Turkeyless

Hi everyone!

This past week was business as usual around here. I had the occasional cancelled class (which seems to be a weekly occurrence) but overall nothing too exciting. Last Tuesday I attended a meeting in Seoul about North Korean human rights. It was really informative and I plan to go again. Its a great place for me to learn more about the situation, but also to get involved. There are so many opportunities in Seoul that I wasn't aware of. Everything from protests and marches, to handing out information in central Seoul, to volunteering with those who have managed to escape. For those of you who don't know, people who attempt to defect from North Korea do not attempt to do so by crossing the DMZ. Its completely impassable, and so they generally go through China to Vietnam where they can claim political asylum at the embassy in Hanoi. If they are caught in China, they will be detained while they await repatriation to North Korea. Once they are returned to NK, they will definitely face punishment. Punishment is usually served out in one of the prison camps, which likely involves torture, and execution is even a possibility. I could go on forever about this and all of the injustices, but this isn't a human rights paper so I'll cut myself off. But please watch this video and read this article that was on CNN about North Koreans who are lucky enough to make their way to South Korea, and how their reintegration into society is difficult after being isolated and fed propaganda their entire lives.


Wednesday I went with Christine, a fellow Badger, to a dance studio in Seoul. We took the hip hop class and it was actually really good. It felt sooo good to get back into a studio! The staff was really nice, and did their best to speak English to us (naturally we were the only non-Koreans in the place). Our instructor was really nice as well and tried his best to explain things to us in English. Precious. But hey! They count in English! And not just for us. I was happy. I would definitely go back there again, but I think later this week we're going to check out another studio in Seoul that I was recommended to try, but this time for jazz. Both studios are pretty far though - about an hour and a half on the subway each way. Gah. But to me, its worth it.


Thursday I went to dinner with my friend John and several other native English teachers in the area. It was basically a welcome dinner for the teachers who have just arrived here. They were from all over the world - U.S., South Africa, the UK, Canada, etc. Most of the people had only been here for a week or two, and some only for a few days. Its amazing how much I've learned in only 3 months! From basic Korean vocabulary to cultural differences, I was able to answer so many questions.


It never ceases to amaze me how cheap things can be here though. There were about 13 of us at dinner, and our total bill was only 150,000 won! That's about $125. That included all of our Korean BBQ, side dishes, and beer and soju. Unbelievable.


This weekend I went back to Dongducheon where I hung out with my friends John and Q. We cooked ourselves a nice little Italian dinner and then proceeded to down 4 bottles of wine between the 3 of us. Of course we ended up at a noraebang (this one had free ice cream!) and noraebanged the night away.

John and Q

I look like I'm about to be kicked off American Idol...

So this week is Thanksgiving. I'm sad I'm missing it. Nobody here celebrates it, obviously. So while all of you are eating your turkey and enjoying your days off school and work, I will be sitting at school with people who don't have any clue that a very important holiday is being celebrated. Some of us have a get together planned for Thursday and probably another one for Saturday so more of us can get together since we're spread all over the city. Turkeys are hard to come by and even if we could find one...nobody here has ovens. How are we supposed to make turkey without an oven? What good is an oven on Thanksgiving without a turkey? That fact shocked me when I first got here. But Korea is so....Korean. And they don't make any food other than Korean food. And their food doesn't need to be baked..ever. Therefore ovens are not necessary to them. I asked what they do when they want to make cookies. I was given a blank stare followed by the reply "we buy cookies", with a silent but implied duh at the end. Well then. We may have to have a Charlie Brown Thanksgiving with popcorn, toast, pretzel sticks, and jelly beans.


My flight to Thailand has been booked! Its official!! Sara, Rebecca, Anna, and myself are leaving early in the morning on January 16th. We have a layover in Beijing, and arrive in Bangkok around 6pm. We leave Thailand on the 31st, and are taking an overnight flight back to Seoul, again with a layover in Beijing. I'm so excited - I absolutely cannot wait. January is supposed to be the coldest month in Korea, but I won't be around for half of it to find out - I'll be loving life on a beach in Thailand. We don't have many specific plans yet. And it will probably stay that way. We will do the usual touristy stuff of course, but we plan to spend a lot of our vacation just relaxing and beach hopping. Eventually we'll need to book another flight from Bangkok to Phuket, but it will be extremely cheap so we're waiting until we get closer to the actual time. Can't wait. This is going to be one epic vacation. I'm also especially excited for January because not only do I get to spend half the month in Thailand, but I also have my friend Kelsey from high school visiting me from the 3rd-9th. She's living in the Philippines right now, and is making a trip up for a week to see me. I only have to work the 2nd week in January (as far as I've been told) and the rest of the time I will have free. Oh and I'm still getting paid. My job is ridiculous.


