Happy Thanksgiving!

Wednesday night Adam, Jessica, and I made lasagna for everyone at my apartment. It ended up taking a total of 4.5 hours. It didn’t seem like that long at all but we finally finished around 1am or so. It was a late night for us but super fun. Jessica was so happy to bake and hang out with us. She told me the next morning that “last night was so fun, it was like a sitcom.” Haha.  Thursday (Thanksgiving) we actually ate the lasagna with Sally and Sharon after work. It was so good but I definitely still missed my mom’s mashed potatoes and turkey that I know was cooking at home in Minnesota. 

The lasagna made from my stove oven. We have to work with what we got here in Korea...

Jessica with her korean squat dicing the garlic.

Adam really knows what he's doing in the kitchen... his cooking skills are amazing, I'm not too sad about that!

Saturday all of us foreigners in town celebrated Thanksgiving. We had dinner at Seamus and Natalie’s place, which is funny because they’re both Canadians. Actually, of the people attending which was around 20, I think maybe 6 or 7 of us were American’s. Anyways, it was really nice to be able to enjoy a nice home cooked Thanksgiving meal. Adam and I didn’t contribute to any of the cooking, however, we did bring beer to the festival to make up for our lack of participation. 

Our Thanksgiving feast consisting of mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes (which mom i'm obsessed with now!), carrots, cranberries, turkey breast/chicken, stuffing, gravy, salad, and pumpkin pie. 

Pregnant Julia enjoying helping number 2 or 3... She's so cute! I tell her to blame her eating habits on "Stella" - their daughter to be's name. 

Sunday was a good day. I got up early and went to Seoul for the day. I met up with Jinwoo and hung out with him all morning. We went to coffee, ate some lunch then had some fun at the batting cage. Korean’s love arcades and games so they have a lot of little stores around that you can play. It was my first time going, pretty entertaining! I later met up with Jiho and we went to church. It was a cool sermon on Sunday because Trace Bundy was there to perform some songs for us! He had a concert on Saturday night that I wanted to go to but wasn't able to. It was cool to hear him play. His wife and son Sawyer were there as well. Sawyer just turned 1 years old on Thanksgiving and the church gave them all Hanbok's (the traditional korean attire). After the evening church service Jiho and I took a bus to Konkuk University (which is his school and it’s near my subway stop). We had some dinner there and walked around a bit. The weather was so nice on Sunday, sweatshirt weather, it was great to be outside! 

There was a Korean couple taking pictures of themselves at Cafe Bene so Jinwoo and I were making fun of them by taking pictures too. It was pretty bad, but very funny. 

Playing at the batting cages.

I got a boxing mitt keychain for a prize... 

I couldn't help but take a picture of this... I love christmas decorations! Seoul is so jolly, Hongcheon on the other hand is lacking... it's pretty depressing. 

It felt like such a nice fall day on Sunday and there were still some leaves around! 

There are some trees here that have huge leafs! 

I sat here for a while before church and enjoyed being outside in the nice weather. 

Trace Bundy

On a side note, last Wednesday was Sharon’s birthday. Wednesday also happens to be Tae Kwon Do class at Wonderland. During Tae Kwon Do I was sitting in the office minding my own business when Sharon comes in and makes me follow her. She dragged me into the room with the kids and had me put on the gloves and fight with the instructor. Meanwhile Sharon just sat and laughed and took pictures. It was fine; we just punched each other for a bit. I told her if it wasn’t her birthday I wouldn’t be doing this right now. It entertained the kids quite a bit. I'll share some of the pictures with you for your entertainment as well...

Sharon why are you making me do this face/smile

The instructor is so nice. He always says hi to me.

Connor is sooo cute! 

Two of the 5 year olds fighting each other, Stella and Ellin.

Baby Tommy

A couple weeks ago I met my friend Jiho for dinner in Seoul on a Tuesday. He had just gotten out of the hospital. He was in car accident. Well I should say bus accident. He was on a bus that got hit and there were 23 injured passengers I guess. Pretty crazy. He didn’t get hurt much just very sore. It had been a while since I saw him last so it was good to catch up. He’s been busy trying to finish law school and apply for jobs. 

At dinner with Jiho. My favorite, Dakgalbi!

Jiho really wanted to take a picture with this sign... haha

Last weekend was my director’s baby’s first birthday party. In Korea, the babies first birthday party is a huge deal. It’s like our sweet 16 birthday party in the states. Anyways, it was interesting to attend. It was my first one; I thought it was kinda weird. It was held at a restaurant. When we walked in they sent us to a room and we ate, chatted amongst those who we came with. Amy came by once to say hello and take cards/money from people and then when we finished eating we left. There were separate eating rooms too so everyone didn’t eat together. It was strange but a free meal I guess. 

