Happy New Year!

I didn't end up taking any pictures of the actual New Year's Eve festivities. I am always so bad with my camera. I didn't really end up doing anything particularly festive anyway. A coworker and I wanted to go see them ring the New Year's bell but it was absolutely frigid and we decided traffic would have been a nightmare. Plus, the western New Year's isn't that big of a deal in Seoul, so we figured it would be better to find the expats. So, we headed to one of the kind of heavily foreign districts, Hongdae, where I had already been with my coworkers on the first night I was here. We just ended up going to a bar and dancing and singing all night and all in all it was quite a bit of fun.

An update on the rest of my break.

On Tuesday one of my coworkers got back from her trip to China, so we headed to Itaewon, where the US military base is, to get dinner. Itaewon is full of foreign restaurants and pubs etc. and is pretty much the best place to go for homesick food. We went to The Wolfhound, a pretty popular English-style pub/restaurant, for two-for-one fish and chips. I had never had fish and chips before, but I have to say I approve, despite the unhealthiness factor.














Before my coworker got back I was pretty much the only one here, so I had been trying to at least go out and see some parts of Seoul. So, I headed to one of the big markets, Dongdaemun, and just got out of the subway and explored a bit. The area is crazy and full of cute little outdoor food stalls and places selling everything you can imagine. It was pretty cold though, so I headed to one of the big mall-like places. The one I ended up in was called Shopping Town and even though the picture is really blurry I took it because I knew my Mom and Dad would have died and gone to heaven in this place. It was a six-story shopping mall filled entirely with little stalls selling every kind of fabric and button and lace etc. you could ever imagine. I think probably all told there was enough fabric in that building to sew all of Seoul at least four outfits. I was pretty overwhelmed.




















These next two pictures are of what used to be the eastern gate to the city. The gate kind of marks the entrance to the Dongdaemun market. It looked really pretty once it got dark out and was pretty much the only thing that made it so I didn't get lost while I was wandering around there.



































Other than the touristy things I have mostly just been staying at home catching up on reading and trying to learn Korean. I am already dreading heading back to work though, since I have to teach my first Kindergarten class on Monday and I am really nervous.

Hope you all had a lovely New Year's Eve. Happy 2010!

I figure it still counts as a White Christmas...

since all of the stores are still blasting Christmas music.

At any rate, when I went outside today it was to find this:




































Real snow! Like on the ground not melted no one can figure out how to drive snow. Like maybe an inch. At least a half. These pictures, by the way, are of where I live. The first is of the plant in front of my driveway and the other is the view down my street/alley.

And since I was such a good tourist all day despite the inclement weather and because the museum was free I splurged on some fast food on the way home at Lotteria:


















Lotteria is the equivalent of McDonalds in Korea and is located inside of Homeplus, Korea's version of Wal-Mart. The food was pretty delicious though. I am glad there are mozzarella sticks in Korea.

And now I made myself some chai and am going to curl up with a book for a while.

National Museum of Korea

Today I decided to force myself to do something touristy since this is the only real break I will have 'til next summer. So off to the National Museum of Korea I went! My windows are all covered so I didn't notice that it was snowing until I got outside. That was a nice surprise and museums are a great way to spend a cold day I figure.

Pictures from museums are always really lame if you haven't been there, but here are a few anyway:



















































I thought the museum was kind of boring architecturally....but the exhibits were pretty interesting. Lots of pottery, lots of silk prints and then rooms that had art from China, Japan, Vietnam and Uzbekistan. Check out this bike from the Vietnam exhibit covered in basketwoven fish traps. Someone had to ride around with that!


















And here is a kind of weirdly western silk screenprint of bookshelves that I liked:

Christmas miracles!

It's hard to tell from the picture but it snowed on Christmas!!!!! And the Koreans were ready to combat it with their umbrellas. Also look how many people were out and about on Christmas night? Strange, I thought. But I was soooo happy that it snowed! Hope you are all surviving the real snow at home and that you all had the happiest of Christmases.

xpat xmas

The view from Danielle and Shane's roof. Note that surrounding us are a million 10ish story buildings....all apartments. Seoul is crazy dense.


















The Christmas tree and Secret Santa presents.














Five Layer Dip and Chips and Van Gerpen Family Chocolate.


















Cream cheese stuffed mushrooms, bacon wrapped chestnuts and an actual fruit cake.














Appetizers. The cheese for this probably cost 30 dollars.

The whole meal was incredibly luxurious. So many dairy products that are really expensive and hard to find.

The Secret Santa thing was fun and all-in-all Christmas was infinitely more pleasant than I was imagining.

christmas at school

So today was the last day of school before Christmas break. All of the male teachers dressed up as Santa and since I don't have a morning class I had to be Santa's Helper all morning and help them hand out the gifts. The whole thing was pretty cute but I thought it was strange that the parents brought the gifts in beforehand and then we handed them out....so some kids got these huge elaborately wrapped presents and others got little unwrapped boxes and stuff. Strange system it seemed to me. And the kids weren't allowed to open any of the gifts at school. That, I think, was partially because the kids would have been upset if they got colored pencils and the other kids got Nintendos or whatever, but also partially because apparently it is Korean tradition to not open gifts in front of the person who gave it to you. I also thought it was pretty funny that almost none of the kids believed in Santa and all spent the whole time calling him Anthony Teacher or Jason Teacher or whatever. But then you could sometimes trick them when a new teacher was dressed up by saying "Well if Shane Teacher is Santa then who is that?" and pointing at the new teacher dressed up as Santa.

