Times Square

This week at school was basically the same as last week so I'll skip over that.

Saturday, I went to Seoul with my Canadian friends, Chris and Joanne.  We went to Times Square Malll. I was looking for English reading material, Chris needed the new Shinee CD, and Joanne was shopping for souvenirs. There was a bookstore that, Chris assured us, had everything we were were looking for.

Before we went shopping, we all agreed lunch was a priority. We ate a Chinese restaurant in the mall that had delicious food and a roomy feel since it looked out over the mall and if you looked up you could see the trees on the rooftop terrace. The mall in general is really futuristic with huge glass windows and glass bridges crossing over the second and third floors.

On the first floor of the mall, we saw a group of people sitting cross-legged in front of a small stage. We weren't sure what or who they were waiting to see, but we figured we'd find out soon enough.

We went down to that level, not because of our excitement to watch an unknown performance, but because there were women dressed in Hanbok giving out free instant rice dishes and packs of walnuts. Kind of random as giveaways go, but none of us turned it down.

There was still no sign of anything starting on the stage, so we started our shopping. We looked around at a few different places, but mostly we spent our time and money in the bookstore, which was kind of like an even bigger version of Chapters or Indigo, with even more random sections that have little or nothing to do with books. There's stationery, toys, music, jewellery, electronics, and even a bulk-candy area.

After about four hours of shopping, we were getting ready to head home, when we saw that announcers had finally come out on the stage. We joined the crowds of people who were pushed up against the balcony on every level of the mall in order to catch a glimpse of whoever it was that was expected to appear on stage.

The announcers went on for a few minutes, getting all the teenagers in the audience to whoop and cheer. Then they brought out a young Korean guy and he played acoustic guitar. My friends and I looked at each other in disbelief. People had sat on the floor for at least four hours, waiting for that? I guess he's a celebrity and we just don't appreciate his star-factor.

In the subway station, Joanne asked if I'd ever tried takoyaki. It's a kind of Japanese food made with dough and octopus. I admitted I had never tried it, even though it's readily available as street food in Korea. So we bought a dish of it and I tried some. I liked the fried doughy part, but I'm still not a huge fan of octopus. I eat it a lot at school, but I still haven't got used to it.

Anyway, altogether it was a really fun day. It made up for a really sloooooow week.

Today Corey and I also went for a nice long walk around Subong Park. (I didn't take a camera) The snow has mostly melted and the paths are starting to smell earthy and Spring-like. This makes me hopeful that winter is almost over. There are signs around the paths with pictures of different kinds of wildflowers, which I'm also looking forward to seeing sprout and bloom in the spring. I hope everyone else is staying hopeful through the dullness of February. One more week.

February Air

It's Sunday night and I'm trying to prepare myself mentally for the week ahead. There are no students this week, but I'll be at the school office every day from 8:30-4:30 anyway, as my contract stipulates. I can't really complain because I get paid just for showing up.

The third grade students had their graduation a week ago. I got to watch the ceremony. It was really nice to see how many of the students' parents attended. They brought flowers and chocolates for the graduates. Afterwards, the students left with their parents, and the teachers had a celebratory feast in the cafeteria. There were even strawberries for dessert!

Graduation Ceremony

Now, most of the teachers are on vacation. The Vice Principal comes to school every day along with a handful of teachers who have prep work to do. I do a bit of lesson planning, but unfortunately I did a ton of prep during my office hours in January and now I don't have much to plan. I've created differentiated lesson plans for my high and low level classes in each grade and compiled a bunch of games from past camp experience and waygook.org. I may never get to use these lessons anyway. First, the textbook must be "covered". So I've done a bit of work here and there, but now I mostly watch TV shows on my laptop.

Some of my co-teachers and me in the school yearbook

I know I should be trying harder to learn Korean, but even with all this free time I can't focus on it for longer than about an hour a day before I start mixing stuff up and forgetting anything new I try to take in. (I guess I sort of know how my students feel when I present them with 45min. of non-stop immersion English)

The co-teachers in the office are always nice to me. They invite me to join them for lunch most days. Sometimes we order in, but usually we go to a local Korean restaurant where the school has a tab. I always order dubugook (soybean curd soup) because it's the least spicy thing on the menu. I feel badly that when we get back to the office, the other teachers all get to work, and I go back to watching How I Met Your Mother.