School is going well. I asked one of my students today what he did this weekend and he said "I ate kitchen". He meant chicken, and I knew that, but it still didn't prevent me from cracking up. I suppose...if you switch the ch and the k around, chicken does sort of sound like kitchen if you're a non-native speaker just learning English. Hee funny ^_^ The kids are still sort of all over the place (remember that immaturity I talked about last time?). Sort of annoying. If I had things my way, I'd bring them all to the U.S. for a few days so I could show them what high school life is like in America, because they just have no idea. Courtney sent me a few pics of high school life from her perspective, which I'll turn into a "high school in America" lesson for my students. Learning culture is important when learning a language so I try to incorporate it into as many of my lessons as I can. I showed some of the pictures to one of the other English teachers, and she was so surprised. I had to explain about every student having their own lockers "no, they're not for changing" and that there's an auditorium for performances "it doesn't take place in the cafeteria", and just...a bunch of other things that I would've thought was common knowledge but clearly I was wrong. She thought Fort's high school library looked like a university library...to which I had to explain that of course a university library is much much bigger and most universities have more than one. Wisconsin has a list a mile long.


Some of these things are just so difficult to explain that I wish it were possible for everyone to visit the U.S. so they could see for themselves. Inversely, I wish I could send all my friends and family over here as well so that you could all see for yourselves the cultural differences that I deal with daily. I'm getting used to many of them, but sometimes I still forget. I forget that when someone older than me is pouring my drink for me (alcohol is not poured yourself, someone else pours it for you) that I should hold the cup with two hands as a sign of respect. I forget to give a little bow when I pass another teacher in the hallway (as is customary). I usually smile and give a perky little wave before I remember where I am, and then sort of awkwardly give a little head nod, ashamed that after 3 months of living here I still can't remember to bow. I'm working on it. When I eventually go back to the U.S. I'll be bowing left and right and no one will have a clue what I'm doing. I do my best to remember every little thing about life in the U.S. but I know that after being fully immersed in a completely different culture for a year, or more, that reverse culture shock is going to hit me pretty hard. Coming home after an experience like this is always more difficult of an adjustment. Luckily...that is far far far away for me, so I'll worry about it later.


Here's some pics of me in the classroom. This is from an open class that one of the English teachers I work with, Choi Yun-Hee, had to do, and I helped her with it. Every now and then teachers have to give an open class where they are critiqued and evaluated by other teachers and the principals. Which is why you can see the vice principal and my co-teacher, Sang-Jin, in the back of the classroom. I figured I'd post this to prove that I actually do work over here, since facebook albums and blog entries probably suggest otherwise.

Helping a student read

Acting out a scene from Friends with one of my students

In my classroom I have a "virtual studio" which is like a green screen (but mine is blue) where I can place the kids in any number of scenes: the bank, post office, doctor's, etc. It is projected onto the big touch screen board I have at the front of my classroom. In this particular picture, although you can't see the scene, we're standing in an episode of Friends. We were discussing the differences and similarities between Thanksgiving and Chuseok, and watched part of an episode where Joey gets the turkey stuck on his head. Classic!


Here's your weekly dose of K-Pop. Its by a group called 소녀시대 (pronounced So Nyeo Shi Dae). They generally go by the English name Girls Generation or their acronym of SNSD. The song is called Gee, and we all go nuts when it comes on in the clubs, naturally. Its pretty catchy, especially the "Gee gee gee gee baby baby baby" since that's all we can understand really. In true K-Pop fashion there's about 30 of them all 18-20 years old. For all of you who can't read Korean - where it says 뮤직비디오 after the title...that literally just says "music video" phonetically in Korean. Easy.


Hope you all have a fabulous Thanksgiving! I will be celebrating by hanging out with people from all over the world who love Thanksgiving even though they aren't American, and I'll be watching Charlie Brown's Thanksgiving on youtube. But I'll be...turkeyless :(


"There are no foreign lands. It is the traveler only who is foreign." -- Robert Louis Stevenson

빼빼로

Hi!

So this week was pretty normal, although it did involve a day off school. Woo! Tuesday night I went out to dinner with a bunch of the teachers which naturally turned into noraebanging until 1:30am. Luckily Wednesday was only a half day of school. Wednesday last week was also 빼빼로 (pepero) day. Pepero Day is sort of a fake holiday created by Lotte probably to boost sales. Lotte manufactures this snack called pepero that is these cookie sticks covered in chocolate. There's a bunch of different flavors. Its celebrated on November 11th because 4 of these pepero sticks looks like 11/11. Totally pointless. However it is tradition for couples to give each other boxes of pepero on this day, and its sort of like Valentine's Day for them. So of course my students who love me soooo much brought me tons of pepero. I ate like 3 boxes that day. But they're so good! I'll be sure to send some home soon.

Thursday was the big college entrance exam test so none of the students were in school. I didn't have to go to school either so I ventured down to Suwon to hang out with Sara and Rebecca who also had the day off. We got some yummy Korean BBQ and then downed 2 pitchers of beer at the bar across from Rebecca's apartment. Friday night I was an old lady and did more laundry and caught up on some reading and episodes of Glee. That is embarrassing to admit so moving on...

Saturday I went out with the usual group. We started off the night at our favorite hookah bar in Seoul and then moved onto the clubs from there.