All in all it was fun but pretty stressful and really hot in that costume.

We also all got a bottle of wine from the Director of the school which was pretty nice I thought. Kind of a strange gift to hand out in the middle of the day at school though.

Then after school I had to go back to the recording studio to record some more...still really strange to me. It is really bizarre to hear your voice as a recording.

Tonight Kyle is coming over and we will probably get dinner and then all of my coworkers are going out to celebrate the fact that we don't have to work in the morning.

Tomorrow almost all of the teachers are going over to two of the teachers who are married, Danielle and Shane's apartment for a big turkey dinner. What is really funny to me about the whole thing is that no one has an oven so we are baking all of the turkeys we got in these toaster ovens that are half the size of a real oven. But apparently it can be done.

Hope all is well with all of you!

Merry Christmas if I don't hear from you before then!!!

Seoul Tower and Noraebang

This is a view of Seoul out the window of the Seoul Tower. I went there with Katie and one of my old roommates Christian and his girlfriend. It was kind of overpriced like most touristy things but was worth it. The tower itself is on a mountain that you can either climb up or ride up in a cable car. We chose the cable car because hiking in this weather doesn't really sound very pleasant. I had also never been in a cable car so that was pretty cool. Then you take an elevator to the top and there is a viewing deck. Seoul is really big. Really big.

And a picture of the tower from the bottom.



































This is me in front of this kind of kitschy pagoda thing in front of Seoul Tower. But it was really pretty colors and looked really cool in pictures on the other girl's camera.

























These two are kind of terrible pictures. But Noraebang in Korea's version of Karaoke. You rent a little room and they bring you beer and snacks and you sing yourself hoarse. There are weird videos that play in the background that have absolutely nothing to do with the music being played and somehow the music itself makes you sound not nearly as bad as you should. That might also be the beer really though.

I also had my first company dinner this weekend but for some reason I can't find any of the pictures from it. These dinner things are apparently kind of a big deal here and I'm not entirely sure why but it was pretty fun and they paid so whatever. Someday I will have to take pictures of the kind of meal we had because it was pretty cool. Each table has its own grill and they bring you this really thick bacon that you grill yourself, lots of sidedishes (as always in Korea) and you wrap the sides and the pork in lettuce and eat it with spicy pepper sauce. It is really pretty delicious.

This weekend I also went to my first Korean class which ended up being great because the whole group including the teacher went out for dinner afterward and then for drinks and to a Noraebang. So I actually got to hang out with some Koreans which was interesting and a lot of fun. They take the Noraebang incredibly seriously though which is kind of great.

Anyway I have to write a million evaluation things for all of my students so I am off.

Friday.

Emily thinks I need to write more so here is an update. It is Friday and I am excited for the weekend. I don't have to do that much in my classes today though because the kids are taking level tests. All I have to do is ask them all of the speaking questions which is pretty easy. It is really pretty incredible how well the kids all do even though they are only 6 or 7.

This week has been pretty good. On Tuesday I went out with my friend Kyle and one of his Korean coworkers Minji. She was really nice and we went out for Korean food and it was really good and nice to have someone there who knew what was going on.

Yesterday I went out with my coworkers to this Irish bar called Madigans that they all always go to on Thursdays. Everyone has been super nice to me and they are all pleasant and fun so I think I will end up enjoying my work environment pretty well once I understand better what is going on.

Tonight we all have to go out for dinner with the director of the school and all of the Korean head teachers which should be interesting. Apparently these company dinners are a big deal here. So we will see how it goes. I hope i don't do anything really rude or anything.

A couple weird things about Korea:

You can't drink the water. That makes everything a little more difficult since you have to cook and stuff with bottled water. I'm not sure why you can't drink the water and I have met some people who do but even the school has drinking water machines so I figure I won't mess with the tap water just yet.

Koreans don't believe in flushing toilet paper down the toilet so they always put it in the garbage can. I find that kind of gross and it is really unnecessary since the plumbing is all the same as in the west. I think it is just tradition or something.

There are fish tanks everywhere that you can buy fresh fish out of to eat. They kind of freak me out because they don't have lids and I am always worried the squid are going to jump out at me.

Anyway, I should get back to work I suppose but wanted to give a quick update. I will try to remember to take pictures when I go out this weekend and post them. I just always seem to forget and I always feel kind of rude taking pictures. But I will try.

Hope all is well!!!

school

Here are some pictures of my classroom!!

apartment pictures

I can't see these pictures to comment on them individually but for the most part they are pictures of my apartment which is really nice and big. The first one is of me on my first day drinking soju with katie. The next couple are pictures of my neighborhood at night. It is really bright and everything is neon and I don't even really live in the city. The rest are of my apartment. The kitchen is super tiny though which is mostly just comical. You can't really tell from the picture but in that space there is a sink, two burner stove, a washing machine and the apartment's water/heater system. Also the bathroom is interesting in that there is no separate shower...you just shower onto the floor and it drains out. It makes a huge mess in the process though. I'm off to teach!