Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween, peoples! Halloween here was pretty unexciting. In fact, while we were planning on watching Rosemary's Baby, maybe carving a pumpkin, we ended up hanging out with Tera (new friend from church who lives in Mokdong! Yay!). It was a lot of fun! We left kind of late (about 8pm) and went to Myeong Dong. We walked around the giant Forever 21 (I got a really cute sweater!!) and the H&M. Then we went in search of dinner (I know... it was 10pm at this point) and came across some shoes. I got a cute pair of ankle boots and Tera found herself some nice, cheap fake Uggs.

We did end up finding food and it was SOOO good! We were kind of going by smell since it was hard to tell what to expect at most places. We got really lucky finding such good food. I'm sure there's a name for the kind of place we went but I don't know what it is. It had like a wok in the middle of the table and they stir fried your dinner for you right there. Tada! We had chicken bulgogi: chicken that tasted like it had been marinated in ginger sauce (there were even chunks of ginger in the stir fry! I love ginger.), bunches of these little mushrooms, slaps of mushrooms, bok choy, carrots, and glass noodles. It was sooo good. Love it.

We made it to the subway too late so we ended up taking a taxi back... got totally ripped off. I taught our driver a new English word. :)

It was an awesome night. Next Saturday, Tera wants to go exploring the shops along the streets near our apartment. I'm totally up for that. Especially since the strap on my favorite (and, currently, ONLY) pair of heels broke today at the singles pancake dinner... DANG IT!

Unfortunately, there are NO PICTURES documenting the awesome adventure. I was pissed when I searched through my purse and couldn't find my camera while we were out. I was even more pissed when I found it in my purse this morning. Grrr...

As far as actual Halloween festivities, I didn't do much of anything except talk about it with my students and give out candy. I did get a couple of awesome drawings from some of my students. Love it!!





My favorite is the one that says "Hallowin." Because it WINS!! :D

Also, one of my students came in a witch costume. I asked her if I could take a picture of her. I just remembered I'm supposed to e-mail her a copy. Here's my adorable Helen.



And that's my weekend. I can't believe that it's only four more weeks until the end of the term! Time has gone by so quickly. One term is the same amount of time as my student teaching yet it seems to have gone by ten times faster. Wow... probably because I'm doing less than half the work for this job than I did for my student teaching. :)

Weekend with Dad: Sunday!

Sunday was Daddy's last day visiting me in Seoul. We didn't do anything really exciting, but it was fun to hang out with my padre.

We caught a movie at the theater: the new "Wall Street" movie. It was pretty good. There was some stuff that I only partially understood, though. The stock market wasn't my best unit in A.P. Economics back in high school...

After that, we walked around the mall again. Good times, good times. We got back to the apartment where we talked with Mom and Jesi for a little over Skype (Jesi was in trouble... uh oh). Dad wrapped my birthday and Christmas presents (I'll be so surprised!) and then we headed off to dinner.

I chose the place because it was called Mudori Chicken and I wanted chicken (which I don't eat a lot of here). It was... strange. Not the food. Just the decor. Very... haphazard. Haha! The menu was in Korean (go figure) but the lady pointed to something and said "FRIED CHICKEN!" so we got that. After an appetizer of popcorn (haha) we got us some spicy, extra crispy fried chicken. It was tasty. And so were the leftovers the next day. :D

6:30 came too soon and it was time to get dad into the taxi. Wave goodbye and wait until next summer. Wow... I can't believe I won't see any family until NEXT SUMMER! Lucky for me, I got Skype and good friends here to have fun over the holidays. It'll be June before I know it.

Aaaand, because I have a lot of pictures from the weekend and I know that people like to see pictures of stuff, I'll just put a bunch of pictures from our weekend.

A chicken for Mom!


A stuffed animal on a stick... what the heck?


I've heard that Koreans will make a banner for any occasion. Looks like that's just what this preschool did for their trip to the Korean Folk Village. :)


Getting out of the subway station in Suwon. The city is so pretty.


Me looking like an idiot in front of the (closed) front office of my school.


Dad in a traditional Korean jail cell. The Koreans standing next to me were taking pictures of him, too. Haha!


Cool looking dudes at the Korean Folk Village.


Korean Folk Village


Another view of the Korean Folk Village.


A little girl dressed up as an imperial guard or something as her parents took pictures. Adorable!


Korean houseboat at the Korean Folk Village.


