Happy Holidays from Korea

Merry Christmas and happy almost New Year! It's been 4 months since Corey and I arrived in Korea. Crazy, eh?

We're still working at school, but we did get a day off for Christmas on Tuesday. It was freezing cold! We mostly just stayed in and opened the presents that Santa brought us. Yes, Santa. Corey remembered to leave cookies out for that jolly old guy so he brought us some presents all the way over here in Korea. Corey got some weights and whiteboard crayons to play with at school. I got a rainbow coloured slinky. I guess Santa knows us well. We had KD for dinner with lots of butter and milk! Yay for a delicious dairy fix!

On Friday, I got invited to go on a staff trip to Seoul. The principal, vice-principal, and about 30 teachers took a chartered bus to the Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art. We had the audio tour guide explaining about the ancient artifacts kept in museum part 1 and then we stared at modern art pieces, trying to comprehend what they meant and how we felt about them in museum part 2. I ran into another foreign teacher from Canada who I originally met at orientation. She was at the museum on a staff trip too, so I guess it's a popular destination for that. My co-teachers were surprised that I ran into someone I actually knew in Seoul. Honestly, I only know about 100 people in the entire country (which has a population of about 50, 000, 000) so I was surprised too. 

a ballsy artistic statement

After the museum, there was more planned. Much more. We got back on the chartered bus and rode to the 63 Building. It is so named for it's 63 stories. On the first floor, we toured the Sea World aquarium. There were some really interesting fish and even some otters, sea lions, seals, and penguins! I took a few pictures, but without flash so I wouldn't startle the creatures, which resulted in mostly blurry photos. Anyway, it was so cool! There was a section with those fish that are popular right now for spas to use as part of mani/pedis because they like to eat the dead skin right off of people. You could stick your fingers in and feel the fish pushing each other out of the way to get at the most delicious dead skin cells. Yum. One of the teachers dared me to put my hand in, so I did. Afterward I washed my hands thoroughly with a lot of soap, but no regrets. 

penguins

Jay Leno Fish

Dead-skin-eating-fish

After Sea World, we went to the 63rd floor to see the Sky Art Museum. They have some Chagall and Salvador Dali paintings, but it's hard for the art to compete with the view. You can see out over the Hangang river and most of the buildings in Seoul.

view from the gallery on a foggy day

Finally, it was dinner. On the first floor, once again, we went to the 63 Buffet. It had the most variety of food I have EVER seen anywhere in my entire life. There was a Chinese food section, Japanese, Western, Korean, and more. Each section had its own chefs working non-stop to turn out fancy dumplings, delicate sushi, fresh pasta and pizza, and an entire "make your own" pasta bar with an unlimited selection of vegetables, seafood, and sauces to add to your personalized creation. There were some foods I'd only ever heard of but never seen before laid out too. Escargot, frogs legs, cow tongue, and ox tail soup to name a few. I decided I should try escargot, but the frog legs were just too froggy looking for me to will myself past that. By the way, escargot tastes exactly how you'd imagine a snail tastes. It's slimy, chewy, and still tastes like dirt, but what do I know. I won't even go into details about the dessert. I'll just post the picture and save 1000 words.

I probably should have reserved "Finally" for this paragraph, but it really felt like "Finally, it was dinner" because I was quite hungry. Actually, finally was the show that we went to in the theatre (in the same building) called B-Boy Marionettes. It was a hip-hop dance musical about marionettes with a bonus performance of beat boxing and dancing tacked on as the epilogue. The choreography and dancing was amazing, but I didn't quite understand why there were so many gimmicks and why the story line expressed so well through dance had to be written (in 4 languages) on the screen behind the dancers. Yes, I'm a food and theatre critic now. 

In conclusion, it was a very fun evening and a nice chance to talk with a lot of my co-workers. If you ever get invited on a staff trip, by a Korean school principal I would recommend that you go. 

Now, Corey and I are off to do some more adventuring. Maybe even get some lunch. Have a happy New Year and there'll be more updates in 2013!

SaChoom

Winter holidays don't officially start until January in Korea, but over the past week the school has felt a bit more relaxed than usual. Final exams are over and this means that I don't have to teach the textbook anymore (in most of my classes.) I've mostly been doing games and holiday lessons with the students. My school computer is broken so I can't even do much prep for winter English camp.

