Christmas in the mountains.

Merry Christmas everyone! Hope everyone had a wonderful holiday! This was my first Christmas away from home. And to be perfectly honest, it wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be. Of course I missed being at home and spending time with my family, but thanks to wonderful technology, I was able to video chat with both Jen and Court in England and the rest of the fam in Tallahassee. It definitely wasn’t the same through a web cam, but it was good to see everyone’s faces and chat for a while. It’s really a bitter sweet feeling, because while I would love to be with my family during the holidays, right now I am perfectly happily being over here. I say it all the time, but I am truly having the greatest time here in Korea. It’s a mixture of great travel spots, great friends, and just once in a lifetime opportunities, and I’m trying to soak up every moment of it. (Oh and it doesn't hurt that I love going to work every day.)

Soeraksan National Park in Sokcho, Korea was our destination over Christmas break. Whitney, her friend Austin, Erica, Jason, Steve, and I all got on a bus toward Sokcho at 8:30 on Thursday morning. 5 and a half hours later we made it and we were all starving, so we decided to find the nearest restaurant and eat whatever they would serve us. We found a Chinese place and had some delicious chicken and fried rice. Once we were all full and happy we set out to find our hostel, which was a little bit of a challenge, but we eventually found it. It’s a long story but we ended up getting one room with one bed for all 6 of us. Luckily they heat the floors here, so most people opted to sleep on the floor anyway. I ended up getting to sleep on the bed due to my butt injury. Let’s just say I don’t walk well on slick ice.

On Friday we explored the National Park a little bit. We saw a giant Buddha, which looked almost the same as the Great Buddha in Japan. It was really neat, especially with the mountains in the background. Then we took a cable car up to the top of the mountain, and according to the pamphlet it’s “one of the most unique adventure attractions on Earth.” I don’t know about that, but it was really pretty. We could even see the waterfalls – frozen waterfalls that is. The view was beautiful and the weather was nice too. It even started snowing a little bit, and I got really excited – because it was a “White Christmas!” It only snowed for about 3 minutes though. :(

After that we took a hiking trail up to one of the waterfalls. It was a lot of fun. The waterfall was really pretty and it was neat to see it half frozen and half not. The sound of the waterfall is so relaxing and it’s just one of those places where I could just spend the whole day. Well, except in the winter. On our way back down we decided to go off the trail and take a quicker way to our hostel. It was fun hiking through the woods and across a rocky river.

That night for dinner, we all wanted a nice Christmas meal, so we went up the hill from our tiny hostel to a nice hotel with a western style restaurant. It was by far one of the best dinners I had eaten in a while. Even though we were pretty bummed that they were out of French onion soup, they did have a nice side salad with Italian dressing and also butter rolls. I had the chicken cordon blue, and it was delicious. After dinner we walked back to our hostel and got all cozy in our slumber party room. It was a good day, and a nice Christmas. I stayed up and talked to my family on video chat for a while and then went to bed.

The next day we walked around the park a little more and saw a temple and just enjoyed the scenery. We planned on going to a hot springs later that day, but then we found out that there was only one bus that was going back to Gwangju that day and it was leaving at 3:30. So, Erica, Jason, and I were tired and ready to go home so we bought our bus tickets and headed back that day, while Whitney, Austin, and Steve stayed back and went to the hot springs and stayed overnight an extra day. The bus ride was really long, but it was nice to get home after a long weekend, and sleep in on Sunday.

Well, I hope everyone had a great Christmas! I’m headed back up the country on another bus to Seoul for New Years! Love you all! Happy Holidays! :) Enjoy this little video I made of my kids singing:

It's hard to eat Thanksgiving dinner with chopsticks

So last Thursday was Thanksgiving, and it was a little depressing to be working and not spending it with family, eating turkey, and watching football. I spent the whole day trying to explain to 5 and 6 year olds what Thanksgiving and turkey was. So anyways, all the foreign teachers, which are all Americans, decided to have our own Thanksgiving dinner that Sunday. We also thought it would be fun to invite all the Korean teachers too, so they could get a little glimpse of what we eat on Thanksgiving. After much debate we decided to have it at our place. That day Erica (another Kinder teacher) came over and we all cooked our assigned dish. Unfortunately none of the apartments have ovens, so that kind of put a cramp in our cooking. We made the mashed potatoes and corn, and Erica also made yummy carrots and deviled eggs :) So since they don’t have turkey here, we opted for the next closest thing – chicken. And well, since we don’t have ovens to cook a chicken, we decided to order it. Now, usually at school when we want to get food we have the Korean teachers order it for us, which works perfectly. But since we ordered it ourselves, it didn’t go as smoothly. We called and Erica ordered what we wanted and how many, it took a little while for her to understand and then she kept talking and saying stuff in Korean, and then I got on the phone and told her where we lived (which was an accomplishment in itself). We hung up and weren't really sure what happened, but knew we ordered something. A little while later the delivery man was at our door and he had one tiny little box of chicken in his hand. Well, we got the chicken we wanted but we needed a little more than one tiny box to feed 20 people – we thought we ordered 4 boxes. So then we ordered again from another place and somehow ordered 3 more boxes correctly. :) The feast turned out pretty good. Everything tasted great. We had a lot of the Korean teachers show up too. After eating we played this fun Korean game, which is sort of like jacks.

Our Thanksgiving spread

Playing the Korean jacks game

On Saturday a few of the other teachers and I went to this store called Home Plus, which I don’t know why we hadn’t discovered sooner. It’s a big grocery/home goods store that has more American food than anywhere else. Not a whole lot, but they have things like block cheese, American beers, salad dressing, and the thing I was most excited about - GOLDFISH!!! :)

On Sunday we went to the “Wii Bong”, which is this cool place where you pick out a game, order a coke or hot chocolate, and then they take you to your own personal room and just play Wii. It was a lot of fun. We played Mario party, and it was hard to decipher a lot of the directions since everything was in Korean.

On a side note, an example of some corporal punishment in the Korean schools. Last week one of my afternoon elementary students told me that her friend got in a fight and so the teacher grabbed her by the hair and threw her on the ground and kicked her….She might have been trying to say that the other girl did that – but I’m pretty sure she said the teacher did. I asked her like 3 times. And it surprises me a little, but Korean teachers don't mess around with punishment - they can do whatever they want to the students. They like to pick them up by their ears too.

Top 5 things I miss (besides friends and family):

5. Real pizza. (you know without mayonnaise and corn)

4. Macaroni and cheese.

3. Driving (though sometimes it’s kinda nice not having a car)

2. A soft comfy bed

1. A Dryer! (I've never appreciated dryers as much as I do now. I hate hanging my clothes, and they are always so stiff.)

Dinner at a new restaurant - Delicious galbi!

China video

4 months in..

4 months…so far so good. I can’t believe I’ve been here for 4 months. This year is going to fly by. I’m still really enjoying it here. I love the kids. And I just love teaching them – and hearing what they have to say and trying to interpret what they are trying to say. The young kinder kids are pretty funny, because when they don’t know how to say something in English (which is most of the time) they act it out – and say a few words they know. So it’s kind of like playing charades with them, which just cracks me up. They can understand a lot of what I say, it’s just hard for them to think of how to say stuff. The kinder kids are really good at repeating whatever I say too, so it’s fun to teach them new things :)

It’s gotten really cold over here, a lot different from Florida weather. I’m not a big fan of it, but I have found a new obsession: scarves. I’ve never really been able to wear scarves in Florida because it doesn’t get that cold. But I wear one every day here. They’re pretty cheap too, so it’s okay. I’m really excited about going skiing too. I haven’t been in a long time. I’m gonna try and go all the time while I’m here, and maybe even learn how to snowboard. :)