Isn't Autumn pretty? I love this shot.


Inspiration for my future backyard gazebo. ;)


A Korean vampire totem!! They're cool because 1) they are awesome and 2) they don't sparkle like vampires in a certain book (look up Twilight).


Chestnuts roasting on an open fire...


Have you seen the two-headed snake? Sorry... inside joke.


A view of the subway.


Daddy was sad that Hard Rock was closed down. Sad Daddy!


Itaewon!!


More Korean Folk Village. A guy making farming tools.


A locker for your pets!! Haha! Too cool!


The mall in front of the theater.


Mokdong at night.

Weekend with Dad: Saturday!

I've been a little slow with the weekend update. Sorry about that!

So, Saturday was a really busy day. We got up and out of the apartment by 9am to head down to Suwon and the Korean Folk Village. I had looked at a subway map and figured it would take us about an hour, hour and a half to get to where we wanted to be.

Three hours later...

It took a little longer to get there than I had anticipated. BUT we didn't get lost at all! Even when I discovered that one of our transfer stops was no longer on the map and I had to ask some guy at the convenience store in the subway (apparently the name of the stop got changed... nice). After several subway transfers and a free shuttle ride, we made it to the Korean Folk Village.

Here's Daddy on the shuttle ride.



And here's me on the shuttle!



Yay! First thing we saw on the way in was a place to take pictures in traditional Korean dress. Number two on my list of things to do before I leave Korea (take a picture in a hanbok) is now checked off my list of things to do. Dad got prints of the picture and took pictures of the picture so I could post it to my blog. I look like an ugly pregnant lady in it, but I got my picture. :)



After that we followed the signs to the art museum since, hey, we paid extra to get into it. Might as well go there first. Along the way, we found an "I Love You" sign. Cute.



We finally got to the art museum.



Aaand it was closed until the next exhibit. Suck. Oh, well. We did get some cool pictures along the way, at least.





I didn't know traditional Korean villages had carousels. Cool.

Then we got into the village proper. They had all sorts of cool stuff.

Traditional houses



Livestock



Government buildings



You could dress up as a royal guard and try out one of the various torture devices they had on display. (Yes that is a little girl on a... cross of some kind waiting for her dad to smack her with a big wooden stick which was also provided)



They had examples of traditional preschools (it's actually a hen coop).



CHICKEN!!



Lots and lots of stuff. As we were walking, I got waylaid by a group of middle school students who asked to interview me for an English project for school. It was cute. I answered a few questions about how we were enjoying the Folk Village so far, what did we want to do later, etc. I hope they get an A+. :)

We finally saw one of the shows we had been told about: a tightrope walker. It was this old guy (looked to be in his late 60's, early 70's) walking and jumping all over this tightrope! It was awesome. I'll prove his awesomeness with this video.



We then came across this area that had traditional Korean games. One looked like this game of dice but the dice were giant foam rolls with dots on one side. I watched for a few minutes and still have no idea what made the crowd clap and what made them groan. There was also this stick game: throw the stick in the vase! It's harder than it sounds...



Also, it's good to know that swinging is acceptable entertainment in most cultures (including Korea).



We had walked all around and we sat down to chill for a little bit and saw this pit where some of the maintenance workers had been burning leaves. A bunch of kids were playing with it. Parents watching on the side, maintenance workers nearby and not even caring. I wonder if it was just that no one cared that the kids were playing with fire or if it was an intentional entertainment set up for them? Who knows... but it kept them entertained.



So, we were done with the Korean Village. Good times. It was still pretty early so we set out for Itaewon for some souvenir shopping. I told dad that the sales people were pushy and he kind of brushed it off saying that he knows these kinds of places yaddah yaddah. HE was even surprised at how pushy the salesladies were. I laugh at him. Hahaha! He even told one lady to GO AWAY and she kept trying to tell him the molded plastic key chains were REAL MARBLE. It was funny. But, dad got himself a bell and a sparkly pink tie (that he promised to wear to church), some presents for people back home, and a few birthday/Christmas presents for me that I have already forgotten and will be totally surprised to open up in a few weeks. :)

AND he took me to Outback! Woo hoo! I had chicken (which you don't see much of except at the fried chicken places... or McDonalds) with CHEESE (which is super expensive here).



YUM. AND a Korean/American actor I like was on all the advertisements there. Oh, you are beautiful, Daniel Henney.