Sara, Anna, Mark, Rebecca, & me :)

And that's all you're getting out of me for pictures...sorry. Some pictures just weren't meant for the public. We wanted to find somewhere to watch the Wisco/Michigan game (which started around 1am on this side of the world) but it was on Big Ten Network which unsurprisingly does not reach Seoul :( Thanks to technology though we were able to get the score as soon as the game was over. Wisco's win was cause for celebration and resulted in yet another night of being out until the sun came up.

My vacation time for January has been approved. I get the last 2 weeks of January off, which means that a trip to Thailand will be booked sometime in the next week or two. EEEEK. I'm pretty excited, in case you can't tell. Vacation will be paid (although it will use up half of my available vacation days but I don't really care). I've had some serious talks with my friends about staying for a 2nd year here. We may change our minds come contract renewal time...but for now its a definite possibility. Its just really hard to say no to the possibility of staying here longer. We have an amazing set up here - apartment paid for, airfare paid for, etc. We get paid way more money than we deserve for the amount of work we do - I mean really how hard is it to speak in your own language all day playing learning games with kids? And even though we spend 40 hours/week in school, we only spend around 20 hours actually teaching each week. We get paid more than most of the actual teachers in our schools. We could probably all be saving tons of money if we didn't have student loans and a poor conversion rate to the US Dollar. Also, even though we've been here for 3 months (can you believe it!!) we still live like we're tourists i.e. we drink like college freshman, travel on the weekends, and eat out most nights especially when we're all together. We like to joke that living in Korea is "easier than life" because I mean really...it is.

Obama will be here in Seoul in a few days. He's on his Asian tour right now, stopping in China today to have a town hall style meeting with a bunch of Chinese college students. Its a pretty big deal for these countries to have our President visit them. I'm excited to see the reaction to him here in Korea - he seems to have a fair amount of support from the people of this country. His speech in China, for those of you who didn't see it since it was the middle of the night for you, really hammered through the point that he doesn't believe information, especially on the internet, should be restricted. China is known to have websites like Twitter and Facebook blocked, among others - including important media sources, and he reinforced his idea (and probably most Americans' idea) that access to information can empower people and that criticism of government is a positive thing because it helps keep the government in check. To further cite the restriction of information in China - his speech was not broadcast on TV in China, as other former US president's visits have been, and his quote about having free flowing information was on a website in China for only 30 minutes before censors deleted it. The students in the audience were mostly handpicked by the government, and many of them are part of China's young Communist Youth League, many of them having questions fed to them. Freedom of speech is not something the Chinese enjoy the way we do in America - so hopefully his visit will encourage the government there to reevaluate some policies.

I'm planning a lesson on movies for my students. Thank God for Disney's Pixar for making adorable little short movies that don't have words. I'm using 3-5 of these short films to get the kids talking about movie vocabulary (animation, characters, music, plot, story, etc), and then I'll eventually discuss with them how to criticize a movie and then make their own DVD covers with lots of fabulous English words on it. Yay! I'm sure half the kids will sleep but movies always seems to keep kids awake. Classroom behavior both appalls and amazes me here. It shows a level of immaturity that I didn't think was possible in high school age children. Some kids are good, but others are just so terrible. And the teachers just accept it. I get the impression the attitude here is that if the kids aren't mature enough by high school to understand the importance of education then the teachers give up. Maybe I've forgotten what high school was like? College kids (generally) are more well behaved in class. Although when we weren't listening to the professors we were a little more subtle about it...doing the crossword or sudoku, checking facebook, texting, etc. We didn't just blatantly sleep or talk in class. Courtney...am I missing something? Are you high school kids as bad in the US as my kids are here?

Naturally I have my weekly dose of kpop for you all. Taeyang has a new song out. He's a bigger babe than ever in this one. Its called Wedding Dress. I think a version of the video w/ English subtitles is available on youtube, but essentially he's saying that the girl who is getting married should be marrying him. And that sometimes he gets excited when she fights with her boyfriend because it gives him hope she'll dump that other loser and marry him. But since she's not, he hopes she's happy with the other guy so he can forget about her. Basically he's whining because he was too scared to tell her how he really felt. Wahh. But the boy can dance!

Also I've stumbled upon this gem of a video called Where the Hell is Matt? If these few minutes of uninhibited silliness don't make you laugh or at least smile, then you are no fun and I can't help you. I think this was 2008's viral video of the year, it has almost 25 million hits on youtube. Make sure you check out his outtakes too :) Maybe one day there will be a Where the Hell is Amy video. Seeing places that I have been, am, or will hopefully go makes me want to make my own version. Make sure you watch for the DMZ (1:52) and Seoul (2:46) in the video!

"I haven't been everywhere, but its on my list." -- Susan Sontag

I Wish You To Better

Hi!

So to be honest, I really don't have a whole lot to say (again). My friends and I haven't traveled the past few weeks. This is partly due to the fact that we spent all of our money on previous adventures, and also because we've been busy celebrating Halloween followed by a series of birthdays.