Wednesday was a day off for Korean election day. Park Geun-Hye is the new president of Korea. From my very limited knowledge of Korean politics, this is similar to a Conservative or Republican victory in North America. My co-teachers said that most of them voted for Moon Jae-In (the more liberal candidate) but their parents tended to vote for Park. Anyway, there's a lot of information about the election on-line if you want to know more. I meant to mention--we just went to the movies and watched The Hobbit

Yesterday, Corey and I went to Seoul to see a dance musical called SaChoom. Corey read about it and thought it'd be fun to go, so I got us tickets as his Hanukkah/Christmas present. The theatre was on the fourth floor of a building that looked from the outside like a typical office building. As we climbed the first three levels we saw that the building was filled with innumerable instrument shops. Each shop sold its own specialty instrument so we'd pass a few stores filled with guitars and then one that was just for drums, clarinets, saxophones, violins, cellos, piccolos and more! The fourth floor led out onto a rooftop courtyard and across the courtyard was the box office where we got out tickets for the show. SaChoom has its own theatre, but next door there is another theatre with its own main show, and one more theatre after that with a third show. 

We took our seats in the spacious theatre and I was surprised to see the place was packed despite the fact that this show has been playing in Seoul for 6 years and it plays once or twice each day! As the show started, we realized it would be quite different from any musical we'd seen before. The tagline for SaChoom is, "dance is an interaction" and they really mean it.  The dancer/actors encourage patrons to interact with the show, which means talking, standing, taking pictures, and even using cellphones is not only allowed but encouraged. Throughout the show, people are brought up on stage to dance and the actors joke around with audience members. They greeted Corey and I, asking where we were from and quizzing us on our Korean language abilities. They also squirted water at the audience and passed out candies during a birthday party scene. 

After the show, the actors pose for pictures with audience members. As a whole, the show was pretty cool, but definitely not everyone's cup of tea. 

Later, Corey and I wandered around Insadong which is a popular area for tourists. There are a lot of traditional craft and antique shops as well as tea shops and restaurants. Corey and I decided to go for Chinese food at a place called Hong Kong. It was a nice cozy restaurant on the third floor overlooking Insadong Ro and the food was delicious.

After dinner, Corey and I went to Jongno tower. We'd heard that it had a restaurant on the 33rd floor where jazz musicians sometimes played. We took the elevator up to the restaurant called Top Cloud and the hostess greeted us kindly, asking if we had a reservation. Of course we didn't and when we asked to see a desert menu, the hostess said apologetically that they didn't have one. I glanced at the entree menu and saw dishes starting at $100. Definitely out of our price range! Corey took a couple pictures of the view anyway. 

Then we went to the next best dessert place, which was conveniently located just across the street from the tower--Dunkin' Donuts. For under 5, 000 won (about $5) we had hot chocolate and a donut for dessert. Again, we took a picture of the view out the window--The Starbucks on the next corner over. Yes, there is a bit of absolutely everything in Seoul.

We also had some street food in Incheon and I promised to keep you posted on this stuff, so here it is. A double-battered pogo and a pot of boiled bugs (I think they're silk worms). I haven't actually bought the silkworms as street food, but we do get them at school occasionally and I never have my camera with me in the cafeteria so I thought I'd take a picture here. They aren't my favourite food, but they're not my least favourite either.

Skating in Seoul

This past week was not very busy for me at school since the first and second year students were writing their final exams for three days. I did find an awesome outline for winter camp on waygook.org that I've been adjusting to fit my students' levels and interests. This week was also Hanukkah and my birthday so Corey and I have been doing a lot of fun celebration type stuff in the evening. We lit the candles in our menorah and although we did not make latkes, Corey attempted to make smashed potatoes with gravy.

Today, we went to Seoul in the afternoon. We had big plans to go skating at the rink outside city hall. When we got there, at 5pm, we were informed that the earliest skate time we could buy tickets for was 8:30pm. We bought the tickets and then went wandering around, but mostly we saw hotels, a few expensive stores, and a lot of museums that were closed for the night.

We bought a couple of Christmas cards and then went in search of somewhere to eat dinner. The first place we went to was Mr. Pizza, but the menu was way too expensive, especially for pizza. We went with the back-up plan--hot drinks and a blueberry bagel with cream cheese at Dunkin Donuts. There are a lot of Dunkin Donuts around Seoul and Incheon. Actually, there's a Dunkin Donuts in the subway stop where our schools are and across the street from our apartment at Juan, but this is the first time Corey and I ate at one since we've arrived here.

It was almost 8pm when we started walking back toward city hall. We got there in time to rent our skates for 1,000 won and then we headed to the ice. Corey tried to take a picture, but the rink guards came over and insisted we had to be wearing gloves. Corey and I had mittens, so we wore them as instructed, but that was the end of our ability to capture skating moments on camera. 

