School Festivals and Sports Days

I haven't updated the blog in a while. Corey and I have been involved in multiple festivals and activities going on at our schools over the past couple of weeks. It's been fun, but kept us very busy!

My school had their festival day on Oct. 18. It was kind of like an open house in the morning with a lot of student work on display. Plus, students did science demonstrations. One station had students cooking bread in cardboard boxes and aluminum foil ovens that they hooked up to some kind of giant battery. Another station had students making a kind of toffee over bunsen burners. It was delicious!

In the afternoon, there was a 3 hour talent show that included acts by students and teachers from the school as well as a semi-professional girls' dance group (that the boys went crazy over!) and a group of older ladies dressed in Hanbok, doing traditional Korean dances. Overall it was a pretty good day.

Oct. 19th was Sports Day. The students competed in a soccer tournament, relay races, and skipping contests. I even participated in the teachers vs. parents relay race. The parents won, but all the participants got a prize--an umbrella! Very practical. At the end of the day the Principal announced there would be a staff dinner. One of my co-teachers drove me and another English teacher to the restaurant. It was my first taste of Korean barbecue. The food was really good and I think I'm starting to get used to eating in traditional Korean style, sitting cross-legged on the floor and helping myself to a variety of dishes with my chopsticks.

I took a lot of photos on Sports day and put them together in a slide show with English captions to show to my students the following week and they enjoyed reliving that day through the pictures in English class.

This week, Corey was especially busy getting ready for the big Incheon English festival that brings together several schools from the area to perform plays, musicals, and songs in English. Corey's school performed Wizard of Oz and Corey was a truly memorable wizard in his bright coloured costume all covered in bells! I'm so proud of him. I got to go to the festival too since my school was in it, performing High School Musical. This gave me the perfect opportunity to take some pictures of Corey in costume. Can you spot him in the crowd?

After the festival we went out with the cast of Wizard of Oz for dinner. This was Corey's first experience of Korean Barbecue since we got here. I think the picture says it all. Note the fork.

To The Future

Yesterday, Corey and I went to Songdo International Business District. It's a fancy new development with a lot of Western style apartments, shops, and hotels. Oh and did I mention that it's actually part of Incheon! So cool!

We got off the subway at "Central Park" Station on the Incheon subway line. The first thing we saw was the Tri-bowl. It's a huge piece of architecture that is overwhelming to try and take in. I've heard that it lights up at night and looks like a spaceship. We will have to go back to see that! We will have to go back in general because there is so much to see and do. 

Anyway, around the tri-bowl are all these modern glass apartments that look like they are bending and swaying. They are not the usual rigid apartments that announce "here I am standing in the way of the sun and anything else you might want to see." No. These apartments coo, "really, you came to see me, so look at me-- I'm beautiful." And they're right.

Then there's a path that leads into Songdo Central Park (as the station name suggests). The park is young, but there are saplings everywhere that will turn into mature trees to shade walkways, create miniature pine forests, and an orchard. Although the pathways are not as endless or winding as those in New York's central park, they are beautiful and every inch has been well though out. There are arched walkways covered in vines and Fall vegetation. There's a man-made river that runs the length of the park, with a boat house at the end. All the way along are plans, rocks, sculptures, and a million other things to stop and admire if you're not focused on running along the runners' path or zooming along the bike paths.

Corey and I just meandered along every path we came across and then we went across the street to find.......another park! This one was more of a kids park with a musical fountain, splash pad, and jungle gyms. A group of kids were sitting on a blanket playing with Lego blocks, designing their own creative architectural works. There were also kids playing catch and soccer in the field areas. There were kids climbing on the sculptures of whales. There were kids riding on rented quadricycle cars along the pretend road that runs through the park. Basically the park belonged to kids, but Corey and I still enjoyed walking through and we even wandered into a sculpture garden where no one was around, because I guess kids don't care that much about sculptures of The Birth of Venus. 