Once I finally went back to school after being sick I was bombarded by the students. One of the teachers jokingly told them that I moved back to America and some of the kids actually believed it. Sad. When they found out the real reason I was gone, they kept asking me if I was ok and "are you have a cold?". When I told them that yes I do in fact have a "cold" aka a swine flu scare, they would tell me "I wish you to better". I think they meant "I wish you would feel better" but its all the same right? It sounds cuter when they say it anyway.


Birthday weekend was quite extensive. Sara, Anna, and Rebecca had birthdays (Friday, Saturday, and Sunday - respectively). Friday night we went out for dinner to celebrate Sara's birthday. Saturday night we got a room in the Grand Hilton Seoul to have a birthday party for everyone. The hotel was really nice and the staff spoke perfect English. The Grand Hilton is also a convention center, so there are several nice restaurants in the hotel as well as a spa. We didn't take advantage of that but we did take advantage of the overpriced room service. Naturally we ordered cheeseburgers and I'm telling you it worth every penny...uhm won? Especially because they were delivered by a beautiful man. Being the typical polite Korean accommodating worker that he was, he actually asked when we answered the door if he could come in to our room with the cart to bring us our food. What? Did he actually think we were going to say no or something? Um...no sexy Korean man at the door with a cart full of cheeseburgers I don't want you anywhere near my room.





We had birthday cake, of course, which I got for the girls at the ubiquitous Paris Baguette. Rebecca has a serious aversion to birthdays and getting older (even though she only turned 23), but she still marketed the weekend as a "Sweet Sixteen" party. So in order to make her happy, and not make her feel old, or rub it in her face that I am still a baby at 22, I put 16 on the cake. We're not old yet, but we'll be there soon, and after turning 21, birthdays are a little scary I suppose. Our next big milestone is 30 - which I don't even want to think about.

Anna, me, Rebecca, Sara, and Mika

Acting 16

We went out in Hongdae of course, not letting the bad weather rain (literally) on our big birthday parade. We were so excited to go out and not have to stay out all night waiting for the subway to open since our hotel was a short cab ride away from where we go out. Ironically, we still stayed out until 5am. But it sure was nice not to have to take the subway home for an hour at 6am.


Sunday a few of us went to a movie in the COEX mall. It was raining and we needed a place to nurse our hangovers. We tried to see Inglorious Bastards, but it was sold out for the afternoon show, so we went to the Michael Jackson movie - the only other movie playing in English that none of us had seen (the movies come out about a month after they do in the US here, some even later). The movies are shown in the original language just with Korean subtitles. Usually subtitles bother me because I end up reading them even if I can understand the movie perfectly without them, but Korean is still incredibly foreign to me even though I'm getting better at reading it, so they were easy to ignore. I wasn't super impressed by the movie, to be honest, but listening to Michael Jackson for 90 minutes wasn't too terrible. He was crazy for sure, but also undeniably genius at what he did.


So - what else is there to say? I always tell you all about what I'm doing, but I'm not sure if you get a feel for what its actually like here. Well, where to begin? The differences are endless. Pretty much everybody lives in apartments here. Even in my city (of 400,000) there are no houses. It makes the cities seem smaller than they actually are, because everybody is just sort of stacked on top of everybody else. The majority of apartments are high rises (mine is pretty small - only 6 stories). In Korea, instead of making one giant apartment building, companies make 10 or 15 or more that all look identical to each other and put them in little arrangements. Mine is not like this, but mine is an exception. Most of my friends live in those types of apartments. One of the teachers at my school told me that one of these little apartments can cost the equivalent of $300-400,000 in a larger city (like maybe Suwon with approximately 2 million people). In Seoul, it can be almost double that. But to rent one apparently you just deposit like $100,000 with the landlord, live there for a few years, and then when you move you get your deposit back. I tried to ask how they make their money, but all I could really get out of the conversation was that they invest the deposit to make enough money to pay the mortgage. Seems like a strange system to me because I'm used to paying actual rent, so...I'll look into this.


On the agenda for the next week: nothing. At least not until I get paid. No school Thursday (I'm working on convincing my school to allow me to skip school entirely) because its the big college entrance exam (sort of the equivalent of the SAT) on Thursday - so none of the students will be in school. Hopefully the English portion goes ok for the kids. Some of my students are still saying "nice to meet you" in the hallway to me, even though I've been here for close to 3 months. I tried explaining the difference between "nice to meet you" and "nice to see you" to them. Some of them got it, some of them seemed to get it but still say "nice to meet you", and the rest of them didn't have a clue what I was saying. I'm finally learning a few of their names, which is a big deal considering I have half of the students twice a week, and the other half only once a week, and they all have names like Yoon Kyeong, Seok Min, and Cham Yeup. Names to me sort of just sound like the rest of the language. Its not instantly obvious to me that what someone is saying is actually a name. What's a cham yeup? I'm learning, but its slow going.


