dynamic duo.  One was a pretty quiet and organized Korean guy and the other was a crazy hippie Canadian guy.  After we got off the ferry we got right on a tour bus and headed to Loveland park, which is sort of a weird sex museum/park thing.  It was pretty funny.  Then we stopped at something called the Dragonhead rock, which looked very little like a dragon head to me.   After that we headed back to our hotel.  Luckily Ashley and I paid an extra $10 to have a room to ourselves.  It was clean and had a basic double bed and a decent shower.  Dinner that night was traditional Jeju Island black pig bbq.  The literal translation is “shit pig” because back in the day these pigs ate up people’s poo.  Dinner was nice and I got meet some really nice people at my table (Ashley was segregated with the other vegetarians).  After we finished dinner we headed to a noribang (karaoke room).  Ashley and I hung out with some of the people we’d met earlier in the day and met a few new people.  We also sang a well-received version of Abba’s “Dancing Queen” despite some anxiety on our part. 

I think we both passed out as soon as we hit the bed.  We were able to have a leisurely morning because we weren’t doing the scheduled tour that day.  Unfortunately, the guides had to switch the tour days due to some weather issues, so we missed the tour we actually wanted to do.  But shit happens, eh?  Luckily we had a guide book with us and decided we would head out to see a traditional folk village on the south side of the island.  With some help from a friendly man on the street we got on a bus toward Jeju City.

I thought I saw a sign for the folk village (even though we knew it was farther away) so we got off the bus and started following a sign to the Jeju Folk Museum.  When we got down the little road, we saw what looked like an abandoned building.  But a few seconds later a little old man came out and started to wave at us to come up.  We were a little nervous about the situation, but we decided we could take the old dude.  He turned out to be a sweet old scholar of Jeju folk culture who ran the museum.  We paid about $2 and went inside.  He had lots and lots of artifacts, ranging from traditional clothing to money and games.  A good number of the placards were in English.  The old man spoke English pretty well and we talked a bit and took some pictures with him.  It was exactly the kind of random experience I love about traveling.

After that, we headed back to the main street and hailed a cab.  We got to the bus station and bought two bus tickets to our destination.  The bus ride was a little over an hour long.  It was so nice to see fields and farms as we drove across Jeju.  I hadn’t realized it until we arrived on vacation but I desperately miss seeing farms and open spaces.  The scenery certainly made me miss home, but in a nice way.  The bus took us right up to the folk village.  I believe we paid about $10 for our tickets and English language guides.

The folk village was pretty cool!  It was a bit like Williamsburg.  It was mostly reconstructed cottages and buildings, some original but transported to the location.  We learned all about life on Jeju.  They had traditional Korean courtyard games scattered around and some activities for children.  They also had a booth where you could get traditional marriage portraits taken.  It was really cool and informative.  We spent a couple of hours there, despite the freezing cold weather. 

When we hopped on the bus back to Jeju City, we bumped into two girls from the tour.  We talked with them a bit and then ended up going out to dinner with one of the girls.  Ashley and I had it in our heads that we were going to go to this Mexican restaurant we had read about.  We got a taxi to the neighborhood where we thought it was and spent about the next hour trying to find it (yes, we asked some poor Korean family for directions).  In the end, we settled for a pizza place (which we found out later, was pretty close to the Mexican place).  We decided to contact the tour guides and met up with the rest of the group to go out drinking.  All in all, it was a pretty fun day and we made some new friends.

I think we got about four hours of sleep before we had to be awake for the tour on Monday.  First thing on the agenda?  Climbing  on of Jeju’s volcanic crater’s, Sunrise Peak.  I’m sure you can all imagine how the hangover bit felt, now just add freezing cold temperatures and…snow flurries.  You’re only young once, right?  Luckily, the climb was only about 20 minutes up and the view was really cool.

