Merry Christmas!

This post is about what we did for Christmas day. We decided to have it at my apartment, since it's definitely the biggest. Originally, I think we invited about 15 people or so but eventually it ended up that we had 26 people coming. We ordered a Western-type holiday meal from an army wife who also has a catering business. Also, people brought loads of alcohol to share (mostly). We had plenty of beer, wine and soju and some people even brought other snacks (chips, cake, fudge, chocolate, etc).

Laura slept over at my place on Christmas eve and we both got up around 9am to start preparing. There really wasn't that much to do except I mopped the floor and we went to get some more cash in case the food arrived before enough people did. The food was supposed to arrive around 2pm and many people didn't know that until late so they weren't sure if they'd make it by then.

When the first people started showing up, it was kind of exciting. The whole greeting people and bringing them to my apartment made it feel like a real family Christmas where everyone meets up at one house. The food actually didn't show up until about 3:45 which ended up working out pretty nicely. By then, everyone was there and we had plates and cups and everything. Plus, it was closer to a proper dinner time. The food was awesome! Laura and I met the woman at my school and we directed her back to my apartment, where we had to enlist some help and take a bunch of trips to and from the car.

 We flattened out the futon, covered it in plastic bags, and set the food out there.

(Carrots, stuffing, mashed potatoes, macaroni and cheese, broccoli, and green bean casserole! Not pictured: two turkeys and two hams.)

A delicious Christmas dinner!

Obviously you can't see everyone in this picture but this was how we sat down to eat. One giant oval in the kitchen. 

After dinner we played white elephant with wrapped presents that everyone brought. We were originally going to do Secret Santa but the website we were using to organize it kept failing and then people kept getting added to the event after the fact, so this worked much better. Some of the gifts were pretty funny and it was a blast. We didn't realize until we were finished but it took about an hour!

After white elephant, we had dessert (four cheesecakes from the same woman) and just kind of hung out, talked, played some charades and took some group pictures. 

The guy who took these actually brought a tripod and does a really good job with editing so this was pretty cool. A lot of us are getting a print of the color one (with "bitches" removed haha...we appreciate the humor but don't want to have to worry about where we display it).

Probably around 7 or so, people started heading home (as we had to work the next day). Nina and Laura stayed until about 10:30 or so and got to meet my mom and dad via Skype. They also took some leftovers, which we had A LOT of. At the time I was kind of wishing we had gotten rid of the food, but throughout the week I've been really happy to have it. 

This Christmas was definitely different from my usual Christmases, but it was absolutely awesome! I couldn't have asked for a better Korean Christmas with a better group of people!

(Christmas Version)

Original Version:

Artist: Girls' Generation

Song: Kissing You

Album: Girls' Generation

Released: November 2007

Christmas in Korea!

So it's not Christmas yet, but I thought I'd share some of the things that have been going on leading up to it.

First of all, the past few weeks in school have been pretty relaxed. The students finished their final exams at the beginning of the month so there's really not much to do in class except fun stuff. That is...when I have class. The 3rd graders (US-9th) were preparing for their Christmas Carol Contest for the past two weeks so their English classes were almost always cancelled. To put it in perspective... I teach 22 classes a week. Last week I taught six. It sounds like it would be nice to have all that free time, and it was at first, but I actually started to get bored. Plus, the third graders will only have one more week in middle school (randomly in February) before they go to high school in March. Most of my favorite students are third graders so it'll make me a little sad!

I'll talk about the Christmas Carol Contest in a bit, but before that was Santacon! Basically a bunch of us (mostly foreigners) dressed up like Santa and walked around downtown singing Christmas songs. Apparently they do this in Seoul and have almost 100 people. Ours was probably around 30 but it was still pretty cool.

Some pictures from before we headed out!

We stopped at this stage in the middle of downtown and sang some songs while people took pictures with us and stuff, it was pretty fun. After that, it was basically a Santa bar crawl! We went to three or four different bars and requested for them to play Christmas music. It was a really nice night so I actually ended up taking off my Santa suit and storing it in a locker and one of the clubs. I kind of thought I'd never see it again since I still don't know my way around very well, but I happened to walk by the place as I was looking for a taxi to go home, so I left with my entire Santa suit intact!

On the stage downtown. 