Teaching overall is good. Its definitely helpful to have the co teachers in the room with me, because they can translate game rules, or even just basic things I say that the students don't understand. It really amazes me that after studying English since elementary school these kids don't have much of a response for when I ask simple questions like "what did you do/are you doing this weekend?". I took Spanish for the same amount of time these kids have been learning English and I can think of plenty of things to say. Hell, I took Italian for only one semester (well ok it was two semesters crammed into one) - but still, I can think of equally as many things to say in Italian as I can think of in Spanish or even English! I mean, how do they not get it by now? To me that shows that there is a serious flaw in the way English is taught here. The only class where I don't have a co teacher is with the taekwondo kids. In case I never explained this - I teach them because their coach feels its important for them to speak English because some of the students compete internationally and English is spoken pretty much everywhere they go. The only problem with teaching them (and with the rest of the kids really) is that there are no lesson plans or objectives or goals or anything to give me an idea of what I should be teaching them. And I don't speak Korean. So basically what this means is that I don't know what I'm doing, but even if I did know, I have no way of communicating it to my students because at any given point I am the only one in the room who has any freaking idea what I'm saying!


On another note, I have become acquainted with someone who I can only assume is the godfather of dance in Seoul. He was referred to me by several friends who I know that are in LA dancing but have connections in Seoul. He gave me the name of a studio that seems legit and apparently the staff can speak somewhat passable English. Which doesn't bother me too much because luckily you don't really need to speak the same language to understand dance. He seems pretty integrated in the hip hop scene here so I'm excited to finally get back in a dance studio. Its been since May since I actually danced (clubbing doesn't count for me!). I'm pumpppppped.


That's all for now. Here's the latest from G-Dragon, he's got a new song out. The video is...well you'll see. And I'm strongly opposed to most of his wardrobe choices, but the song is catchy! Also, I'm not sure what GaHo is doing in there at the end. GaHo is G-Dragon's dog, and its sad that I know that, but its sort of a famous dog. Like Tinkerbell to Paris Hilton. Gaho (가호) means like...blessing or grace in Korean. The song is called Breathe. Click here to listen!


"Things I can't say in words run through my body as I dance...Because we feel the power of speaking another language: the language of dance." -- Elenor Schick

Impromptu Field Trip

Hi again!

So as I write this blog I am laying in bed feeling like I'm dying. I just got back from the hospital after getting a swine flu test. Its negative, but I definitely have some sort of sickness and I feel miserable. Just a little disclaimer - in case anything doesn't make sense please know that I'm sort of drugged up and not completely clear-minded. Also won't be super detailed since all I really want to do is sleep. Sorry.

Compared to previous weeks I don't have a ton to say. I did go on a field trip with some of my students (where I'm pretty sure I picked up whatever sickness I have). It was sort of sprung on me last minute. Jin had mentioned it to me before but didn't give me many specifics and then last Tuesday she "reminded" me that the following day I should bring my bags to school because we were going on a retreat with the students until Friday. Ok then.

So Wednesday we took 3 buses full of the first grade students (high school only has 2 grades here - first and second) to a small town called Chungju which is in Chungcheongbuk-do province, just southeast of Gyeonggi-do province where I live. From the time we got off the bus until we got back on on Friday afternoon we were not in charge of the kids and it was soooo nice. The 3 days were sort of a team-building retreat for the kids, which meant the teachers didn't really have any responsibilities. It was like more paid vacation :)

Our first stop was an old palace and another version of the Korean Folk Village in Yongin.

This place is also famous for apples.

Apple replica of the entrance gate to the village (visible in the background)

There Jin made me dress up in a hanbok and took a bunch of pictures of me. Like my new hairdo?

We left there and went to the resort where we were staying. It was really nice, nestled at the base of a ski mountain. I shared a room with Jin and the other 2 female teachers that were with us on the trip. Our room was pretty big - actually it was 3 rooms. We had a sort of living room/kitchen area and then 2 bedrooms. We spent the afternoon and evening watching TV and reading. I showed them some of the magazines that I had sent from home, and educated them on some American pop culture and celebrities. They wanted to know why Nicole Richie was "so fat" and how she possibly ended up on the best dressed list. (Answer: she's pregnant and she got best dressed maternity). They got me hooked on a Korean TV show (IRIS). I would love to continue watching it but its sort of difficult because its entirely in Korean obviously and there's no subtitles. Jin translated every few minutes for me the things that I wasn't able to pick up on just by watching.

The next day we pretty much did nothing again. I spent a little bit of time with the kids but other than that it was more TV watching and reading (I finished an entire book) and a little bit of hanging out outside since it was in the 70s. Soooo nice. My students talked me into practicing archery with them, which naturally was completely disastrous but the kids thought it was hilarious.

Thursday night after dinner we had pizza ordered for the kids (and ourselves of course). So after we delivered the pizzas to the kids' rooms, all of us teachers gathered in a room to have pizza, fried chicken, and beer. I explained to them that I pretty much lived off of these things in college. Great meal. I think I had spoken too soon though, because then they brought out a bowl of fried grasshoppers. Some of the male teachers had spent the morning catching grasshoppers in the fields near the resort and had fried them up to have as a snack. At first I was freaking out because they were all bugging me to try it. I initially refused. But then Jin found me a nice little tiny grasshopper and dipped it in some salt. I gave in to peer pressure and ate it. I washed it down with a slice of pizza, a beer, and 3 chocolate cookies. I'm not going to lie, it didn't taste like much - just sort of a burnt salty crispy thing, but it was still disgusting.