After walking around a little more, we got back on the subway and headed back to Mok Dong for another visit to E Mart and a quick look around the mall. Aaand by quick I mean about an hour. Heh...

I for one was pooped by the time we got back to the apartment. It was a lot of fun and a very busy day.

Weekend with Dad: Friday!

This last weekend was AWESOME!! Why? Because my dad came to visit! Woo hoo!! We had an awesome time. Doing what, you might ask? Well, let me fill you in on our awesome weekend together.

Dad got here to my apartment about 6:30 Friday night. I met his taxi at the subway stop about a block away from my apartment because addresses here are wonky so you need to give them landmarks near where you want to go (strange right?). I helped him drag his suitcases to my place and he was amazed at how small my apartment was. I guess he didn't believe me when I talked about how small it was on my blog. He says the pictures make it look much bigger.

After a quick chat with Mom over Skype, we headed out to a barbecue where I treated him to a birthday dinner. He thought it was funny that you pay to cook your own meat. He also ate a good amount of kimchi so I was impressed. I have yet to develop a taste for it, though I'm still sticking to my guns of taking a big bite whenever I'm presented with any.

After the barbecue, we walked down to E-mart and got a few things for Mom and just to have something to do. Once we got back to the apartment, we watched "The Expendables." Great Daddy daughter movie.

Dad took random pictures of me brushing my teeth. Why? I have no idea.



And that's part 1 of my dad's visit. We did a lot of stuff on Saturday so I figured I'll break it up into three shorter posts rather than once really long post.

Next up: Saturday in Suwon! :)

International Festival and Mexican Food!

Well, against all odds, I've survived another week in Korea. Go me! It's been pretty exciting. As far as teaching goes, we're getting closer and closer to week 10 where the students take the tests that determine whether or not they will advance a level at the end of the term. The kids are dreading it while I'm looking forward to not having to plan any lessons that week - I just proctor while the students take their tests! Yay! :)

I got my first paycheck this week. I'm a millionaire! Well, at least in Korean won. In American dollars, it's not even close. It's still nice to have money in the bank.

I was originally planning on having a quiet weekend of movies and lots of sleeping. However, I woke up Friday morning realizing that I needed to finish all my Christmas shopping. Ah, crap. So, Kendra and I decided to make another excursion to Itaewon so I could finish up Christmas shopping.

Maybe I should clarify why I need to finish my Christmas shopping in mid October. My dad is coming next weekend! Yay! I wanted to send all my Christmas gifts back with him so I don't have to mail packages where I spend more money on postage than I did on the gifts. He's so nice to me. He's also bringing me a bunch of stuff from home (peanut butter M&M's!!). Only four more days! :)

Anyways. We got to Itaewon and we discovered that there is some kind of parade going on. What the heck? How do we FIND these things! We heard music so we looked and saw a Korean marching band going by. Complete with traditional dress!

A Korean marching band!



We figured out after that band that it must be some kind of international festival as a group of people carrying national flags of a bunch of different countries walked on by.



These were followed by a line of women in Hanboks carrying flags and followed by what I can only assume were ambassadors from different countries. A bunch of old guys in suits with their families in the traditional dress from their country (it was cute).



After all that, there was a marching band of U.S. soldiers! Yay us! :)



This was then followed by a Chinese dragon carried by some very unenthusiastic youths.



It was all very exciting. I love how we can just randomly show up on the day of a party.

We then decided to find something to eat. After turning down a random road, we ran across a tiny taco shop!

Now, a random tiny taco shop might now seem like a big deal to people in the States, but Mexican food is all but nonexistent here (go figure). What we saw looked pretty good and so we decided to give it a try.

Kendra was very excited.



Me, too!!



The food showed up looking delicious. Kendra had fajitas.



And I had a steak quesadilla.



And before we knew it, everything was gone!



As far as Mexican food goes, it was only okay. Not amazing, but okay. However, I think that we can forgive them since, I mean, we're in freaking KOREA!

Also, on the way home, we saw a giant fire extinguisher. What the heck?



The rest of my Saturday night was spent wrapping up goodies for my fam back home for Christmas. The best part? The wrapping paper I got came with instructions. Made my day.



And that was my weekend! Next week's update might end up a little late since I'll be spending as much time as possible with my padre until he leaves Sunday evening. But we plan on doing some fun stuff so it should be worth it. :)

Love ya!