525,600 minutes! My 1 year anniversary in Korea!

So I hate blogging…I have been terrible at updating and I’m not even sure I really even want to try again. However I figure having spent an entire year in Korea and only documenting the first few months, I might as well get a fresh start.

A quick glimpse into the past few months.

October and the best holiday ever Halloween.

Halloween is one of my most favorite holidays ever. I love dressing up in costumes, I love eating candy and I love being on a crazy sugar high. Celebrating Halloween at work was really funny and cute. The school I work for is called Wonderland. So naturally I dressed up as Alice. My cleverness didn’t go far in Korea but I still had to do it. The kids were excited to eat candy and dress up! We even had a haunted house in our gym. Truth be told we a few criers…but they made it through. I felt super terrible though with one student because the second we turned off the lights he death gripped my body and was about to cry. So I took pity on the poor child and took him outside where the lights were on so we could wait it out together. Well I took him back in once I thought they were about finished so we could start playing our games. Unfortunately once we went back inside my Korean coworkers saw that he didn’t go through the haunted house and took him from me so they could take him. My protests to them fell on deaf ears…five seconds later guess who’s crying. Ahhh!  I just felt like I lied to the poor kid. I wouldn’t have made him go, he’s four years old…I’m 25 years old and I don’t like being scared…I will gladly skip that.

During Halloween weekend my friend and I dressed up as crayons. It was super fun but freezing outside. I was just glad I had a partner because Halloween isn’t really a holiday they celebrate here. We got a lot of looks and the bus driver asked us if it was someone’s birthday. (Note for next birthday…everyone is dressing up as crayons)

Korea has only been as great as it has been because I have made some amazing friends here. Ride or Die! In November we had a little Thanksgiving Day feast at my house. It was fun cooking with friends and we had some fantastic laughs. We filled up my tiny table and ate as much as we could : )

please notice the hello kitty peeler : )

December was super fun! Once again amazing bestie friends came through and we totally enjoyed the Christmas spirit! We got each other cute little gifts and celebrated by eating delicious Shabu Shabu. During Christmas vacation my friend Sarah, her friend from the states Dez (now my friend too) and I all traveled to the Philippines. The best way to describe the Philippines is if Hawaii and Mexico had a baby. It is beautiful and tropical the people are very outgoing and friendly. However it is still a very poor and developing country and you don’t want to be out and about at night. We spent one day/night in the capital Manila. I have never been so aware that I was white before. People pointing at you from across the street, yelling hello to you, even driving inside a taxi cab people would point in at us. We took a horse drawn carriage around the old town area. Our driver was super nice and took a million pictures for us : ) After Manila we went to tourist safety bubble Philippines called Boracay. It was amazing and beautiful. I think after that I only want to have white sand Christmas.

family photo!

Tasted terrible but made for a good picture.

New Years we were back in Seoul and brought in the new year with a Far East Movement concert (like a g 6)

February and March went by well. My friends and I had a nice Valentine’s day dinner with cute little presents and once again delicious dinner : ) My birthday was great! My friends are so awesome and got me wonderful gifts, an ice cream cake, and endured some Rod Stewart noraebong :) I got to wear a cute dress and dance the night away! Perfect night!

The Quad! Ride or Die 

During the months March, April, and May my friend Sarah and I took a Korean class. Let’s just say I’m glad I took the class but I’m not sure how much I really learned/retained. But I guess everyone has to start somewhere. I am proud to say that I can read/sound out Korean words. By that same system I could sound out write something. I have noticed that I can understand more but still a struggle. Be nice to Asians learning English, it is not an easy transition.

Highlight of May was going on a short trip to Busan with my friend Sarah. She is one of the best if not THE best travel buddies. Busan is a beach town in the South Coast of Korea. The water was still a little icy to really enjoy swimming but it was fun to get in and lay on the beach none the less. We had lots of fun adventures, visiting temples, aquariums, fish markets, carnivals and making friends with the locals. We took the fast train there and back and stayed for the long weekend (Buddha’s birthday!) I love traveling by train. It is the best, easiest way to travel. I wish America didn’t suck and had a better train system.

washing Buddha the birthday boy

fyi: not a nazi sign in the background

yes that IS an amazing couples t-shirt!