Two weekends ago my sister Jennifer was in Seoul for work. So I went up there and visited her. It was really good to see her. I stayed with her at her hotel, which was super nice. It felt great to sleep in a soft bed with real pillows and a nice down comforter. :) We had a good time. Friday we went shopping in Itawon (a big shopping area right outside the military base). Jennifer got a suit made, and also some custom made boots. And then she talked to me into getting a pair of custom made boots too. Since the only winter shoes I have are my tennis shoes. That evening we went up to the Seoul tower – and saw the whole city. On Saturday we went to a palace and saw the changing of the guard, which was really neat. We also got to dress up in Hanboks (the Korean traditional dress). After the palace we walked around Seoul a little and then went to another shopping area. That night we went to the Korea House and had dinner and a show. The show was really good. It was just like a little theater with lots of different traditional Korean dances and performances. There was one really cool act with 5 girls playing these drums with a synchronized dance along with it. Sunday we did yet again more shopping at the Namdemoon market, which is an outdoor market where you can buy things for really cheap. This is where they sell lots of name brand purses and anything else you could ever think of. After shopping I said bye and got on a bus back to Gwangju.

Korea House after the show


Hanbok wearing at the Palace

Last weekend was good, didn’t do too much. I went and saw the movie 2012 with some of the other teachers. I liked it. I thought it was really good, the plot was kind of cheesy, but the special effects were really cool. This weekend we are having a Thanksgiving dinner. We don't have ovens in our apartments, so we'll have to see how that all works out. And no turkey here, I guess chicken will have to do.

A few quotes from my kids:

Me: “Do you like tangerines?”
Student: “Teacher what is tangerine?”
Other student: “Oranges little friend!”

Student: “Can we play that one game again with the points?...it’s name is..uh..Japanese”
Me: “You mean Jeopardy?”

Boy’s journal about the movie Harry Potter: “Harry Potter’s mom is die. I cried.”

There was something written about Jello in their book.
Student: “Jello is what?”
Me: “Uhh..you know it’s a sweet dessert thing that’s squishy and gooey”
Student: “Gooey is what?”
Me: “You know it’s wiggly”
Student: “Wiggly is what?”
Me: “Nevermind, too hard to explain”

Say Kimchi!

Friday was Halloween. And even though Koreans don’t celebrate the holiday – they celebrate in the English Hogwans. We were supposed to go to a park with the Kinders and have a whole show with the kids singing and dancing and their parents were going to come, but it got canceled due to the swine flu. Yea…Korea is very paranoid of it and lately even the kids have been wearing surgical masks to school. So instead we just did the whole show upstairs in the activity room and their parents didn’t come. It was fun anyways. The kids all dressed up. The boys were superheros, wizards, vampires, etc..and the girls were either angels, fairies, or princesses. All the teachers dressed up too of course. The Kinder teachers all decided to be crayons! And Jason just wanted to be a box, but we made him be the crayon box. They were pretty much the best costumes ever! :)

So we started the day with face painting, which was interesting, since I’m not the best artist. Then we took all the kinder kids upstairs and they did their class dance. After that we had to do 2 dances with the kids. One was “You are my Sunshine”, and then the other was a Korean superman song…which was a hard dance, but so much fun - we practiced it, so we wouldn’t look like total idiots. After that we had lunch and then it was time for trick or treating! We had a huge box of candy and they just had all the kids line up – one class at a time and say trick or treat and they had little Halloween baskets for us to put the candy in. Once all the candy was passed out the kids went back upstairs to watch a movie…and all the foreign teachers came up and we took a million pictures. By the end of the day I was exhausted..plus I was getting sick, so I felt horrible. It was a fun day though.

This weekend I didn’t too much, because I’ve been sick, just layed around and such. I listened to the Yankee game this morning then I went to the Kimchi fevstival with Whitney, Erica, and Jason. I wasn’t expecting it to be that great, because well I’m not a huge fan of kimchi. It was a lot of fun though! I had a great time. The taxi ride over there was pretty fun in itself. It was a white and pink taxi, and we got in it and I felt like I was in cash cab. It was so colorful. It had pink felt on the sides and on the roof it had red cushioning. On the dash he had a lot of decorations - a few of those solar powered flowers that move and a spiderman suctioned on the windshield. We were taking pictures and he just laughed, and then gave us some coffee flavored gum.