Yesterday, I went to the library to try and get a card so I could sign out books to read at school, but when I went to the information counter, the librarian shook his head and walked away. Later in the day, I read online about getting a library card in Korea and found out that most libraries do not issue cards to foreigners, though there are a few libraries in Seoul that will. Anyway, I stayed at the library and read for a few hours in the children's section (where there is a small section of English books). If anyone wants to send me books, newspapers, information pamphlets, pretty much any reading material in English, I will be more than happy to read it cover to cover! I also read articles and stuff online, but staring at a screen all day has started giving me headaches (which I never got before coming to Korea).

Corey spent the day at a jimjilbang which is a kind of Korean spa. I was a little nervous about going since I didn't really know the protocol and I just got over a cold, so I thought it'd be best if I wait before going into tight spaces with big crowds. Corey did some research though and bravely explored the four floors of the jimjilbang, which he tells me included a floor that had separate saunas for men and women, plus a co-ed sauna floor, a swimming pool, arcade area, eating area, and more. You pay an admission fee to go into the jimjilbang and then you get a bracelet that you can swipe to charge various items and activities to your tab. Maybe next time I'll be brave enough to go with him.

Not the actual jimjilbang Corey was at, but he says this sauna looks similar to the ones he went in

For now, I'm keeping a low profile and eating lots of chocolate. Corey's mom sent us a big Valentine's Day package and Corey got me an additional box of "KicKers" chocolate (kind of like a kitkat)

Valentine Treats from Corey's mom

KicKer!

The tone of this blog post is obviously less optimistic than my previous ones. I just can't seem to shake these February blues. I'm really looking forward to my students returning in March! Plus, they will be joined by the new grade 1 students who will be starting middle school!

Winter Warm Up

Corey and I are back at school and teaching this week. The students have one random week of classes before they graduate. They know their grades are already decided so they aren't very motivated to learn new material. I've been playing games like 20 Questions, Hex and Hot Seat with all my classes.

The nice thing about being back at school is we get mail sometimes. We got a winter warm-up package from Corey's mom with many delicious and warming things inside.

Corey used the gravy to top off some homemade chicken stir fry. Yum!

Our Thursday night was spent with the board games in Bupyeong group. We took over a few tables at the local cafe, Coffeesmith, and set up a variety of boardgames. Corey and I played Red November with some other foreign teachers. It was a bit of a sad ending when our drunken gnomes died before they could save their submarine.

Bupyeong is a magical place. Besides being the meet up spot for many events, it's also a huge labyrinth of a shopping mall. Corey stopped to pose beside a mannequin wearing a lovely SMILE sweater. It has many English words that don't make sense when read together which is typical for clothing items found around Korea.

Vacation in Phuket, Thailand

We've just returned from a week in Thailand. The weather was 30 degrees celcius every day. Our hotel had beautiful pools to swim in or just lie around. I can't be sure how long we spent just sitting in the sun, but it was at least enough time for me to read three novels.

We were just a short walk from the beach. It was always a little crowded on the sand, but the ocean had plenty of room for everyone.

The hotel's breakfast buffet was loaded with things we haven't seen since we left Canada like cheese and watermelon. There was even beef stew! Sounds strange for breakfast, but beef is hard to come by in Incheon, so we didn't question this. The hotel also had a coffee and cake shop. Mmm cake.

Patong Beach, the area where we stayed in Phuket, is a tourist destination above all else. There are shops and restaurants along every street and then there are food carts and independent sales people of all kinds along the sidewalk. There is no safe place to walk where you will not be offered a ride in a "tuk tuk"(an open air kind of taxi) or pulled along by the arm to "the best custom tailor in Phuket". We didn't shop too much. Mostly we just bought more food and drink. So much deliciousness!

There are also a lot of tourist activities you can sign up for. The only one I did was Hanuman ziplining. It was an incredible experience. The people who run it come into Patong Beach area and pick up a bunch of people staying in the various hotels there. My group consisted of three Russian tourists, a family from Australia/New Zealand, and me. We all took turns taking photos of each other flying, less than gracefully, through the trees.

Corey enjoyed the night life. (I did too when I could stay awake). There was so much going on just on the streets that it was impossible to take it all in. There were whole streets of lit up bars and disco a-go-go places. There were people who tried to hand you monkeys to play with, while demanding 100 baht for this strange entertainment. Meanwhile you could have your pick of ferrel cats and dogs to play with for free (if you don't mind that most of them have fleas) because they'd stalk you all day and night, begging you to love them or, more importantly, feed them.