Then we headed over to Udo Island, which is a small island with a resident population of about 600 people or something.  We took a ferry over and then decided to take the bus around the island rather than the moped or ATVs.  First, we stopped near a lighthouse and a couple of touristy shops.  At this point, we were starving.  So we stumbled into a restaurant and ordered their famous seafood soup.  It turns out the tour company goes to this place regularly and it was soon full of some of the other people on the tour.  The soup was hot and full of noodles, mussels, crab and shrimp.  I have to say, crab here just isn’t the same.

After food, Ashley and I went to explore the black sand beach nearby.  Jeju and the surrounding islands are all made of volcanic rock.  When we were heading toward the black sand beach we were able to see rocks that looked like pooled lava.  It was really cool!  The next stop was a white coral beach.  This would have been cool…except the wind was howling and it was absolutely freezing.  We did manage to take a picture of me in all my winter gear “sunbathing” before we ran back to the bus.

After we got off Udo, we headed to the lava tubes.  These are basically giant caves formed by lava?  Yeah, that’s about the extent of my knowledge. They were big and pretty cool.  It’s a bit hard to describe, but it was neat to see.  After the lava tubes, we headed over to a big hedge maze, which was…pretty standard.  That night we went out for dinner and got some Indian before we went to bed early.

The ferry on the way back was less fancy than the one we took on the way over.  Luckily we found a small niche and were able to sit comfortably and read books with some of the other people from our trip.  When we landed in Mokpo, we headed to the bus station with one of the guys we met on the trip who was traveling to a town near Daegu as well.  When we got to the bus station it was PACKED.  Almost everyone in Korea was off work Monday and Tuesday for the Lunar New Year.  It was kind of like traveling the Sunday after Thanksgiving.  We were able to get a bus for about 2 hours later.  Unfortunately it meant Ashley and I would miss the bus we already had tickets for.  With nothing else to do, we found a really cheap buffet and sat down with our friend to eat and read and talk.  When we arrived in Gwangju we went straight to ticketing and were able to exchange our tickets for a ride on the last bus…at 9pm.  So we had another four hours to kill.  Luckily, the coffee shop we discovered before was open and we went and camped out there.  The bus ride home was uneventful and despite my apartment’s welcoming temperature of 5 degrees Celcius when I returned home, I was happy to be thereJ

All and all, I think I navigated my first trip here in Korea pretty well!  

(Sorry this is so late...!)

Essay Quotes

I know I'm super behind on my blog, please forgive me!  Hopefully these quotes from essays I read during term tests will make you smile and laugh.  I'm working on my blog about my vacation and some other stuff.  Anyway, here's what the kids have to say:

These students had to write about where they would want to travel and why.

"So many knives, dishes in the Seoul museum...There was sad history, happy history, a lot of history in Seoul!"

"In lunch, maybe I want to eat Franch food like hamburger and cola."  (Can't you just picture the French rolling their eyes at that one??)

"I visit New York with my friends but I think USA is very dangerous because USA people has a gun."

"I like France food.  Stake food is very important."

These students had to write about their families.

"Me and father is every day running because very fast pleople."

"My sister is 6 years old.  She is very not got.  She is cut the my book.  And hit the my legoe.  Oh-my-god.  She is very very not good."

"My brother is emaciated because he has the puberty." (My personal favorite!  This was the only sentence the boy wrote about his brother.)

"I see tree and birds, father see river, mother see air, my big sister see grass."

"Dad is very cool. I want pencil my dad buy and give me and I am happy."

"My family is very funny and scary.  You be careful my family whuwouw." (Should we be worried??)

These students had to write about whether the should have a 4 day or 5 day school week.

"But if school should only be four days a week, I will love government and school."

"History class is very fun and interested.  I like history class forever!"

"History is see a past world."

"And when parents know their son or dauther is not study hard, they want to emigrate the school."

"I go to university is the worst the elementary school."

And a few kids had to write about their rooms.  This is the only one I have for that category:

"My room has 1 fish.  The fish is very cute.  Last night my brother kill fish.  My fish is very sad."