Fast forward to day- Christmas eve! Korean schools are a bit different and we actually didn't have this day off. We have Christmas day off, and then we come back for Wed-Fri. Then their school year is over for two months. They come back for one random week in February, I think because the 3rd graders will graduate. And then in March, the new school year starts. 

Well, even though we did have school today, it didn't really feel like work. Classes were shortened to 30 minutes and then there was a short classical music concert by the students followed by the Christmas Carol Contest. I wish I would have taken a video of some of the classical music-especially this kid who is an absolutely brilliant violinist, but they were a bit formal about it. They didn't even applaude after the performances, so I guess I wasn't sure if it would be appropriate. I did take a bunch of videos of the carol contest however, which was a blast!

Took some pictures with students before it started :P

"We Wish You a Merry Christmas" and "Santa Clause is Coming to Town"
This one is probably my favorite. 

"All I Want For Christmas is You"

"Last Christmas" and "Jingle Bell Rock"
Very close second favorite!

Anyway, I started this post Christmas eve and now it's Christmas day! Today, almost 30 people are coming to my apartment. It should be crazy but a lot of fun. I'll post about that when it's over!

Merry Christmas!

Artist: Girls' Generation

Song: Santa Baby 

Performance December 2011

Putting Korea's Mountains to Use!

In the past four years I have not been doing nearly enough snowboarding, as Illinois is SUPER flat. Because of this, I was really excited when I found out about a ski trip being organized in Daegu. There's this group called "Explore Korea Daegu Travel Group" and they put together various events for (mostly) foreigners.

We left this past Saturday at about 7am for High1 Resort in Gangwon province. It was a huge group- three buses full of people. The trip took about four hours and then we stopped to rent ski clothes. I've never heard of people renting jackets and snowpants and stuff but it's a good thing that was an option, since most of us hadn't brought any of that stuff to Korea. In fact, many of the people who went had never even seen snow before. That absolutely blows my mind haha...

After we got our ski clothes, we went to the resort and had lunch before heading to our rooms. I was in the biggest room with 14 other people. There were no beds, just a lot of sleeping pads for the floor. This is actually pretty common in Korea. After dropping our stuff off in the rooms, we went to rent our boards/skiis. I ended up with boots that were too big but I didn't really realize the extent of it until I was boarding. It was difficult but I made it work. We had a little over two hours to board before dinner. It was awesome. I mean...the quality of the snow wasn't very good but the place was big and it was really exciting to be snowboarding after so long. Most of the people in my room took a ski lesson in the beginning so I mostly hung out with people who already knew how. Snowboarding tends to turn into a solo thing once you're off the lift but it's cool to have some people to ride up with.

Riding the gondola with Roger, Winnie and Adam.

After dinner we could either go back out again, hang out in the outdoor hot tubs, or just sit in the rooms. I did want to check out the hot tubs but I wanted to get as much snowboarding in as possible. I switched out my boots and went back out. It was better this time since I had better boots but it was colder. We didn't stay out as long this time because we had to get ready for the party later that night.

The party was about 5 minutes from the resort and it was pretty fun. They had free chicken, fries and beer and we played some drinking games and there was a little dancing.

At the party with Courtney and Michelle.

The party ended at 1:30am and we went back to the resort. There was a bit of an after party that ended up happening in our room but a lot of us were too tired/didn't feel like having a hangover in the morning so we went to bed early. 

The next morning we skipped breakfast and ordered Domino's instead. It was a bit of a challenge since they didn't speak English but eventually, we just had the lady at the front desk of the resort order it for us. The time before we left was pretty relaxed. We just packed up our stuff, had some coffee in one of the main buildings and then took the group picture and got on the bus. 

We were back in Daegu around 6pm on Sunday evening.

This is very fitting...

Artist: Girls' Generation

Song: Snowy Wish

Album: Hoot

Released: October 2010

BRB, Philippines for the Weekend

Following my trend of posting really late, this post is about three weekends ago when I went to Cebu City in the Philippines for a rugby tournament.

In another post, I talked about the team, the Seoul Sisters that I played with once before in Seoul. I also mentioned that they invited me to go to the Philippines with them for a tournament. You might be thinking that  a weekend trip all the way to the Philippines is a little insane. Well, you're right.

We all met at the airport where we were given further details about the theme before we boarded the plane. Apparently when the team goes on these "tours", as they call them, they choose a theme for the after-party. This time the theme was stewardesses. We were given a packet with some rules to follow such as, "You must gesture like a stewardess when you talk to people", "You can only call your teammates by their stewardess name", "You can only drink with your left hand", etc.