At little Tommy's bday party. Some random lady, our school cook, and Jessica.

Adam and I at the "party"

The gift towel

After the “party” Jessica, Adam, and I went to Seoul. We hung out for a bit and then Adam and I headed to Costco. We went to get cheese to make lasagna for our Korean coteachers. Costco Korea failed to provide us lasagna noodles and ricotta cheese, which was bit disappointing to say the least. We then headed to Itaewon (the area in seoul where the us military base is aka the foreign food is) to collect the rest of our ingredients. We met up with my friend Nick for dinner after at a foreign pub. It is always so good to have get a taste of home. I miss western food. Don’t get me wrong, I’m fine with Korean food but after a while you just really crave a good sandwich or dish from home. I enjoyed a nice BLT that night with a halfway decent beer. 

My friend Nick and I at Dinner in Seoul

Sunday morning I went into Seoul again to hang out and meet up with Jiho for church. He has wanted to take me to church for a long time now and finally we were able to go. Before I met with him I went to a familiar place to sit down, relax, and enjoy more comforts of home: Caribou Coffee. It was a great lazy morning hanging out at Bou drinking a latte and reading a book. Jiho and I met up at church for the 4pm English service. It was actually really fun and good to go to. This was the first time I’ve been to church in Korea. After the service, Jiho and I went to dinner before I headed to meet up with friend and coteacher Jessica. She has been asking me to go to church with her for a long time as well. I felt bad going to church with Jiho and not her so I went to evening Korean service with her. It was so interesting to go to it. I have never been to a Korean service before. The church she attends is fairly young. At the church they have groups or teams she calls them, which remind me of youth groups, but they are all adults. So the teams all sit together at service and then after they get together to say a prayer. They also had a section of singing at the beginning, which was normal, but then a full on orchestra appears out of nowhere. They were really good too. Jessica kept saying to me I’m so happy that you’re here Julie, thank you for coming. She really wanted me to meet her friends who already knew all about me, only good things I hope!  It felt really good to go, it meant a lot to her I could tell. 

Enjoying a cup of coffee with the comforts of MN.

N. Seoul tower view from the subway stop near church

Pepero Day!

Teaching my little kindergarteners is getting so entertaining. My director has put strict rules in place now that they can’t speak Korean at all in our school so their English has improved tremendously over the past month. I honestly feel bad for the kids at times. Being 5 years old and not being able to speak your own language in school for 5.5 hours would be awful. Some of the things my kids say now are so hilarious. Here are a couple examples of things I wrote down (keep in mind these kids went from knowing a few words to now starting to make sentences):

-Scott: “Dylan, wait for Scott!” Dylan: “Scott you need to hurry up. Dylan is finished!” … then Dylan proceeded to count to ten.

- Dylan: “Julie Teacher, I’m as hot as a fox” … haha I couldn’t help but laugh so hard when Dylan said that.

- Scott: “Scott’s Christmas tree is VERY big. Wonderland big!” Dylan: “Then you can’t sleep in the house. You need to sleep outside because it’s tooooo big”

- Kyle: “Julie Teacher, I’m finished” Me: “Ok, hold on Kyle” …two minutes later… Kyle (In an exasperated voice): “COME ON Julie Teacher!”

Kyle, one of my 7 year olds is way too smart for his own good. He’s always asking me questions like “Julie Teacher, what does this mean?” and is very curious to learn more. He is a lot smarter than all of his classmates so every time that I have the kids sit down and work on pages in their workbook, I sit next to Kyle because I know he will be the first one done. When he finishes, I usually will have blank pages for him and I make him do things like spell out words or solve random problems like writing out “we’re =” and he’ll have to write down the answers. I like to do sentence problems a lot where I’ll write down a sentence in the wrong order and he’ll have to unscramble the words to make the sentence. Lately, He’s been wanting to make sentences for me too so we switch off making them for each other. I love playing with this kid; he’s so funny.  

This is an example of what I do with Kyle. The first time I wrote the sentence down for him to unscramble, Kyle looked at it and said, “Julie Teacher, Why two words with big (capital) letters? Why no dot (period)?” I couldn’t believe it; the damn kid was correcting me!

This is a page from my "Welcome to America" book that I teach in one of my Elementary after school classes. I was so pumped to talk about this particular page... :)

Two weeks ago we took a field trip to the mountain once again. It was fun as always. I love being outside! Anyways, we went on a little hike with the kids and the leader dude was telling the kids to walk like agimas “Old lady’s” and it’s easier to walk up this mountain… Sharon told me this and after I stopped laughing I took a picture of everyone. There was also a stray dog wondering the area with us. Sally Teacher was deathly afraid of him and hid behind me so that I would protect her. It was funny. He was harmless. Later Sharon told me she thought it may be the gas station owner’s dog that was down the street a bit. 

