My weekend in pictures.

*Courtesy of: http://www.flickr.com/photos/cyclenavigator/3384507079/.

Friday night we had a school dinner.  We had "Korean BBQ" which is absolutely amazing. I had to stand up and give a "speech" and accept a plant as one of the new teachers.  

*Courtesy of: http://bluesplayer.co.uk/tag/Chosungayo/orderby-rating/page1.html

After dinner we headed to another room where we sang.  I was forced to sing a song. I chose "Poker Face" by Lady Gaga.  It was absolutely hilarious.  

My co-teacher and I spent the day together on Saturday. We went to many art exhibits and then went window shopping, or "eye shopping" as they say in konglish here. 

Sunday was spent reading and writing in a cafe in the morning and then headed out to the English bookstore for more reading material in the afternoon. After browsing the books for over an hour, I finally found the perfect book.  I am very pleased with my purchase.

I have today (Monday) and tomorrow off from work as tomorrow is a national holiday.  I attempted to go to the bank today, but that turned out to be an epic fail on my part.  It's frustrating not knowing the language at times. I did manage to set up an automatic payment for my internet bill, so today hasn't been a complete loss.  It is less than $8 for my internet here! I rather like that price.  

This has been a very busy but for the most part fun and low-key weekend. I start teaching my first class on Thursday so I am getting excited! I will finally have a schedule after this week!  Well, as much as one can have in Korea, that is. 

A lovely "lunch."

Today, during lunch time I decided to explore a trail my co-teacher mentioned during the first or second week here. It is right behind the school and she said that another English teacher used to walk the trail quite a bit during the lunch period.  Since it is nice and sunny outside (and I am restless from sitting at a desk all day) I decided to take a look at it.

I discovered that it is a really nice trail that is paved.  An added bonus is that it is near the river! (You know me and trails down near the river...could there be a better place in the world than that? I think not.)  So I took a nice 40 minute walk out in the sun today. It was absolutely brilliant.

Along the walk I passed a section of earth that appears as though it will be a very large garden in the spring. The smell of manure wafted through the air as I passed, further confirming my suspicions. It reminded me of home.  ^_^ ( "Smells like money" right dad? ;-)

I was very happy that I finally made it down to the trail. I am certain I will make it down there again, soon. It was a nice walk to clear my head while getting out of the school for a bit.

Another weekend in Korea

My weekends in this country never fail to be interesting.  This past weekend didn't disappoint. As I mentioned in Friday's post, I was more than ready to start my weekend out of this town.  I started it off right by going to Seoul to hang out with some friends.  It was nice to see them again and we had quite a good dinner! After dinner we headed to "Roofers" to watch a comedy show.  This was my first comedy show that I have ever been to, and I have to admit that I really enjoyed myself!  I especially enjoyed the jokes that were related to teaching.  Although I haven't "officially" started teaching a class yet, what little taste I have had made me be able to relate completely to what was being said.  An very enjoyable and much needed evening. :)

Saturday was lovely as well as I was able to have a THREE hour skype date, starting at 7:40am my time.  Crazy.  :-p  After that, I headed back into the Seoul area to meet up with some people.  We headed back to the Palace area.  This weekend we saw the changing of the guards!  That was fun to see.  I absolutely love how bright and colorful the traditional clothing here is.  Koreans are in high fashion now and in the past.  (Speaking of fashion, as a completely random sidenote: I have been seeing long colorful skirts everywhere! Like the ones I used to wear a few years ago.  I may have to invest in one...or three....)  After we toured a few more palaces, we headed over to get something to eat.

Here's a picture of the changing of the guards.

I have been good and have tried many new dishes since coming to Korea.  Most have been good and a few have been extremely hard for me to eat.  The dish I ordered for supper, however, is in a class all on its own.  We had to order by looking at pictures and pointing to the one that we wanted.  I saw a few familiar dishes (in fact, I had thought I had already tried everything the restaurant offered) so I thought I would get a soup. There was a soup that looked like a picture of the soup I described having eaten on Wednesday.  It was a very good soup with a cow's rib bone and meat.  Since I was feeling extremely hungry, and I knew that it would not only taste good but be very filling as well, I ordered that.

Before our food arrived, the person serving us gave me a pair of scissors and tongs.  So far, so good.  This was just like last time.  Then, the food arrived.  Looking down in the dish I noticed right away that 1) There was no bone (and the hopeful me thought to myself--maybe they were nice and cut the meat off the bone for me already?) and 2) the broth was a milky color and not the clear broth from the other soup.  Another thing that I noticed was that there wasn't really anything else in the soup--just the broth, one or two pieces of celery (literally, one or two small pieces) and then some onions I threw in for good measure.  Then, some dark pieces of something, which I assumed to be the meat.