Ok so you can't see that I'm holding the grasshopper but I am. And I ate it.

Grasshopper sandwich

So we just sat around eating our pizza, fried chicken, grasshoppers, and beer. Totally normal right? After a few beers we (naturally) ended up in the noraebang in the basement of our resort and sang until 2 in the morning. Jin was the only one who knew any songs in English so of course she made me sing Sk8er Boy and Baby One More Time. Yeesh.

The next day we headed home after lunch and the principal took us all out for dinner once we got back to thank us for going with the students. I called it a night after that and spent Friday night doing laundry and catching up on my American TV shows. I'm old.

Saturday was Halloween, and although it didn't even come close to comparing to Madison, it was still fun. We started the night in Itaewon which is full of foreigners due to the US Army base nearby. Overall I wasn't a huge fan of Itaewon. Partly due to the foreigners that were everywhere (I could've been in a bar in Madison for all I knew) and partly due to the abundance of prostitutes everywhere (we were near Hooker Hill). Eventually we ended up in Hongdae and of course stayed out until 5:30am once the subway opened.

YouTube costume

Me and Gq - I did his makeup - isn't it fab?

Me Rebecca and Sara

And that brings me to today. I started feeling sick last night, and even after more than 10 hours of sleep I wasn't feeling any better. So I called in sick to school and then Jin took me to the hospital to get tested. Typically I would just go to the doctor by myself but nobody can speak English so I need a translator. Bah. Luckily everyone is putting up their Halloween albums on Facebook and there's a Sex and the City marathon on TV right now which is keeping me from being incredibly bored.

And of course there's always K-Pop videos on YouTube. My latest obsession is Taeyang from Big Bang. One of my students showed me this video, also informing me that Taeyang is from Uijeongbu (where I live!). Here's his video Where U At. He's a serious babe. Also popular in the clubs is a song by Big Bang and 2NE1 called Lollipop. Its a favorite in the noraebang as well. Enjoy!

"Travel is more than the seeing of sights; it is a change that goes on, deep and permanent, in the ideas of living." --Miriam Beard

I'm Thank You, My Pay

안녕하세요!

Hope you're all doing well. The past week has been super busy and full of stories. As usual I've been all over the place. I get restless really easily and luckily so do many of my friends here - so we're on the go a lot. I'll do my best to recap.

Last Monday I only had school for a half day due to midterms. I didn't have to teach - just sit there and watch movies that Jin illegally downloaded on my computer. Around noon all of the teachers left to go hiking. We took the bus to Yangju Station (the nearest one to our school) and then took the subway north to Dongducheon (where I had originally thought I would be working) and from there we took a diesel train 40 minutes north to Sintan-ri (the last stop on the diesel train before we would be in North Korea). We walked a few minutes to Yeoncheon-san. Most of the women chose not to hike - they thought it would be too "difficult". It was the smallest of the 3 mountains I have hiked up so far in South Korea. So Jin and I were ready in our full hiking gear for our trip up the mountain with the rest of the male teachers. Jin was dressed like there should've been 8 feet of snow coming. She had on a fleece and a Northface jacket as well as long sleeves. She claimed she was cold - but seriously it was upper 50s/low 60s that day.

Jin and her hiking gear

Jin and me on Yeoncheon-san

My principal explained to me in a mix of Korean and broken English that until as recently as 20 years ago nobody was allowed to hike on the mountain because it was covered in landmines (guess you were right Mom...). Even today, at the top of the mountain you can find South Korean soldiers on the lookout for any strange activity from North Korea. The no-fly zone begins at the mountain, and any planes flying past the line will be shot down (probably from both sides). The view from where we stopped before turning back was amazing though, and it was probably about as close to North Korea as you can get before you need to be either on a tour or you have to be searched by guards or need to have a soldier with you. Another reminder of my proximity to North Korea and everything else that comes to mind when North Korea is mentioned. For the most part its just business as usual around here - but I've learned more and more that it is something that's still always in the back of everyone's mind. Very informative afternoon.

View from Yeoncheon-san (amazing). No fly zone starts on the smaller mountains to the right.

Third peak back is North Korea!

After our hike was over, we all went to a small restaurant for some tofu and makkoli (Korean traditional rice wine). This small town is sort of in the middle of nowhere and literally has dirt roads and there are chickens at the train stop. Vastly different from the big-city life of Seoul and feels further away than a short train ride from my city of 400,000 in Uijeongbu. We all ended up being quite drunk - which naturally meant that we were getting on the train to go to Uijeongbu for more drinking. I finished the night off with about 6 other teachers (Jin and my neighbor Sang-Eun included) where I'm pretty sure Jin has a picture of me eating pig's feet. I'm not going to lie, they weren't too bad. I've surprised myself in the past 2 months I've been here - not only with the foods that I've tried, but have enjoyed! Pig's blood noodle-y stuff - check (although I hated it). Raw cow liver? Check. Raw cow stomach? Been there done that. Squid jerky? Love it. Clams? No problem. Pig's feet? All about it.

