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! 

Yangpyeong tourney!

Last weekend we had a soccer tournament in Yangpyeong. It was my last tournament with the team. We played two games on Saturday. The first game we played a team that we’ve played a bunch for practice in the past. All of their teammates know me and call me by name.  If they’re not playing against us then they usually cheer for me and say “Julie Fighting” It’s actually quite funny.  One of the teammates on their team speaks English pretty well and lived in Utah for a couple of years, she wasn’t there though. I’m not sure where she was. She’s really nice. It was a good game. They are a good team. We ended up winning though. I scored a goal from just inside of the 18. The next game we played was a good team as well. It was a team that I don’t think we’ve ever played. Eunju scored a header goal off of one of my corner kicks. It was a really pretty goal. After the second game a bunch of their teammates came up to me and wanted to tell me “good” with a thumbs up. Some wanted to shake my hand but one just went in for the hug… She wanted to tell me that we were the same number and that she’ll see me tomorrow (in Korean of course, there was a guy standing next to me that knew a little English).  She was really cute actually and so happy.

            Sunday we had a game in the morning that we ended up loosing in overtime. We played Yangpyeong; they were pretty good. It was a very frustrating game for me. First off, it was raining which was annoying. Secondly, they put two girls on me at all times from the first whistle. At one point I shoved one to the ground and was super surprised I didn’t even get a call. I was expecting a card to be honest; it was really bad. The two marking me wore me down quite a bit. It was exhausting not being able to walk or even tie your shoe. Unfortunately we didn’t get a goal and the game ended in a tie.  We went right into PK’s. No overtime play. We ended up loosing, pretty sucky way to loose. We didn’t go home empty handed though; we still got third by being at that game. 

COOOAAACh!

Sunbok and I. She's super animated and one of my favorites on the team. She was number 5 already so she told me to be 15. 

The two girls stalking me... 

"Hongcheon Fighting" picture...

PK, hard pass to the corner always gets you a goal! 

            I’m not going to lie I’m a kinda sad that that was my last tournament with my team. I really enjoy playing with them. They’re all so funny and really try to communicate with me. You know you’ve made an impact on your teammates when they start speaking English when it’s not even to you. Lately I’ve been hearing some of them saying words like “sorry” or “it’s ok” and “restroom” not even directed at me. It’s great. A lot of them couldn’t say anything to me the first day but now we’re pretty good at communicating, and by we I mean they’ve learned English – I haven’t learned any Korean. Haha. Woops, Sorry bout it. 

After our game on Sunday we went to eat a late lunch in Hongcheon with our trophy. Typical Korea, right after we finished eating the trophy came out and so did the beer in the trophy. Of course I was not exempt from making a speech. Dajeong happened to be there so she could translate what I said. I didn’t say much; I kept it short and sweet. I said, “Thank you for taking me in and letting me join your team. I’m really glad to be a part of it. I will really miss everyone here. I love you guys! Cheers” I think that’s all I said and then drank the beer from the trophy. They all got teary-eyed and some of them were crying after. They were shouting out “Julie I love you, don’t go”. Haha. It was cute. Soccer is not quite over yet though. I guess we have a few more practice games before the snow arrives and then December 9^th we’re going to be having a banquet with the whole club.

Getting texts from my teammates makes my day, they put such an effort into talking to me and some texts are really funny. Here are a few that I still have on my phone: (ps <3 means heart) 

 “nicehappilyday ha.ha.ha <3” – from Junglan

“have a nice today! –from sun bok” – from Sunbok

“Happy birthday to you… <3 <3 congratulations!! I love you <3 <3 jung lan me too…. ha ha ha” – from Oksun

“Hi Julie! This week excise soccer program Monday, Wednesday, Friday at 8 p.m Julie, fighting! <3 <3” – from Oksun (a typical text from Oksun on a Monday morning)

“Tonight at 8 p.m have a soccer” – from Oksun (with the daily reminders around 5 o’clock)

“Ok, bon voyage~~!!” – from Oksun (this was when I told her “Julie no soccer. Julie go Daegu” on a Friday night when I was going to visit Kalie in Daegu)

 “areyoudoingplay? lmemily” – from Junglan (it was actually from her 8 year old daughter asking me if I was going to soccer that night – she’s so cute!)