Taking the first spoonful, I saw a fatty substance surrounding something dark. I was still being optimistic at this point and I told myself that yes, this was the same dish from the other day...I just got a really fatty piece of meat.  First bite.

Second bite.  Another fatty substance surrounding something dark.  It took me a little longer to chew.

Third bite.  "Um, I don't think this is meat." I say, looking down at my bowl.  I had a sinking feeling that I knew exactly what this was.  A few days before I had read on another person's fb page of their adventure of eating congealed cow's blood in their soup.  Their description of the taste was spot on.

Fourth bite.  Yep.  That's what it was.  Blood inside of (as my co-teacher explained to me this morning) a pig's intestine.  Yum?  Not at all.

I forced myself to eat a few more bites and then I couldn't stomach anymore.  I attempted to eat my rice by just dipping it in the broth, but even the broth had a very strong flavor.  Eventually I just gave up, pretty sick to my stomach.

Here is a picture of some of the pieces out of the broth...

Sunday, I woke up extremely sick.  I am not sure if the dinner from the night before had anything to do with it but I literally didn't get out of bed the entire day.  Every time I did attempt to get out of bed, I was so dizzy I would stumble around like a drunk person.  The dizziness of course upset my stomach...thus creating a pretty annoying cycle.  Whether or not this was caused by the food, I know that I will be more careful with what I order in the future and will not be ordering this dish again. 

Today I feel much better.  I am able to eat again, although the thought of eating any form of Korean food at the moment does not sound appeasing.  Thankfully, my co-teacher brought in some very healthy and normal sandwiches with fruit for lunch today.  I might be avoiding the more traditional stuff for the next few days...

Friday :)

Another weekend is upon me.  I am hoping to go out and explore a lot this weekend, although I haven't decided where yet.  Either way, it's time to get away from this city and see more of Korea!

This past week has been very uneventful but still pleasant. All of the English classes were canceled as it was the last week of the school year.  The students were busy with their other classes and taking exams, etc. This was nice in a way but it also made the days long as I still had to be here from 8:30-4:30 with nothing to do. I managed to get a lot of reading done towards the beginning of the week!

Wednesday was graduation day.  After graduation we had a school lunch where we went to eat together. We had a very nice soup. It was a little different as there was a large bone in the soup and they gave you tongs and scissors to cut the meat off of the bone.  It was very tasty though!

Yesterday was a month after the lunear new year which means they had another special day. My co-teacher brought in traditional food.  I have to admit I wasn't too keen on most of it, and it was a little hard for me to stomach some of it, but the more I ate the more I was able to handle it.  There was a rice with 9 different cereals in it--not bad, although it was cold.  I am not a fan of cold rice.  Then they had seafood and mushrooms shaped in a circle and fried--This was also cold.  I had the most problem with eating this. I definitely was not a fan.  It may have tasted better warm though.  Everything else was good.  I really like seaweed.  :)

Today for lunch my co-teacher brought in mandu (Dumplings--yum! I love these things) and really good sandwiches. She told me how to make them so I will have to try, although they sound like a LOT of work for only a little result! We also had sliced apples.  So healthy. ^_^

Mid-week until now I have just been working on my lesson plans.  Some of these lessons are pretty ridiculous, but at least they will be entertaining. The government basically tells you exactly what to teach so it makes it easy at least.  The students come back in March.  I will have 6th grade (YES!) and 3rd grade.  I will also be teaching an afterschool class a few times a week and a kindergarten class every once in a while.  Not bad. I am most excited about the 6th grade students though!

Now that this posts talks almost entirely about food I am starting to become hungry again...

Today is going to be the "numbered blog."

I don't feel like writing in a coherent paragraph form today.  Therefore I am going to list what I want to write about.

1. I went to "What the book" yesterday and bought two books.  I am excited for the new reading material and appalled at how expensive even used books are in this country.  Shipping ruins everything.  I have heard of a few "book exchange" groups which I plan on using once I get a few titles here.

2. Yesterday, I tried using my card to pay for my dinner.  It was rejected.  A very nice man translated for me that I needed to call my bank.  I don't know why my card was rejected as there is money on it.  He was also nice and bought my dinner.  I <3 the kindness of strangers.

3.  Yesterday, on the subway a group of four loud and very drunk americans got on.  I looked around and it was apparent that all of the Koreans were 1-looking at me to see my reaction, and 2-extremely annoyed.  I wanted to apologize for the loud group.  They were extremely annoying.