Adam and Sharon walking like little old agimas. 

This little area had a ton of Birch trees. They aren't nature to Korea, they were imported from somewhere. It was really pretty seeing all of them around though. 

Jessica and the dog that was stalking us! 

Maya playing on the swing.

Jessica and Sally Teacher

They were playing some Korean yard game.

A couple weeks ago was also Pepero Day. It’s a day that the guys working at the candy factory for Pepero decided to make a huge profit and declare one day a year in Korea as Pepero day so that all of the children will buy a crap ton of their products on that day and give it to their friends. But, I’m not complaining because the kids also bought Pepero for their teachers as well aka me! During my Kindergarten classes that day we made Pepero in my classes. It was really fun! I have some pictures with the 7 year olds. Maya, one of my students, took these pictures for me! 

Kyle and Jason

The mid-day success. And yes, that implies that I got more...

I have come to really appreciate this town and the random people that live in it. There is a selective group of foreigners here so you’re stuck with what you get. The foreigners aren’t people I would seek out as friends at home but I kinda like that I’m stuck with them because they are so different from me and it’s fun getting to know them. Last week was Dan’s (the guy from MN that I go boxing with) Birthday. A group of us met up at WaBar for some drinks to celebrate his birthday. It was a fun Thursday night. 

Birthday Boy Dan with his cheesy smile and all! 

Dan and Julia (his pregnant wife!)

Some yummy street food on the way home from the bar is never a bad idea!

This man provides me with much joy... He makes the best Hoddeok (delicious sugar/nut filled pancakes) in town! 

Seoraksan!

            Kalie and I made it to Seoraksan last weekend. It was very cool and quite a site to see. We got a head start on the day and arrived to Sokcho (the town that is next to the mountain) around 10am. We however being the idiots we are didn’t dress properly for a cool fall day. You’d think being from MN we’d know how to dress warm by now. It was very windy and cold; we both thought we’d be fine in long sleeves. Let’s just say we ended up buying hats and Kalie invested in a winter coat as well… Haha. We were walking to the trailheads when we realized we both had no clue which route to take. We missed the info booth so we had to walk back towards the entrance and that’s when we saw it: the cable car. We walked into the building thinking they’d have a map that we can get and then decided why get a map and hike up when we can just take this cable car to the top with all the Koreans and go hiking the tourist Korean way. So that’s what we did! We were both feeling lazy as usual and enjoyed every second of that ride up to the top of the mountain. It was fun. We go out walked around a bit to see the top of the mountain where the wind almost pushed both of us over the edge. We didn’t last long up there, only long enough to enjoy the pb&j sandwiches I prepared for us. 

The statue of buddah near the entrance

Kalie and I with our new hats! 

Umm.. where is this water coming from?

The cable car that looked way too appealing for us to resist. 

From the top of the mountain overlooking Sokcho (a city on the Eastern sea in Korea)

At the top overlooking the other mountain tops in the national park. 

I love leaves! 

Some Koreans were watching as I had Kalie throw up leaves for this pic. They thought we were sooo strange. It was pretty entertaining.

After our time at the mountain we headed back into town (Sokcho) and walked around downtown for a bit looking for a coffee shop or somewhere to go relax for a bit and spend the afternoon. The coffee shop venture turned into a pasta and beer type place. It was a cute little place right by the ocean. We ordered some a kimchi fried rice dish and beers. It felt so good to just sit down and relax for a few hours and chat.

That evening when we got back to Hongcheon we met up with some of the foreigners in my town. They were having a boy’s poker night. Kalie and I just so happened to run into a few of them and joined them for a few hours just to sit, chat, drink, and enjoy watching the game. It was yet another great successful day with Kalie. I only get to see her about once a month and when I do we always have such a great time together. 

Kalie at the restaurant we hung out at that afternoon.

Sunday morning Kalie left early for Daegu. She had some stuff she needed to do back at home. I had a soccer game. We ended up playing an old men’s team. When I say old, I mean old. One guy who happened to be the same number as me (15) came up to me and told me he was 80 years old. Clearly, one of my teammates translated because he told me in Korean. Anyways, the old guy was playing and almost scored a goal. It is so incredible to me how they can actually play and how well they play. They did a good job. We had to go super easy on them because if we didn’t we’d probably break one or two of them but still. They ended up winning the game. The goalie on our team who was playing sucks, just sayin. It was pretty entertaining playing them though. 

Random thought about Korea: I still can’t believe how they do construction here. They have, what appears to be, no regulations on safety here it’s so crazy to me. You will be walking down the street or in the subway or anywhere and there can be sparks flying at you. You have to be careful where you walk at times. I guess it’s just another one of those cultural differences but it’s definitely not always safe at construction sites here!