Summer has started and it’s been hot, humid, and some pretty crazy storms. My sister is coming to visit me this month and I can’t wait! It has been a million years since we last were able to be together and I can’t wait to show her my new country :)

I’m not going to make any promises about keeping this blog updated. Just enjoy the moment : )Don’t ruin it by thinking about the future ; )

ba de ya...Say do you remember..ba de ya..dancing in September....

 September was actually a very busy month and because I waited forever to write about it I am going to give the water downed version. Some things will be forgotten, and I know at times my writing will be rambling.

First I will talk about Chuseok…This is Korean’s fall harvest festival, much like Thanksgiving, you visit family, eat a lot of food, give thanks for blessings etc. This was a very interesting and fun cultural experience for me. I learned a lot about it so I could talk/teach the children about it. I impressed my school/boss with my awesome puppet skills, I gave a puppet show explaining what Chuseok is…the plot: Korean girl runs into non Korean friend, Korean girl can’t hangout with friend because she is getting ready for Chuseok…she goes on to explain what Chuseok is to her non Korean friend. In the end she invites her friend over to make traditional Korean food…and they lived happily ever after : )

We made songpyeon, they kind of look like potstickers, they are a rice dough filled with either sugar, honey, bean paste, dried fruit. You make the dough and fill them and then you steam them. For ours we filled it with sugar and seeds, they are super good when they are warm because the sugar is melted. I think I remember having these at my cousin’s first birthday party (she is half Korean) but I don’t think I fully appreciated them at the time.

The kids all wore their traditional clothes (it’s called Hanbok) it is always super cute to see kids dressed in clothes that you aren’t used to seeing children in. I still get a kick out of seeing my 3/4/5 year olds in suits haha. They all looked so adorable in their Hanboks and I was super jealous I didn’t have one of my own. In all honesty I think I am going to purchase one before I leave Korea, I don’t really know why I would ever need one but I feel like it is an important thing to have in my life also knowing me I will invent reasons to wear it. 

my crazy 3 year old boys

my 6 year olds

Songpyeong (you don't eat the pine needles)

My 10 year old boys (I never want to hit them upside the head...)

children in their Hanbok

Along with Chuseok comes vacation days!!!! I went to Hong Kong for a few days, got in Saturday night and left Tuesday afternoon. I was trying to visit my cousins in China, near Hong Kong but that plan was ruined when the people that they are volunteering for took them to the middle of China (aka 20 hours away) that weekend. :( I am still upset and sad about this so  I don’t want to talk about it anymore…

However I had a friend from back home that was working/living in Hong Kong at the time. We’ve know each other since middle school; he was nice enough to put me up and show me around the city. I think we ended up having a pretty successful adventure.

Highlights of the trip:

World’s longest escalator.

   

Taking the sky tram to the top of a mountain and looking down into the harbor

Randomly stumbling upon a tourist information center that told us about all this fun free stuff happening in Hong Kong that weekend. (It was inside this fake trolley car)

World largest fish lantern (it’s in the Guinness book of world records)

Fire dragon. They had this super long dragon that they had covered in incense and lit, they had a huge team of people running/dancing/carrying it, while someone was hitting drums…it was super cool to see but the pictures didn’t turn out very well, it was sooooo long it was crazy

Disneyland Hong Kong!

I hadn’t actually planned on going here but when the option came up I figured why the heck not! Now it can make it a goal to  go to all the disneylands (Tokyo isn’t that far, and I’ve been wanting to go back to France and after Harry Potter world opened in Florida, you know that’s on my to do list)

Now this Disneyland is very small compared to California, but it was nice to be able to do literally everything in one day and still enjoy it. I was able to see my Disney boyfriend Stitch, it was fate because he was both on my ticket and when we went to the Stitch show he picked me to be his girlfriend.

After a long not planned adventure of walking in the opposite direction we made it to the Avenue of Stars…China’s Walk of Fame if you will. We were able to see such stars hand prints such as Jackie Chan, and Jet Li…I was also able to do some Kung Fu moves in front of Bruce Lee’s statue (I did gather a bit of a crowd doing this).

There were some more fun things here and there and lots of inside jokes. Thanks Matt for being a good host!

