Thursday, October 27, 2011

October

I’ve been slacking on the posts lately, sorry Dad. My life here has settled down quite a bit since Hadley left the first of October, I’m not longer going to Seoul every weekend anymore. I also had a pretty bad week here with a ton of drama going on at my school. The new teacher that came to Korea, let’s just say didn’t fit in well. She was an older lady from Canada. Anyways, after receiving her first month’s pay, she vanished. She literally ran away. When she wasn’t showing up for work on Tuesday morning my director went up to her room and found a note saying that by the time you read this I will be out of the country. Pretty classy move if you ask me…. Anyways, there was panic at school, if you can imagine, and we all had to take on more work. On top of that, I was going to the hospital because I was really sick. It was a rough week. (Don’t worry I’m better now) Good news is we have a new teacher coming hopefully next week sometime? I’m not really sure when he gets here exactly but we’re all hoping it’s soon. 


These are how they package their medicine in Korea. They don't have bottle of pills, pre wrapped pills for each day... I kinda like it. 

My soccer team has been awesome lately. We’ve played a lot these past two weeks. We had a tournament the weekend I was really sick and Oksun (my favorite teammate) was trying to help me get better during the week. She brought me to dinner several times (one time she didn’t even eat, she just picked me up asked me what I wanted to eat and sat with me while I ate) and went to get medicine for me. She’s always so concerned about me. Oksun bought me this rice soup or Korean porridge two weeks ago, which was delicious. The soup kind of reminds me of wild rice soup so it’s comforting. I told her on Wednesday that I loved it and what did she have waiting for me at yesterday’s game? Yep, three cups of rice soup… AMAZING!  She also noticed I didn’t have gloves on at Wednesday’s practice and bought me a pair of kids gloves that match hers. They’re so awesome. 


The "rice soup" as Oksun calls it... so delicious.

My new jacket, it's made of duck feathers. It's super warm. 

My kids gloves that Oksun gave to me! 

Last weekend, I went to visit Kalie in Daegu. We had a great time as usual. We were going to go to Busan (the second largest city in Korea at the southern tip) to watch a fireworks festival but it was raining so we decided we’d go a different weekend. Instead we broke into her coworker’s apartment, stole his computer and watched movies all day long. Some of you may think I’m joking but I’m not. We watched a total of 5 movies I believe. Kalie said she could just hear my mom looking at us and saying, “you two slugs are so pathetic.” It was a great day. Sunday we got up and headed downtown to shop a little, sit at Starbucks and people watch, and get some good western food at a bar called Travelers while watching the final rugby world cup game: New Zealand vs. France. For those of you who are wondering, New Zealand won! 


So Korean's wear a ton of clothes that have English writing on it that makes absolutely no sense. Now this sweatshirt isn't that bad but there some that I find myself looking at for 5 minutes to try to figure out. I need to start taking pictures of them. 

This photo was sent to my e-mail from an outside machine. There are these machines everywhere in Korea where you can take a picture of yourself and send it to anyone's e-mail. It's pretty cool. 

A close up of the picture. It's Kalie and I in downtown Daegu.

This is a place that Clayton and I passed by one day in Incheon and had to take a second look to make sure it wasn't a restaurant. As you may know already, Korea is known for eating dog (which I found out isn't that common, thank goodness!). 

This weekend I’m planning to meet up with some of the few friends I still have in Seoul. It’s Halloween weekend so it should be fun! 

Saturday, October 8, 2011

island field trip!


I’ve been super busy the last couple of weeks. Hadley left, I went camping during the long weekend and things at work have been pretty crazy. One more thing that has kept me occupied is a gym. I’ve joined a gym here… not just any gym, a boxing gym! That’s right you heard it correctly. A couple other foreigners in town (guys clearly) go to this gym and kept telling me how awesome it was so I decided to give it a shot. I’ve gone a few times now and it’s fun so far… I’m super out of shape I found out pretty quickly, haha. The guy that owns the place/instructor speaks a little English and is very nice. It will be good for me to have something to do in the winter for sure.
On another note, Friday we went on a field trip with the kindergarten kids at wonderland. It was so much fun. We went to Chuncheon to an island on a lake there. Once again, so good to be out by the water! The weather was perfect. It was sunny and in the 70s. It was great sweatshirt weather. On the island we had a picnic and played in the fields all day. I brought my soccer ball so we could play soccer and we had badminton rackets as well. Amy, my director, rented an ATV so we could take the kids out for a ride on it. It was a very fun Friday!




little (5 year old) louie playing soccer

Kyle (7 year old) one of my favorites! 

Joseph and Julie waiting for their turn to ride the ATV

My director Amy (white shirt) trying to play badminton with the kids

Amy and her son Joseph

Maya saw some dogs and made me go over to pet them with her. 

deokjeokdo island - camping!

Last weekend was a long weekend for us here in Korea. We had Monday off. Obviously I had to take advantage of that and do something with my weekend. I went camping with my friend Clayton. We went to an island off the west coast from Incheon. It took us about an hour on a ferry ride to the island called deokjeokdo. The island is one of the biggest in the patch of islands, which it was surrounded by but it still wasn’t too big. It was so good to be on a boat on the water. I miss my lake at home! Korea has a lot of rivers but very few lakes and no one has boats here.


In the background you can see the city of Incheon.

We spent two nights on the island and got to explore a good amount of the island. Saturday morning when we arrived we were motivated and walked a ton. We walked along the shoreline till we arrived at a beach. The shoreline was very rocky and had a ton of big boulder rocks. We then headed up a mountain to a peak that overlooked the whole island. I was so annoyed getting up there at that point but it was worth it, the view was awesome! The rest of our day was spent walking around sappori beach (where we camped) and getting some ramen for dinner… there was no restaurants at the island so we kept it classy and became best friends with the guy at the family mart (7/11 type convenient store) where we bought all our food that weekend.




Clayton went hiking up on some big boulders along the shoreline... I preferred to stay safe by the water with the smaller boulders.


Hiking up the mountain... I was so tired and crabby at this point! Haha

We made it!

Overlooking Sapori beach and town.


            Sunday we spent the day exploring the rest of the island. We took a taxi up to the northwest tip of the island and saw the cool rocky beach. It was super fun to explore the beach. After a few hours of looking around that beach we decided to start walking back. On our way there was a bus load of people who stopped us and asked us where we were going. I told the guy I didn’t know and he said get in… so we did! It ended up being two families who were on vacation and were getting a tour of the island. They all spoke some English and one girl who was 11 years old was amazing at English. It was quite an adventure and very fun to meet them. They were so nice and fed us some snacks on the van ride around the island stopping at different locations to look around. The tour ended at sappori beach where they went clamming while the tide was still low. The mini vacation was so relaxed and fun. It was great to get away form the city for a long weekend and the weather we had couldn’t have been better. 


At the rocky beach on the northwestern tip of the island.

Dried snails that you could find covering the rocks.


The mud

Clayton helped the families look for clams... they loved us! 

Sapori beach.

Our camping spot on Sunday night. Clayton bought a tent here from a foreign teacher who was leaving… his tent just so happens to be pink. He told me that if anyone asks, we’re telling them it’s my tent. Haha.

The sunset on the yellow sea was awesome! 

Our campfire Sunday night!