I can tell you though, the rink was very crowded. The lights and the music made us kind of forget that though. We could just enjoy skating around the rink and swirling in and out of the way of people who were trying not to fall over. There were about ten people fallen down on the ice at any given time and it was rarely children that had crashed, but everyone seemed to bounce back and keep skating. Corey kept racing around and lapping me, but neither of us fell. I think that is success.

At the end of our skating hour, Corey and I returned our skates and asked a guy sitting on a bench near the ice to take a picture of the two of us. We got on the subway and came back home to light our eighth Hanukkah candle. Now it's time for bed I think. I hope this entry makes some sort of sense since I'm writing it at midnight.

Tips if you plan to go skating at Seoul City Hall:

1. Check this website for operating hours in 2012: http://www.visitseoul.net/en/article/article.do?_method=view&p=06&m=0003001006005&art_id=59545&lang=en

2. Get there early (City Hall Station exit 5 [on line 1] will take you right to the rink)

3. Buy your ticket at the information/ticket sales desk (you cannot rent skates until you have this ticket in hand)

4. Know your shoe/skate size in centimetres because this is how the skates are organized at the rental shop.

5. Bring gloves. They're mandatory. Or you can borrow them from the information desk, I think.

6. Lockers (to keep your shoes and bags etc. in) require a 100 won coin for deposit, but you get this back when you return the key to your locker.

Winter in Incheon

We officially have snow on the ground in Incheon. Yesterday was the first major snowfall. My students were running down the hallways screaming in glee, only stopping long enough to grab some freshly fallen snow off the window sill and shoving this down their friends' backs. Yes, winter is truly here.

Unfortunately I didn't have my camera with me to capture this, but today Corey took some pictures on the way to school. It was early morning so the students weren't quite awake enough to be enjoying the snow and ice. Plus, our schools are on the top of a hill, which means that the slope is pretty much a downhill ice rink. So we had to climb the huge stone steps that lead up to Sunhwa. There's no railing, but they're still less slippery than the steep path up the hill without stairs.

I made it to the top!

It's the climb.

Artsy photo of the sun and snow on the clock outside Sunhwa 

This evening Corey and I took advantage of some craft material my mom sent in a Chanukah package. We made beeswax candles for the menorah (also part of the package) so we're all ready for Saturday night candle lighting.

Corey making an artisan candle

Our menorah and our mini Hanbok

Namsan Seoul Tower

This past week has been quite exciting. The students are getting ready for final tests, but Corey and I have managed to get some engaging lesson plans in. Corey's class has been doing world geography in English. My second year students have been writing pen-pal letters to students in Canada. Trying to make November fun is very difficult, but I'm proud of us for trying....

This weekend we went to Seoul. This time we went with a destination in mind. We followed the directions to get to Namsan Tower! We took the cable car up the mountain and saw some gorgeous views of Fall colours below us. That was very nice, but I was extra excited because there was music playing in our cable car and guess what song was on??? Carly Rae Jepsen's, Call Me Maybe! A Canadian musician was serenading us all the way over here in Seoul.

 At the top of the mountain, there are restaurants and lookout points. It's very touristy on a Saturday afternoon. Corey and I played the role of tourists too. We bought tickets to ride the elevator up to the tower's observatory. We were crammed into a dark little elevator with about a dozen other people. There was a screen on the ceiling that showed a cartoon version of the ascent. This is what the screen looked like....

 We got off the elevator at the top and looked around the 360 degree observatory. The coolest part was that there was a post office right there at the top of the tower. The views were pretty cool too. Other than that, there were a lot of tourists and the whole inner part of the observatory was lined with gift shop items to tempt small children. And what parent is going to deny their child a Namsan Tower souvenir and risk having them burst into a temper tantrum while being trapped at the top of a tower? It's brilliant marketing. There were a lot of kids walking around with new toys and satisfied smirks on their faces.

Corey and I took the elevator back down to the bottom of the tower. We walked past the cosmetic shop, card shop, coffee shop, and restaurant that blocked the exit. Once we made it into the courtyard surrounding the tower, we saw performers dressed in old-fashioned Korean military costumes. They were just starting a performance so we stayed to watch. Corey really enjoyed the play sword fighting, where the performers pretended to kill each other off with a variety of traditional spears and swords. Corey thought of a young cousin Keith playing with an imaginary light sabre and thought he might enjoy knowing that he could have pursued that as a full-time career in Korea. The performers certainly seemed to enjoy their job and they even took some time to pose for a picture with us after the show.