4.  I am starting to get more adventurous in what I eat as half the time I have no idea what it is anyway.  On Friday, however, there was a dead animal floating in my soup bowl for the school lunch.  I just couldn't bring myself to eat that.  It was also one of the first moments since being here that it really hit me that I am in a foreign country.

I believe that is all for now.

Sweet Landlord

I have the sweetest landlord.  He just brought over a 30 pack of TP and two really nice towels to replace the ones that were ruined in the flood.  Yay.  Now I have WAY too much TP as I went out and bought some as well...

Today was also good because I received a letter from Cass, the packers won, and I didn't have to teach.  :) 

Winter Holiday

I have far too much to write about with far little motivation to write.  Unfortunately I woke up this morning with quite the cold going on which has sucked any and all energy from me.  Since it's the last day of holiday I thought I would update in here as I am sure I won't have as much time to do it once classes start back up.

So on Wednesday I met Corrie in Seoul!  We decided to take the 63 building by storm.  After figuring out where we wanted to go we actually made it there without mishap.  Walking in the building we were stopped by a man asking us what we were doing there.  We were both confused as we thought that this was a touristy type building and didn't expect our presence to be questioned.  Eventually we decided that the building was so large that the man was just trying to be helpful with directing us but because of the language barrier it sounded more as though we didn't belong.

After eating a quick lunch we decided to see what the place had to offer.

So, we found an English speaking guide near the ticket counter and started talking to him about what we wanted to see.  We decided to get the 3 events for 30000 won ticket.  Then, we would get a 10% off discount since we are foreigners.  So we went to buy tickets to Sea World, an IMAX movie on dinosaurs, and the Observatory/Picasso exhibit.  Instead of paying the 30000 won each, it totaled 30,000!  The English guide was talking with the person at the register for quite some time and then she gave us a 50% discount!  Seriously awesome.  Corrie and I believe it's because we really complimented him on his English skills.  ;-)

So the building was fun.  The IMAX was hilarious as they took a movie in English, dubbed it over in Korean, and then gave us headphones to listen to the English version with a 5 second delay in both speech and music.  SeaWorld boasted the fact that they had over 20,000 creatures.  Corrie and I believe one of the creatures died in its cage as it wasn't breathing or moving and was laying at an awkward angle.  Poor thing.  I hope it was just sleeping.  The observatory was pretty cool.  There were many great views.  It was also good to see the Picasso exhibit as I meant to do that while in Philly and it never happened.

After that Corrie and I eventually headed over to Itewon and joined up with some people.  One of the people, hilariously enough, was also from EMU like Corrie and I.  So we were able to talk about Ypsi things for a bit.  A good way to end a fun day.

The next day, Thursday, we were headed to Everland to meet up with some of Corrie's friends from her section of the country.  It took us about 6 hours to get there as we kept getting lost!  Both of us are directionally challenged in the first place...but I think it's worse when you put us together!  We eventually made it to Everland at 4ish so we still had 4 hours there which was more than enough to see a lot.  Everland is basically an amusement park.  Our first ride was a roller coaster.  What's more terrifying than a normal roller coaster?  One that you're not quite certain will make it to the top of the hill...

But yes, that was fun.  I barely made the last subway ride home but it was totally worth the long trip.  The night before wasn't able to sleep at all so I was super tired all day on Thursday.  I figured I would sleep well but I believe the over-stimilation (and a lot of caffeine...^_^) kept me awake until after 4am!

The next morning, Friday, I headed over to meet up with some people in Moran which is about as far away from here as possible.  The trip didn't take as long as I was thinking, however, so it wasn't bad.  Only about 2 hours by subway.  We went to a market there and I saw many things.  It was really cool because it's more how I would imagine Asia being.  My town is so modernized it's not always interesting.  After leaving the market we decided to hike up a mountain.  That was fun as well as I got to talk to and get to know another English teacher that lived in that area for a little over a year.  It was a really fun day/night hanging out and getting to know some really cool people.

Saturday was interesting as we headed over to a long name that I won't even try spelling to see some Palaces.  It was interesting to read the history and see the spirit chambers.  It would be really cool to see it in May when they do their ceremonies as they are one of the last places in the world to still do it.  I love going to places like this and experiencing some of the culture.  Plus, it's so cheap!  Only 4000 won total for two different places!  My list of places I want to visit while here is steadily growing...

I called it an early night last night as I wasn't feeling well.  Today I took it easy as well and literally either slept or read for the entire day.  I am hoping to get rid of this cold before having to go back to teach tomorrow but I have a feeling I haven't even started getting sick yet as every hour I feel progressively worse.

Oh well.  A cold is well worth the lack of sleep and fun sites/interesting people I have met this week!