Last thing to wrap up September

These are just some pictures of a little outing in Seoul. Some friends and I went down town on a weekend and they were having some festival preparing for Chuseok. We got our faces painted and walked along the river. Saw the statue of the King who invented the Korean alphabet. The weather was still nice…it was the perfect weekend outing : )

I know I have some catching up to do, but I am still enjoying every minute of Seoul. I love Korea, I have made some really great friends, that will be my excuse for my lack of blogging, I’m so busy enjoying life that I don’t have time to stop and write about it ;) haha. I love you all. I hope you all are doing well!

August in words and PICTURES!

Alright let me first off apologize for being a bad blogger :/ I guess it just means I’ve been having too much fun to stop and write about it. So let me just give you some thoughts and highlights on the last month. Sorry if it becomes random and out of order, but for anyone who has ever talked to me knows this is how I speak ;)

My Summer Vacation was nice. I stayed in Seoul for it, I was kind of trying to see if I could get out of town for a few days but by the time I got my act together everything was basically sold out. However I think it ended up working out better this way. I got to sleep in and explore Seoul during the day time. I also did a lot of shopping!

Tangent: Korea and I were made for each other. The shopping is ridiculous and I mean that in the best possible way. I seriously feel like I live in a giant forever 21 but better. All the clothes are super cheap, and cute. It is normal for girls to dress up girly, do their hair and makeup, wear cute little dresses everyday; there are venders everywhere selling handbags, hair things, and cute clothes everywhere! Plus in Korea you don’t really show your arms/upper part of your body, so all the dresses have sleeves which I love! However the flip side is that it’s totally normal to wear teeny tiny shorts or dresses, but you can just throw on a pair of tights or leggings or just wear a pair of undershorts just in case you have students that like to pull up your dress when you’re not paying attention. The shoe shopping is okay too. It’s crazy because I am a size 7 ½-8 in shoes and I am literally the second or largest shoe size, haha. I can’t understand how they have such small feet.

Okay off the shopping tangent. I went with my friend to this place called Cheonggyecheon. I was excited to finally see this place because a friend of mine had blogged about it before I left for Korea  http://ariellesophia.wordpress.com/2011/04/05/cheonggyecheon-demolition-and-community-restoration/

Basically here is the story. There is a river in the middle of Seoul, over the years this river became super polluted and was a dumping grounds for everyone’s trash so the city decided to cover up this eyesore with a major freeway. A lot of pollution and a few decades later some people got an idea to clean up the river and split the freeway around it. Now it is beautiful park where you can walk along the river and forget that you are in the middle of the city.

When I was walking around I couldn’t believe that it wasn’t that long ago that it was a polluted mess. The water looked so clear and the trees and plants so healthy. It was so nice, you are walking below street level so you really can’t hear much of the busy city around you. It was fun to see some families playing in the water and having picnics.

In this same area there is Dongdaemun Stadium, this is where all the athletes used to practice, even professionals. They had a little cultural and history center that was nice to look around at. Plus there were some random statues that my friend and I had to have a photo shoot with :)

Little brother big brother water fight, the little brother totally owned his older bro haha

My friend Brittany

Hilarious Korean Mannequins  

Another fun thing that I did was go to a dog café. Let me explain, this is a place where you can get some drinks and play with dogs, or if you have a dog you can bring it. It was so funny and fun to play with all these cute puppies. Plus it was just funny to see these dogs running wild all over this place, on top of tables, windows, they were just everywhere. Plus I felt like the girl of Finding Nemo chasing all these dogs around the café trying to catch one so it would come sit in my lap. You can take a look at this place on one of my favorite websites since I’ve been in Korea

 http://www.eatyourkimchi.com/bau-house-dog-cafe/

This couple is so funny I love them and wish we were best friends.

I know my eyes are closed but I kept laughing he didn't want to stay still

Where are you going?!