Woke up Tuesday morning feeling the aftermath of our night out. My neighbor was about 10 minutes late to get to my apartment, and we couldn't even make it to the bus stop without stopping at 7-11 for some water. Oops. Luckily, we had another half day because of midterms and then it was on to Everland! The whole place was decked out for Halloween. Even though nobody in Korea celebrates Halloween, everybody knows what it is. I was so happy to see all the pumpkins and scarecrows - I almost felt like I was back in the States. Everland this kitschy little place in Yongin - where Anna lives - and is home to the biggest roller coaster in South Korea.

Everland!

I got so excited when I heard about this because I love a good roller coaster. However, I was totally spoiled growing up with parents who took us all to Cedar Point every summer, and therefore very little can compare to the steel mega-coasters that I am such a big fan of. This "biggest" roller coaster was sort of like the Gemini (for you Cedar Point go-ers). For those of you in the Chicago area, you can compare it to the Viper at Six Flags, maybe a little bit bigger. So overall - nothing too shocking. Jin wasn't able to come to Everland with us, so I spent most of the day with my neighbor Sang-Eun - the only one who could speak enough English to actually have a conversation with me.

Teachers at my school having fun in the pumpkins :)

Sang-Eun and me

We spent most of the time going on the smaller rides. While this place is an amusement park - it doesn't even come close to comparing to what we know of amusement parks in America. Most of the rides are not roller coasters, but rather the spin and make you want to throw up kind of rides. They're not my favorite, mostly because they make me sort of dizzy, but I dealt with it and enjoyed myself regardless. When it came time for the big roller coaster, I dragged Sang-Eun on with me. We only had to wait in line for about 20 minutes or so, and then it was our turn! As soon as we got onto the ride, Sang-Eun grabbed onto me and started freaking out. Once we got to the top of the hill I put my hands up and was ready to go. Sang-Eun was still clinging onto me, and by the end of the ride she was practically in my lap. All the women on the ride were having heart attacks because it was going so fast (or so they thought). Of course, the ride takes your picture, and the one of me and Sang-Eun was so funny that I'm regretting not buying it. She's curled in a little ball and I have my hands up and I'm smiling away. Classic. The guys wanted to go on again - of course Sang-Eun wouldn't go. So I dragged another teacher on so we'd have an even number and prepared for Round 2. This time we practiced our poses for the camera.

Practicing for our roller coaster pic

Ready to Safari!

We also went on a Safari "ride". Everybody gets on a bus and they drive through a sort of zoo-like area of the park. There's giraffes, elephants, and lions and tigers and bears oh my! The bears do tricks which is pretty cool. They stand on their hind legs and walk alongside the bus. Or they stand up and do a little dance for some food.

We ate some food inside the park and then went home for the night.

Wednesday was uneventful - although nice because it was only a half day. Thursday was my first day teaching in awhile. I've had a lot of time off for various tests the students have had to take. Friday I had to teach as well. My last class of the day was the taekwondo team. I know I'm not supposed to have favorites, but I do. And it is the taekwondo team. Most of the students in my classes don't pay much attention - and I'm finding this is true across the board for my other fellow English teachers. But the taekwondo kids are extremely disciplined and respectful and so I pretty much just play games with them the whole time because they actually listen and participate. One of the students speaks pretty decent English in comparison to the rest and was able to understand my explanation of the game enough to translate it back to his classmates. This is my one class all week where I am not accompanied by a co-teacher to help me with translations or discipline. It works out though, because the kids are really great.

After school Friday I headed to Gangbyeon Station in Seoul where I was to meet up with Sara, Anna, and Adam. Rebecca was supposed to come with us, but she caught the swine and had to stay home all weekend :( At Gangbyeon we tried to figure out how to buy our bus tickets for Seoraksan/Sokcho, but were sort of lost. Even though we've lived here for 2 months, sometimes we still run into times where (especially in Seoul) we are lost or can't figure things out. So I ventured off to find tickets while Adam, Anna, and Sara sat with our stuff. I must have looked extremely lost because a Korean guy stopped me and in perfect English said "uhh...can I help you? You look really lost..". Hm. My bad. It was extremely fortunate though, and he accompanied my friends and I to the bus terminal and even helped us buy our tickets to the correct city by speaking with the teller in Korean. Lifesaverrrr! That kid has some good karma coming his way. Random acts of kindness like that always inspire me to do the same and pay it forward. We had some time to kill before our bus left, so naturally we sat outside a 7-11 and drank and ate Korean food.

We arrived in Sokcho around 10:30pm. From there we took a taxi to our hostel and called it a night. The next morning we woke up bright and early to get our hike started. After stopping for a quick convenience store breakfast, we were on our way! I had expected the hike to be difficult, but overall it wasn't. Seoraksan national park was extremely crowded, however, and that made things a little frustrating at times. Fall is the peak season for people to hike because the leaves are so amazing. The hike was very uneventful, but still beautiful. We saw a big buddha statue, an amazing temple in a cave, and of course some beautiful fall leaves. Here's pictures:

Prayers on tablets

Big Buddha!