Anyways, at the kimchi festival they had a free bicycle rental place – so we decided to rent bikes and rode around for a while. Erica didn’t know how to ride a bike, so we taught her how, and she picked it up pretty fast. After bike riding we found a tent that said “Foreigners making Kimchi” and we couldn’t pass up making our own kimchi, even though we weren’t going to eat it. So we went in and they first showed us all the ingredients and what goes into it...I couldn’t tell you what all of it was. After that they demonstrated how to do it. Then they took us to a table, gave us aprons, gloves and the materials and let us at it. Well a guy kind of helped us a little bit. All we really did was just spread all the spicy stuff on the cabbage. It was a lot of fun.

Once we made our kimchi, we went around to the different booths. They had lots of different types of kimchi..I only tasted a few of them, and was force fed some black salty thing. There were a few other exhibits we went to, including a kimchi art place and the history of kimchi. And apparently Gwangju (my city) is known for making the best kimchi in Korea. :)

China!!

So, last week I had a 5 day vacation for Chuseok, which is like the Korean Thanksgiving. Whitney, Katelyn, Prairie and I all went to Beijing, China.

We left on Thursday morning, at like 4 am, so we would have enough time to catch a taxi to the bus terminal and then take a 4 hour bus ride up to the airport. We got there in plenty of time and sat around in the airport for quite a while, we actually ran into some of the other teachers at our school who were on their way to Japan. We got on our plane and made it to China, even after sitting on the runway for an hour. The flight itself was only about an hour and a half. Once we got to Beijing their friend Alan was there to pick us up. He is also an English teacher in Korea, but he is from Beijing. And he was already there on vacation. (He was such a great help, from driving us places, to giving us translations, and ordering food for us:)) From there he drove us to our hostel and we quickly checked in and put our stuff down, and then we drove to Katelyn and Prairie’s hotel. (by the way our hostel was only $9 a night..and it was actually pretty nice, complete with a little restaurant that even had western style food :) After all that we went to this little art deco street and walked around for a while. Then we went to the lake, which is just a nice little area with bars, restaurants and shops all around a lake. We found a little place to eat dinner on the lake, and I had real Chinese sweet and sour chicken. It was served with fresh fruit around it. It was so good :)

On Friday we hiked the Great Wall. I mean..really hiked it. We woke up pretty early and Alan drove us out there. It took a while to get there, because we went to a non-touristy place. When we got there Alan dropped us off and left us with this old Chinese man and his little van. Both him and Katelyn went and hung out and were going to meet us at a section of the Great Wall. So Whitney, Prairie, and I got in the back of this man’s rickety van and he drove us up to the part where we could start hiking. He said it would take us 3 hours..but with breaks in between and taking a bazillion pictures it ended up taking 4 and half hours. The weather was absolutely perfect. It could not have been a better day. And I cannot put into words how incredible the Great Wall was. Even all the pictures I took can’t compare to actually being there and seeing it. The mountains were beautiful and where we were, there weren’t many people so it was really peaceful…and just surreal. It was a lot more exhausting then I thought it was going to be. Climbing up and down the wall..and a lot of parts were super steep with nothing to hang on to. There were also some parts of the wall that were deteriorating, so the rocks were all unsteady and crumbling. We eventually met up with Alan and Katelyn and we had to walk across this shaky suspension bridge. We got a drink, chatted for a little while and then we decided to hed home. So there are many different ways you can get down the Great Wall…you can just walk down, take a cable car, do this little bob sled thing, or zip line. We opted to do the zip line. This was a little scary at first (especially since the guy just threw a harness on us hooked us on and pushed us down)...but it was so much fun.

That night we went to the Silk Market, which was an experience in itself. It’s this huge 7 story place where there are thousands of vendors. They sell EVERYTHING there, from coats to book bags to shoes, purses, silk scarves, jewelry, etc. This is one of the most famous places for bargaining. The vendor people speak really good English and they all want your business. Therefore they will do anything to get you to buy something from them. They will get right in your face and beg you to come into their spot and try to convince you that you need something. They will literally grab your arm and pull you into their little area. They are all pretty nice and very funny..but also very pushy. It was such a fun place though…and bargaining with them was really fun. They would punch in some ridiculous price on their calculator and then you would have to go way down like to half of what they said…and bargain from there. They would say some funny things like “Oh no..I cannot do that price, when you come back tomorrow you will not see me because my boss will kill me”. It was also kind of hard trying to convert in my head. Because I was converting Chinese Yuan into Korean won and then Korean won into US dollars. I bought a lot more then I wanted to buy there, but they had so much stuff and it was so cheap. I was really happy that I got a winter coat there. Also 2 purses, a silk scarf..and some other random souvenirs.