Lotte World

Winter English camp wrapped up last Friday. Corey's crew had red-carpet interviews and then screened the film they'd been working on all week. My students defeated the dragon and saved the kidnapped teacher.

On Saturday, we went to Lotte World. It's an indoor-outdoor amusement park that operates year round. It's also connected to a huge shopping complex and hotel. I think I'll do this blog in photos with captions because I'm not sure how else to describe the entirety of such a surreal place.

Corey by the entranceway fountain

Skating rink below the amusement park

Corey and I in front of the indoor carousel

Corey in the 3D art hall

Scene of a Queen and aristocrats at the Folk Museum

Emily in the 3D art hall

The outdoor part of Lotte World complete with Disney-esque castle

Corey at the candy shop where we bought 11, 000 won worth of gummies

Corey with pirates

COEX Night and Skating Day

2013 is upon us. It is still very cold here. We've been trying to find indoor things to do since the weather outside is frightful. One idea we had was to check out the COEX mall. It's located in the basement of the Korea World Trade Tour in the Gangnam area of Seoul. It's a series of shops, theatres, museums, and an aquarium that are all connected by tunnels underground. Corey and I went at night so the museums and aquarium were closed, but there were plenty of other things to see and do.

Corey and the fishes in the entrance of the closed aquarium

We browsed a 9 storey department store, admiring everything from fur coats to designer jewellery, home appliances, sports equipment, musical instruments and more. We went to many of the smaller shops as well and picked up some school supplies at a store similar to Staples in Canada. The best part was the bookstore we found with a section for Foreign Books. That's where we found shelves full of books written in English for us foreigners! I bought a copy of Mockingjay and finally finished reading the Hunger Games series.

On the steps of the COEX movie theatre

Thanks to the copious amounts of free time I have, now that the students are on holiday and I only teach an hour each day, I get a lot of reading done at school. (If anyone in Incheon wants to trade books to read-- I have Mockingjay and Eat, Pray, Love on hand)

Sorry, got sidetracked there, but anyway....back to the COEX experience. We ate dinner at an Italian-themed restaurant called Bruschetta. The food was pretty good though a bit pricey, since we were in Gangnam after all.

Eating some Italian pizza at Bruschetta restaurant

On Thursday, we met up with the Boardgames in Bupyeong group. It's always a highlight for me! We met up with the other foreign teachers at our favourite Pakistani restaurant in the food court at Bupyeong's underground mall. (Yes, we live mostly underground like mole people now. Don't judge. It's colder than Canada here). Then we walked, OUTSIDE, for about five minutes to get to Coffesmith, which is the cafe where we always go to play boardgames. They have fancy hot drinks that are quite expensive, but they're nice about letting us push tables together and set up camp for a few hours each week to play a nerdy selection of boardgames. This week, Corey and I were involved in a game where everyone works as a team to save a castle from orcs and trolls. We lost twice to those vicious monsters, but the third time we managed to save our castle and it was kind of a big deal.

This weekend we decided to suck it up and brave the cold for a skating day at Seoul City Hall. We met up with our friend Chris and took the subway right to the rink. We bought tickets for a 2:30pm skate time, which left us an hour to grab lunch before we had to come back to rent our skates. We found a place called Burger Hunter close by. The menu had a huge variety of burger options and some interesting sides to choose from. Everything we ordered was delicious (although for some reason we all stayed away from the more unusual burgers like P.B. and jealousy, which had peanut butter, jam, and bacon on it).

hunting burgers at Burger Hunter

Back at the rink, the air was cold, but the sun was shining. We got our skates and joined the crowd being herded around in circles on the ice. It was a lot of fun!

Ready for some ice time

Chris left after a while to go to Myeong-dong. Corey and I headed toward the subway for home, but on the way we ran into a changing of the guards ceremony at one of the palaces nearby. We couldn't resist stopping to watch and then taking pictures with the other tourists who were crowded around the costumed guards. 

Corey and the palace guards

Then in the subway we came across another national treasure--Psy socks. We may or may not have purchased some for a couple of lucky friends to receive as souvenirs. Ha ha ha

Gangnam style

Anyway, I should probably do something to get ready for day 4 of my winter camp tomorrow. I'm using a really elaborate Creature Hunter template I stole from Waygook, but at the end of each class my students always want to hang around and play games in English. Especially hangman. We usually play for an extra half hour after class, except that the administration turns the heat off when class is officially finished so it gets pretty cold by the end.  I've only had between 4-8 students show up each day, but they're so enthusiastic that it makes camp really fun and worthwhile.

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!