Adam, Sara, and Anna in the cave

One of the most beautiful temples ever.

View from the top - beautiful but foggy

2 of the 4 guardians guarding the palace

After hiking we stopped for some beer (standard post-hike ritual). Then we headed back to our hostel to clean up for the night. Post-showers we went to a restaurant that had pizza next to our hostel. Pizza was decent for being made in Korea. Of course, being the Americans that we are, it wasn't enough and we ended up with a massive bowl of fried chicken as well. Adam left us girls early and went back to the hostel to sleep. The 3 of us made friends with some Korean boys, and as was to be expected, before we knew it we were in a noraebang with our new friends singing away. This was one epic noraebang session. No holds barred. We sang everything from Spice Girls, to MMMBop, to Shaggy's "Wasn't Me" (which I haven't sang in forever), to Summer of 69 to K-Pop. Basically if it came out before or while we were in middle school, or was in Korean, it was fair game for karaoke. The K-Pop songs were the funniest because the boys sang the Korean parts and us girls sang all the English words. Great system. We finished off the night with "Its Raining Men". The Korean guys knew every word to the song and even busted out a tambourine at some point. Hilarious. We offered to help pay but of course the Koreans were gentlemen and paid for our time in the noraebang. When we said "thank you", our new friend responded with "I'm thank you, my pay". Whatever that means. We said bye and went back to the hostel for the night. In the morning we woke up and went to the beach (yes...the beach) for a few hours, and then got on a bus back to Seoul.

Loungin on the bus

The bus was only supposed to take 2 1/2 hours, but because of the traffic it ended up taking FIVE HOURS. It was really miserable, even tho the bus was nice and our seats were practically lazy-boys. We were starving by the end but made it through.

Today in school I did a Halloween lesson with some of my students (they're going nuts for the candy from the states!). I also did a "If I had a million dollars.." lesson to teach them the conditional tense. These kids seriously crack me up. One girl said she would buy cosmetic surgery with her million dollars. Another kid said he would build a house out of kimchi (the spicy pickled cabbage that Koreans love and eat with literally every meal) and put the "free girl" in his front yard. By "free girl" he meant the Statue of Liberty. So hilarious. I proposed other hypothetical situations to the kids to get them speaking using the conditional. Who would you date? Who would you be if you could be anybody in the world? What would you do if you were the President of Korea? I'm sure you can use your imagination based off what I've told you about the kids to guess what they said. The top answer I got for who students would want to be was Mariah Carey. What? Really? Other popular answers included God, Obama, and Amy Teacher (that's me). I was honored to be up there with God and Obama but I think these kids might have their priorities out of order. The kids had some pretty intelligent answers to being president: they would unify North and South Korea, lower taxes, and lower education costs. Unification was always said first by the kids - proving again that these two countries don't want to be divided. A few kids even said if they had the opportunity to go on a date/have dinner with anyone they would choose Kim Jong-Il (North Korean president for those of you living under a rock). Other kids had some different ideas and wanted to eliminate tests in school and make Korea part of the United States. Ahhh they crack me up.

Here's a few K-Pop songs that we sang in the noraebang on Saturday night. They're both by a girl group called 2NE1. The first song is called I Don't Care. The other song is called Fire. Both of these songs are extremely popular here right now and I love them :) There's a street version of Fire on YouTube as well - same song just a different video. Check it out if you're bored!

Up next: Halloween rager. I think this is the first time that I will truly be missing Madison. Halloween just won't be the same without riots, tear gas, and police on horseback. Sigh...

Meghan!! Happy Birthday (on the 29th!). I haven't forgotten about you and I will be sending you a birthday package full of presents and squid jerky very soon! It will be late but keep your eye out for it. I hope you have a fantastic birthday - miss you!! :)

Also, are people still reading? I'm not talking to myself am I? Haven't had any comments in awhile...show me some love please :)

Sorry this was kind of a long entry. I'll be sticking around Seoul for the next few weekends. Who knows where/when the next adventure will be. I'm looking forward to it though. The feeling of living out of a suitcase and being constantly on the go is something that I absolutely love. Many people would prefer to stay in the comfort of their own homes, but its just not for me. I learn something with every monument I see, every person I meet, and every city no matter how big or small that I visit. Traveling, in my opinion, is the best education, and I hope everyone has similar opportunities at some point in their life.

Did I mention I went to the beach this weekend? My. Life. Rocks.

Sokcho Beach

"Adventure is a path. Real adventure - self-determined, self-motivated, often risky - forces you to have firsthand encounters with the world. The world the way it is, not the way you imagined it. Your body will collide with the earth and you will bear witness. In this way you will be compelled to grapple with the limitless kindness and bottomless cruelty of humankind - and perhaps realize that you yourself are capable of both. This will change you. Nothing will ever again be black-and-white." --Mark Jenkins