Our flight left at 7:40pm and when we got there it was around midnight. Walking out of the airport was a bit like walking into a sauna. I actually changed clothes right away in the airport because I had left Korea wearing a sweater. We got a shuttle bus to our hotel and chose roommates (I was with Sandy). When we got to the hotel, we pretty much went straight to our rooms, which were actually really nice. They were pretty small but they had big TVs and super comfortable beds with more pillows than a normal person would ever need...

The next day we were up early to head to the tournament. First we had breakfast at the hotel. From what I've had of Filipino food, I like it. It's different enough without being super foreign. Again, it was very hot and humid outside...which I'm guessing is the reason they shortened all the games for the tournament. We were playing 10s, so they would have been shorter than a regular game regardless...but we played 8 minute games. Usually in 10s, you'll play like two 10 minute halves. We played 8 minute GAMES. It was really strange but with the weather, even that tired us out by the end. We didn't win any but it was still a lot of fun.

After the tournament we went back to the hotel to get ready for the party. Remember how I said the theme was stewardesses?

Basically we looked awesome.

The party was pretty cool but we left before it was officially over to check out some of the other clubs/bars in the city. I only ended up going to one and it was pretty similar to most of the bars I see in the US. Some people stayed out pretty late but I didn't want to push it since I knew I was going to be rushing home the next day so I went with a group that left early.

Sunday was probably the best day. This was our day to be real tourists. We went out on a boat, went snorkling and hung out on a sandbar off an island. It was awesome. The water was warm and the views were beautiful. I had always thought snorkling sounded kind of lame but it was actually really cool.

We drank coconut milk out of the coconut. Then, I had them break mine open and I ate it :P.

Snorkling!

Stopping at an island for lunch.

Hanging out on a sandbar.

After the boat, we went back to the hotel and this is where the fun starts... I had to rush up to the room, quickly change my clothes and go straight to the airport. I had to leave earlier than everyone else since I had to go back to Daegu, which is farther from the airport than Seoul. I took a taxi to the airport and my flight left Cebu at 6pm. 

This was out my window on the cab ride to the airport.

Then, I had a 4 hour layover in Manila. I left Manila at 11pm and by then I was already exhausted. I even slept for almost the whole flight, which I'm almost never able to do. When I got to Incheon airport, I took a cab to Gwangmeong station and took the KTX to Daegu. I got to Daegu at about 7:20am and got back to my apartment with like 10 minutes to change before heading to work. Success! That day at work actually wasn't as horrible as I had been anticipating. All in all, it was totally worth it. 

Artist: Girls' Generation

Song: Himnae (Way To Go)

Album: Gee

Released: January 2009

Dongbyun Idol!

Yesterday, we had no classes, just multiple talent shows! The first one was an English pop song cover contest. Some of the songs students sang were "I'm Yours" by Jason Mraz, "Moves Like Jagger" by Maroon 5, "Because of You" by Kelly Clarkson and "Creep" by Radiohead. The funny thing is, they didn't censor them at all. I cringed but also laughed a little when the Radiohead boys sang "You're so fucking special"...

I have some videos of this show but they won't upload here for some reason. The "I'm Yours" performance is on my Facebook.

Before the next show they had an intermission where they played some games and stuff. During one of them, there were about 10 students on stage and then they were told to go find a teacher. Two boys ended up without one so they called me and the vice principal on stage. It took me a while to realize they were talking to me but eventually I was on stage paired with one of my students. The kids seemed excited that I was getting involved. I had no idea what the activity was and my partner didn't speak English very well so luckily, one of my advanced students was there to translate: "Follow this action. If he does like this, you do like this." So basically, the students would dance and the teachers were supposed to copy them. My partner didn't have very interesting dance moves, so we were eliminated fairly early but it was fun.

The next show was a Korea pop song/dance cover show. This one was a lot of fun to watch. It was clear that the students put A LOT of work into their performances. For some reason this is the only video that will upload, but it was also one of my favorites.

"Dongbyun Style" 

The stars of Dongbyun Style!

After this show, there was a classical music show in a small auditorium where students played instruments. I only saw about half of it. Two girls played piano together, a 3rd grade (US-9th) boy played violin, and then a group of 13 students played piano, violin, flute and cello. That one was especially beautiful. 