I just spent this last weekend in Naksan, it is the beach in the East of Korea. It was so beautiful, the weather was perfect. The water was so blue, it reminded me a little of Hawaii, how the water changes shades of blue the farther out you look. It was nice week took a bus on Saturday morning and played at the beach all day, our hotel was right next to the beach. We played some volleyball, swam in the water, took a nap on the beach, listened to music etc. Then some friends and I got cleaned up and walked up to the Buddhist temple nearby. It was on top of a hill so you had a nice view of the ocean and the city below. There weren’t very many people there when we went so it was very nice and peaceful. We were also there during a prayer/chant time so it was cool to look in and see as well as listen to the chants. Something that I hadn’t realized before was that the Swastika (Nazi symbol) was actually from the Buddhist. I knew that the symbol had been around long before the Nazis used it but I didn’t know that the Buddhist used it. I had been wondering about it for awhile now because I see that symbol around Seoul often, it even shows up when I use my google map on my phone. It’s nice to know that Korea is in fact NOT full of Nazis. There was a tall Buddhist statue at the very top of the hill, where people would come and light a candle, asking for their prayers/wishes to come true. There was also a frog statue that if you touched its head you could ask for 2 wishes :) We ended up going back to the temple in the morning to get some pictures in the daylight too.

After walking to the temple we went back to the beach and listened to music and watched fireworks and mingled with the other people on the trip. Then we went to sleep in our hotel. Just a fun little fact about Korean hotels, you sleep on the floor, you have a little mat and a blanket and pillow. It really isn’t that bad. However my friend and I about died laughing when I went to lay on my pillow, she kept calling it the captain crunch pillow because it was so loud it sounded like it was full of cereal, upon farther examination we discovered that it was filled with cut up pieces of drinking straws. Haha So if you ever have an industrial size bag of left over drinking straws and you don’t know what to do with them…cut them up and put them in a pillow case and BAM!

The next day we woke up went back to the temple and played a little bit more on the beach. Then we went to another beach where they have the longest zipline in Korea! It is super fun you zipline over the water and land on the beach. However I forgot that the sun = death and failed to sunscreen my ENTIRE body and got a weird sunburn on the tops of my feet and ankles. WTF why am I destined to be an albino the rest of my life. Luckily I was able to buy some Aloe and I have been using it twice a day so hopefully I will have normal legs again soon. In the mean time I have been wearing a lot of tights. Something that I love/hate about Koreans is that they call you out. Didn’t wear makeup today…your face isn’t as pretty as normal, getting fat…you’re getting fat you should go on a diet… you have a freaky leg sunburn…what happened to your legs, everyone come look at these crazy legs. Haha In all honesty I think I love it more than I hate it :)

View of the beach

Me on the Zipline!

Ceiling in one of the buildings, I love all the colors

Statue

Some art in the museum at the temple

At work we had our talent show yesterday. It was super cute the kids did such a great job. Their parents came and watched. I was the MC for the event, I always wonder how much people really understand when I’m speaking, at the very least I looked nice, I got all dolled up for it, It’s the Korean way ; )

Makeup for the talent show, these are some of my 7 year olds

Talent show, musical peter pan (weird version) 

Please note the batman costumes, they were bats in the show... bats=batman? haha

Some of my 5 year olds, the boy flashing the peace sign is one of my favorites

More of my 5 year olds. The one with the yellow bows was the one that cried everyday until I came to teach :)

My 6 year olds, minus one. 

A few of my 7 year olds, playing with fun Korean toys!

Today was the last day of one of my Korean coworkers, she teaches the 5 year olds, however since we changed to a Wonderland school (one of the top English schools in Korea) she didn’t feel like her English skills were high enough to perform to the new standards/demands. She is super sweet and it’s true her English isn’t very good at all, however it was kind of funny trying to speak with her because she always had a deer in the headlights look. The new teacher will start tomorrow, I met her very quickly today, she seems nice, but I wonder how the students are going to react to the change, I don’t think they told the students, which to me seems a little weird but maybe that’s just how they do it here. I hope I don’t have 10 crying 5 year olds tomorrow :/

Quick shout out to my favorite pass time in Korea Noraebong (Korean Karaoke). I seriously love this! It is so fun, you get a little room with some tambourines and a book of songs. You get to pick which songs you want to sing and then it plays the words for you like normal Karaoke, but at the end you get a score! It reminds me of when you’re driving in your car with a group of friends singing super loud to whatever song is playing, only this time you actually know all the words and can drown out your voice a little with the tambourine ;) Oh and in case you were wondering, I rock at this and often times get 100s, I know I’m awesome! Haha. Alright I love love love love you all. I will try not to let so much time pass between updates.