Korean Wedding

Hello! So I know its been a really long time, but my daily routine is just so...normal. I'm sorry :( Anyway...awhile back I went to my co-teacher's wedding. I was so excited to finally have a chance to attend a wedding here because I had been invited to several but could never attend because I was always traveling (surprise!).

I invited my friend Sammy along, who had just arrived in Korea. I figured it would be a good opportunity to show her a little bit about Korea, plus I didn't want to be the only white person at the wedding..

Wedding hall before the ceremony

In Korea, everyone gets married at a wedding hall. Some people do choose to get married in a church if they're Christian, but primarily weddings take place in halls. And I mean, literally everyone. When planning her wedding, I suggested to my co-teacher that she get married maybe in a nice park in Seoul since the weather would still be nice. She laughed in my face. Nobody gets married anywhere except a wedding hall in Korea. My bad.

Sammy and I arrived at the wedding hall about 30 minutes before the ceremony was to begin. We received a lot of curious looks from people, but I recognized several teachers from my school, and even a few students made the trek to the south side of Seoul for the occasion. Everyone takes pictures before the ceremony so I got in line for my picture with the bride.

The ceremony only lasted about 30 minutes..all of which was in Korean. Most people were talking throughout the ceremony or texting on their phones. Weddings are a really informal affair in Korea. Although people are dressed nicely...their behavior definitely doesn't give the impression that a wedding is very important.

Father walking the bride down the aisle

Mid-ceremony

After the ceremony, everyone went downstairs to the dining room. The meal was buffet style..and we were mixed in with the guests from other weddings. Since weddings are so short in Korea, as soon as one wedding is over, the next wedding is ushered in. It sort of has that Vegas shotgun feel to it. I couldn't really tell her guests from the guests of other weddings, so Sammy and I sat with some of the other English teachers from my school so we would be able to have conversations without using wild hand gestures or speaking like 3-year-olds.

The food was pretty good. It was a good mix of Korean and western food, plus there was a giant dessert buffet which was what most of my meal consisted of. There were also some crazy fruits which we later figured out were called "rambutan". They look like big hairy meatballs, but once you peel that part away, there's a really sweet little fruit inside. They were surprisingly really good. They scared me at first, but lesson learned: don't judge a book by its cover.

Eating the scary fruit

With the bride and groom in their traditional Korean "hanbok"

So that's all for the wedding. No travel plans in the immediate future but I WILL be home for Christmas! Hopefully in the spring I'll be able to travel more, though :)

Sorry if the formatting of this entry is a little messed up. I'm on a stupid Samsung computer, and in my opinion any other than a Mac is impossible to use. So I really don't know what I'm doing on this thing. Plus all my menu options are in Korean so its a lot of educated guessing as to what I'm clicking on.

Completely unrelated...I can now rap in Korean.

Here's the latest from my favorite girl group 2NE1...its called "박수쳐" (Bak Su Chyeo) - it means "Clap Your Hands". Enjoy!

"Those who know nothing of foreing languages know nothing of their own." --Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Baby, It's Cold Outside

Hi! This past week was pretty laid back. I had a few cancelled classes due to final exam review and swine flu vaccinations so my week was pretty easy. I also let half my classes watch a movie (in English of course) because I know they're stressed about finals, and I figured I'd give them a break.

Had a dinner one night with some of the people in the Dongducheon area - we love to get together when we can and cook "normal" meals. Korean food is good, but its kind of boring. We're used to it by now, but we also miss the diversity of all of the yummy things we can get back home, so we like to have Indian, or Italian, or Mexican food nights. Mmm!

Friday I went to Seoul with Sara and her mom and Rebecca. She got a hotel room for us again, and took us out for Indian food. So nice! The hotel was in an area of Seoul I've never been, and now its probably a bad thing that I know about it because there's a pretty sweet mall there. Oops. The hotel was in Seoul Times Square, which is a relatively newer area from what I hear. It was really nice though. We just spent the night hanging out in the hotel and being lazy.

Yeongdeungpo Station

Rebecca and the sweet sweatshirt we found - "stold my love". Who is Tom???

Hotel and shopping center at Seoul Times Square

View from the hotel room

Saturday we took Sara's mom to see Deoksugung Palace, Gwanghwamun Square, and Gyeongbokgung Palace. Gwanghwamun, which usually has fountains and flowers, was set up for Seoul's Snow Jam. They basically brought in a bunch of fake snow, since it doesn't really snow here, and set up a small area for children to sled down. There was also a big ski/snowboard jump for a show they put on later that day, and an ice skating rink. It was a bright, sunny, and relatively warm day, so some of the ice rink was melting. I'm sure all of you back home weren't having that problem!

Seoul Plaza

Sledding for the little ones

Skating in Gwanghwamun Square

Which, by the way, I'm so disappointed I wasn't in Madison for all the excitement that happened last week with the giant snowball being left in the middle of University, the massive snowball fight on Bascom Hill...and of course the DAY OFF SCHOOL. Since when does UW cancel classes? There were blizzards when I went there too and never a single cancelled class. I'm mad.

Haechi

Gyeongbokgung Entrance

Gyeongbokgung

Pagoda picture (the winter version - we'll eventually have one of all 4 seasons)

Anyway...after the palace I left them and came to Uijeongbu. I went out with my friends John and Q and Rachel and then we met up with some of our friends from South Africa, Mieke and Werner. We went to a great little Korean restaurant that after we had stuffed ourselves to the max, and drank ourselves drunk, we each ended up paying around $8. Unbelievable how cheap things are here. After dinner we were off to the noraebang for a few hours of ear-splitting drunken singing. We even threw in a few Christmas carols. As much as I love going out in Seoul, some of my favorite nights have been just hanging out in our obscure little Korean towns doing random things.

This week is finals and so I'm spending my week skyping everyone and watching American TV shows online. Yay. I got to leave school early today and went to a teacher's house with some of the other teachers for lunch. So nice!

Christmas is about a week and a half away yet it just doesn't feel like the holidays here. Its true, there's lights up everywhere, but there's no snow. I feel like I've always had a white Christmas, and this year I definitely won't. Sort of sad. But we do have some holiday activities planned, since none of us will be with our families.

What else? Not much to say I guess. Pay day is Thursday, which means this weekend will be much more fun than this past one :)

Here's your K-Pop update. This song is by CL and Minzy (from 2NE1) and its called Please Don't Go. There's no actual video for it that I can find, except for live performance versions, so this link is just for the song.

Also, have you guys seen this video of the little boy playing the ukulele and singing "I'm Yours"? Its freaking adorable you need to watch it!

I really thought I had more to say...but I guess I don't. Sorry. Hopefully next week I will be more interesting. Bye!

"It is not down in any map; true places never are." --Herman Melville