After all this walking, Corey and I got some ice cream at the local Baskin Robbins and then headed back toward home. On the way we stopped into the "Compact Smart City" museum that showed diagrams of how the city has changed. There were even descriptions in English. So we read a bit, but the museum couldn't capture how amazing the reality of all this city-planning was. You had to go outside to appreciate it, I think. Sorry for the endlessness of this blog entry but it does seem to go with the endlessness of the International Business District. If you get a chance, check it out!

 

Gangnam Style

This post is very late, but I just realized I didn't write about our Psy adventure!

You've probably heard of Psy, but in case you're living under a rock I will explain that Psy is the singer of the world famous song Gangnam Style and he's an especially big deal here in his native Korea. So when Corey found out that Psy was going to be performing a live concert at City Hall in Seoul there was no way we could miss the chance to hear Gangnam Style performed live by Psy himself.

After school on Thursday, October 4th, Corey and I made our way to Seoul by subway. We got to City Hall around 9pm. Psy wasn't expected to perform until 10pm, but already the place was packed. There were people crowding every surface of pavement. There were even people standing on top of cars and the roofs of subway station shelters to get a better view. I didn't dare take out my camera for fear of losing it in the crowd.

It was crazy! There were 80 000 people crammed into the square.I'm not just talking teen fans, but everyone from business men in suits to senior citizens and young children. All of them were singing along to Psy's entire concert. Who knew he even had enough songs for an entire concert? It was so funny to hear an entire city chanting in unison to Gangnam style though. Every man, woman, and child was screaming at the top of their lungs "Heeeeeeeeeeeey sexy lady!" 

The concert finished after 11pm so we could only take the subway halfway back toward Incheon since our part of the line was closed for the night. Then we took a half hour taxi ride back to the apartment, but it only cost about the equivalent of $30. Let's just say the concert was well worth the price of admission plus cab fare.

(Corey took pictures at the concert. He's very brave. I will post them soon.)

Incheon Hikes

Thanks to Chuseok, Corey and I only had a two-day-work-week this past week so the order of events is a little confused in my mind, but I will try to fill in what I can remember.

On one of our days off, we went exploring right in our own backyard. Just on the other side of Dowha station (the station directly next to our apartment), there is a nice park area. It has  performance space and then a stairway up into the hills that leads to a memorial shrine at the top. Corey and I wandered up into the hills, stopping to admire the artificial waterfalls built into the space, the real trees and flowers, and various other spaces carved out for a basketball court, playground, and exercise equipment. When we got to the top we did see the shrine, but we were also surprised to find a small petting zoo and sculptures of cartoon characters. 

We also spent a day in a part of Incehon called Yeonsu. We had bibimbap for lunch and then wandered around the area. I wanted to try and hike Munhak Mountain, but we could never really find a clear path up the mountain. Instead, Corey and I settled for hiking along a little path near the base of the mountain and then looking around at Munhak Stadium, which is one of the stadiums that will be used for the 2014 Asian Games being held here in Incheon. To get to the path that led to the stadium we walked through what looked like a little farm where people were harvesting vegetables. Then we went under a bridge and up some stairs to find ourselves on a track that goes around the stadium. You never know what you'll find when you start walking!

We went on one other long walk around Incheon, but we didn't take a camera with us so there are no pictures. Mostly we walked past a lot of apartment buildings and construction sites that are probably future apartment buildings. We did see a nice marketplace though and an underground library and art gallery. On our way back some ladies called us over to where they had set up a tent. They asked us where we were from, gave us coffee, and invited us to join their church. We politely declined even though I'm not sure they understood, but they smiled and gave us a package of hand wipes with a picture of jesus on the front. 

We also went to our first movie at a Korean movie theatre over Chuseok. We went to see Resident Evil. It was in English with Korean subtitles, but there was very little dialogue and the plot was pretty straightforward so the language wasn't much of a factor in it. Corey took a picture of the theatre, but it doesn't quite do justice to how huge it is. The box office is on the sixth floor of the mall and the actual theatres are on the 7th-9th stories.