The third place trophy!

Halloween

Halloween weekend ended up being pretty quite for me. I was planning on meeting up with some people but things kinda fell through for different reasons which I was more than ok with. It was nice to have a quite weekend. I went to Seoul Saturday and did some shopping. It was good. I needed to get some warmer clothes. My school gets pretty cold during the winter. I ended up going to a well known shopping area called Myeongdong and went to some familiar stores: Forever 21 and H&M. I also wondered through the street markets and got a few things there as well. 

I had fun taking a break and watching the Hoddeok stand. One thing I'm super impressed with about Korea and the people here is how honest they are. The men two men at the stand just put out a pink bucket for money and then had paper out for people to take the Hoddeok themselves. It was a self service Hoddeok stand. You could easily get away with not paying or short changing them.

Had to take a picture of this... Now is this really necessary? 9 steps... Come on korea! (and yes I took the stairs)

Namdaemun market

            Sunday I was being super lazy, what a shock. By the time 3 o’clock rolled around I forced myself to get out of my apartment and take a walk around town. I went over to this little mountain hike that overlooks the city to take some pictures. Later that evening I attended Sunday night dinner at Seamus and Natalie’s  - I think I’ve mentioned this before but they are the foreigners who’ve been here for 5 years now and they host Sunday night dinners at their place for all of the foreigners in town. It’s super nice of them and fun to go and get a free meal, I’m all about free food. Yesterday it was Lasagna and I missed it. Dan told me today that it was delicious, I’m so bummed I couldn’t go (I was at the late lunch with the soccer team then Dajeong came to hang out for a bit).

Leaves on the ground make me happy! 

A close up of Hongcheon. My bus stop is on the lower right corner, you can see a bunch of buses lined up.

Zoomed out. You can't really see the river because the tree's are blocking it. The river is to the right and makes a U shape through town. 

On a side note, one of my favorite classes is called Prodigy class, which I have no idea why it’s called that but I just go with it. Anyways, this class is made up of four 9yr old students; Ida, Mary, Thomas, and Abram. I love them, most days that is. They like to fight a bit too much sometimes. I teach them 5 hours a week for my afternoon classes. The teachers tease me that Mary and Ida are my only friends because they will come into the office to hang out with me while the Korean teachers are talking Korean which I can’t understand. On Halloween I taught them “trick or treat, smell my feet, give me something good to eat”. They loved it. I only teach this class the important things in life, Haha. I took a video of it but this blog doesn’t like when I try to upload it, bummer!

I have a funny story about this class. So I received a text from Kalie during class one day in early June and my phone vibrated. I ignored it but Ida told me I had to look at it, so being the good teacher that I am, I answered it. It said, “guess how many donuts I ate today. If u say more than 6 u will be wrong. If u say less than 6 u will be wrong” I started laughing so hard when I read it. The kids were intrigued and wanted to know what was so funny. I told them that Julie teacher’s friend just ate 6 donuts. Thomas then said, “Oh teacher, Julie teacher’s friends is very big!” After this incident and them all laughing about my fat friend they still bring it up to this day. When I have them make sentences with new words they learn or are working on they sometimes use “Julie teachers friend” in the sentence. It’s hilarious. I think it’s happened about 4 or 5 times. 

Thomas with his angry face... Haha. I just said that to him so he's kinda smirking! He's awesome.

Thomas and Abram

Mary and Ida

Ida's my favorite in this class. She's the best at English and helps me teach. It's awesome. She breaks up the fights, translates for me and is usually always happy. I had to get a picture of her in this sweatshirt. It's super Korean. This is how Korean's would phonetically think to spell monkey "mung ky". Between the spelling and picture of a monkey as the statue of liberty with an american flag... It's just perfect! Haha