We walked down the mountain path. I was freezing. What else is new? Corey had to stop and take a picture of a wild rooster on the way down, but then we made it to a coffee shop to get warm. It was called A Twosome Place, which is a popular chain of coffee shops here in Korea. We've seen them around Incheon, but this is the first time we visited one. We got some hot chocolate and plotted the rest of our day. We decided just to walk around and see whatever we came across.

We walked around Myeong-dong station and saw some amazing lights all over the huge department stores and smaller shops that lined the streets. Every brand name was available in the stores, as well as every knock-off was available from carts and trucks set up outside the huge stores. 

I must add a section on street food here. Near Myeong-Dong we bought a swirly-potato-fry-on-a-stick. It was delicious! Cooked to a perfect golden colour and rolled in salty cheese powder (that Corey adds, "tastes like Kraft dinner powder!"), this confection should not be missed. 

Also, we tasted some local street food. Very local, since the truck has started parking right outside our apartment. These are fish-shaped pastries, but they're not filled with fish. They're actually filled with a sweet red bean paste.

A library right under our noses!

It's the Fall in Incheon Korea. Maybe there should be a comma after Incheon. I wouldn't publish that if I was your publisher. Or should I say were your publisher. 

No. No new paragraph. This is nonsense. No one will want to read this. The end.

No seriously, this is the end.

(The above portion was guest-contributed by Corey. He's very particular that his words not be minced so I have made sure to write them exactly as spoken.)

It's the Fall in Incheon, Korea. It's getting colder, but we still manage to go for some nice long walks. This past weekend we returned to Subong Park (where we saw the artificial waterfall a few weeks ago). This time, Corey ran into some of his students. He asked if they were going hiking. They shook their heads sadly, pointed at the building that's shaped like a boat and said, "no, we're studying at the library."

This was the first time we realized that we lived just ten minutes walk from a library. So exciting! Corey and I went inside to check it out. The first floor was children's books and they had a large selection in English so of course I was happy to stay there with a book by Gail Carson-Levine.

Meanwhile, Corey went to do some further exploring and took some photos of the ship-shaped library.

 Picture from the rooftop of the library.

 Top floor of the library. There's a ship steering wheel!

 One red tree in Subong park

We also went on a walk to Juan station, which turned into a walk to Ganseok station, which turned into a walk to a huge park a couple blocks beyond the station. I should know better now when Corey says we're going for a little walk that we're actually going on an odyssey.

We saw the finished knitting on the sculptures near Juan that we had seen women working on a couple weeks prior.

Sculpture covered in hand-knit garments.

We enjoyed the autumn colours in the park. Plus, this park had the largest selection of built-in exercise equipment I've seen since the Hangang Park in Seoul. It's about an hour walk to get there, but it's worth it. We passed a lot of interesting houses and businesses on the way to keep things interesting.

Corey sitting in the park.

 Corey being exorcised...er I mean exercising

Emily sitting in the park.

This was more than a week ago, but I also need to give a shout out to "The Boardgames Incheon Group" who meet weekly-ish at Bupyeong. I was invited to join them for the most epic game (even better than Risk!) called Red November. The way the game works is that everyone plays a drunken gnome, and together all the players try to save an experimental submarine from inevitable doom. If you get a chance to play this game, do it! It made for a very fun night with some fellow foreign teachers.

Tests and Peppero Day

This weekend's been quite lazy. Yesterday the weather was fairly warm and sunny. We did get out to walk a bit which was good. We ate lunch at a traditional Korean restaurant and then went grocery shopping at the local supermarket which is just across the subway tracks from our Dohwa apartment.

Today has been rainy and cold. I haven't even bothered to change out of my pajamas. It's Peppero day, which is kind of like valentines day in Korea, where people give their friends and loved ones peppero (a kind of cookie). I got a heart shaped one for Corey, but I forgot to take a photo of it before he ate it. He says "it was delicious" though.

The week at school at school was pretty typical. A lot of textbook work to get through. The third grade students are getting ready for their end-of-year tests which determine which high schools they can get into next year so things are a little bit more tense than usual.

The Senior high school students also wrote their end of year tests on Thursday. It's kind of like the SAT  in the States. All the Senior students in Korea write on the same day and most of the schools and some businesses close so that people can go and cheer on the students who are going to write. Corey's school was closed, but mine stayed open. I took some photos of the high school and of my own school with the pretty Fall colours.

Crowd cheering on senior students at Sunin High School

Walkway to Sunin Middle School

Stairway to our school library

Sunin Middle School from the front

Trees to be planted

That's about all the excitement this week. I'll try and be better about taking photos of stuff that happens next week. Until then, Happy Peppero Day!