On Saturday, Katelyn, Prairie, and Alan went to Shanghai, because they had been to Beijing before. So Whitney and I were off to do more sightseeing. We decided to go to the Forbidden City. What we didn’t know was that everyone in China decided to go as well. Thursday was the 60th anniversary of the People’s Republic of China, so I think a lot of people were in the city for that big celebration and decided to stay in town and make Beijing even more crowded than it already is. So anyways, that morning we found the subway and were in amazement by how many people were there. It was so incredibly crowded that we were literally shoved on the subway by the subway police. They had to push people on and hold them in as the doors closed. It was crazy.

Once we got to the Forbidden City. We grabbed a quick breakfast at McDonalds and then just followed the herd of people. Again it was a beautiful day, which was another reason so many people were there. As we were walking there we got stopped several times by Chinese people asking if they could take a picture with them. At first we were both like “haha ok”. But then when we actually got to the Forbidden City and started taking our own pictures, even more people asked to take our picture. EVERYBODY wanted to take a picture with us…it was like we were celebrities, which I guess we were in their eyes, since we both have blonde hair and blue eyes. I could not tell you how many pictures we are in…I would guess about 40 or so. The Forbidden City was really pretty. Lots of really neat Chinese architecture and….well it was just really cool.

Sunday we went to the Olympic Park. This was really neat, especially since the Olympics were just this past summer, and the stadiums are pretty much the coolest Olympic stadiums ever. We went inside both the water cube and the birds nest. I thought the water cube was really neat, just to be in there and see where Michael Phelps had won all his gold medals. :) The birds nest was really awesome too..

After the Park we went to the Llama Temple. As we were walking there we noticed all these shops selling big incense, and we were wondering why they were selling those. We found out once we got to the temple. You get incense, they have a flame to light them and then you kneel in front of every Buddha and bow three times and then give the incense to Buddha in this big pot. It was interesting to watch.

By the time we finished the Temple we still had a few hours to burn before the acrobatic show we got tickets for, so Whitney and I decided to go and get massages. We wanted to get full back massages, but the place we went to only did foot massages. So since we had been walking around all day anyway we figured a foot massage would be quite nice. Plus it was only 28 Yuan for an hour long foot massage, which is roughly $5. They first soaked our feet in this really hot milky stuff and gave us a mini back rub, then they gave us a really nice foot massage. At the end they asked us or I should say just mimed to us if we wanted something else, and pointed to something that said “heat therapy/foot cupping”. It was only like a dollar more, so we said why not. We didn’t know what to expect, but all of a sudden they brought out these glass cups and a giant flame! Whitney and I just looked at each other and laughed and said oh my gosh what are they going to do?! It wasn’t bad though, they just put the flame into the cup and stuck it on my foot, making it like a suction cup. It didn’t make my feet feel any different, it was just very odd.

The acrobatic show we went to was really fun. We actually met some girls who were also English teachers in Korea and they also worked at an ECC.

Monday – are last day in China. Alan, Katelyn, and Prairie came back from Shanghai and picked us up in the morning. We went back to the Silk Market and bought a few last minute things. We then went out to lunch, Alan took us to a restaurant so we could have the famous Beijing pecking duck. It was really good! You could even watch them cook it. They cooked them in this fire pit thing, head and all. Then they took them out, cut the head off, and sliced it up for you to eat. After lunch we went back to the lake, and this time rented a boat and went out on the water. It was really nice…and yet again, a gorgeous day. It was a perfect way to end our trip. After that Alan drove us to the airport to catch our plane home. By the time we got home it was really late…with the plane ride, the hour difference, and then the 4 hour bus ride home..it was around 2am when we got home. And we had to be at work at 9 the next morning. I had such a great time though. I would definitely go back if I get the chance.

Alright, well sorry this blog was so long. Hope everyone is doing well! In other news my sister Lauren got engaged this week! :) Yay!