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.
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 :)
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| Little brother big brother water fight, the little brother totally owned his older bro haha |
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| My friend Brittany |
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| 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
This couple is so funny I love them and wish we were best friends.
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| I know my eyes are closed but I kept laughing he didn't want to stay still |
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| 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 :)
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| View of the beach |
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| Me on the Zipline! |
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| Ceiling in one of the buildings, I love all the colors |
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| Statue |
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| 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 ; )
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| Makeup for the talent show, these are some of my 7 year olds |
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| Talent show, musical peter pan (weird version) |
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| Please note the batman costumes, they were bats in the show... bats=batman? haha |
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| Some of my 5 year olds, the boy flashing the peace sign is one of my favorites |
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| More of my 5 year olds. The one with the yellow bows was the one that cried everyday until I came to teach :) |
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| My 6 year olds, minus one. |
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| 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.