They also had artwork displayed in the entryway of the school.

Needless to say, there are some really talented students at this school. After seeing all this, I actually have a lot more respect for them. Most of them go to private academies for more classes after school and on top of that, they practice instruments and were coming to school on weekends and after school to practice their performances for the talent show.

Yesterday was cool, not only because of all the performances, but I also got a chance to talk to some of the students outside of the classroom environment.

Three girls did a cover dance to this song and I really wish I would have recorded it. They were joined by three boys who did the dance with them for about 30 seconds, it was hilarious.

Artist: Orange Caramel

Song: Lipstick

Album: Lipstick

Released: September 2012

DMZ and Seoul Sisters

Again, this post is SUPER late. I have to get better at keeping up... This one is about two weekends ago (Oct. 12-14) when I went and visited Sandy in Seoul.

It was my first time going to Seoul and my first time on the KTX (Korea Train Express). I ended up in first class because all the regular tickets for the time I wanted were sold out. First class was awesome! I had my own seat and more leg room than I'd ever need. The trip took about two hours, which wasn't bad at all. Sandy met me at the station and we went back to her apartment where she lives with her dad. We took it easy for the rest of the night because we had to be up early on Saturday for the DMZ tour.

In case you don't know what the DMZ is: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Demilitarized_Zone

Saturday morning we got on a bus to take us to the DMZ. Our tour guide was a 30 year old Korean guy who spoke pretty much perfect English. I was really impressed by his ability to understand English as well. There was a guy on the tour whose English I could hardly understand. On the way to the DMZ, he told us some interesting things about Seoul and some history about the DMZ and the Korean war. He also pointed out places where you could see North Korea. You can actually see the difference. The mountains in South Korea are green and the ones in North Korea are brown. Apparently it's because North Korea still uses a more old fashioned heating method and they don't replant the trees they use.

There was a stop along the way before the actual DMZ that had some food and a few shops, along with some monuments and stuff. At one point, Sandy called the tour guide "ajussi", which kind of means "sir" but usually refers to an older man. He suggested "oppa" instead, which means like "older brother".

These flags had messages written on them, I'm assuming for the people who fought in the war.

We broke this rule...

At the next stop, we went in a museum type building that had some scenes behind glass that depicted things like North Koreans digging tunnels and South Koreans patrolling the borders. We also watched a video about the Korean war and the DMZ. After the video, we were able to go down into one of the tunnels the North Koreans had dug. We weren't allowed to take pictures in the tunnel. It was a long way down a ramp and then we walked the tunnel for a while before coming to a closed off section and turning around to go back. It was a little eerie since the tunnel was narrow and there was no way out except the way we had come. According to our oppa, the North Koreans spread charcoal powder on the walls of the tunnel so they could claim they had been mining charcoal. We could still see the powder in places, as well as holes with yellow circles around them that they had supposedly put dynamite in. We were given hard hats, which was good because at places, you had to duck to avoid hitting your head.

This shows how they patrol the border. Apparently they flip those strips to either red or white to show that that length of fence had been patrolled.

After seeing the tunnel, we went to an observation deck where we could look through binoculars at North Korea. There was a yellow line about ten feet away from the end of the platform that you had to stay behind to take pictures. There were soldiers who would make you delete the pictures if you took them from across the line. 

North Korea. I zoomed in all the way for this picture. 

The final stop on the tour was a train station. It was strange. I think he said only a few people use it and they're hoping to use it when/if North and South Korea ever...go back to being friends I guess.

A memorial at the train station.

Sandy and me with a soldier at the station. 

After the tour, we got bibimbap for lunch and then went back to Sandy's. She and her dad went to church so I went to a mall in Seoul. I there was a bookstore there where I found tons of Girls' Generation stuff. It was kind of like Christmas... When Sandy and her dad got back we all went and ate burgers and then Sandy and I hung out at this park where there was an outdoor concert going on nearby. 

This weekend, Sunday was a rugby day! Sandy joined a team called the Seoul Sisters, which is made up almost entirely of other foreigners. We met at a hotel and took a bus about two hours away for the game. Since there aren't really any other women's rugby teams around, the team splits up and plays themselves a lot of the time. This time, we did that...but we also played middle school boys. Two firsts for me this day... I played in the backline, and I played against boys. I think we played better than the boys but they were so DAMN FAST. If they ever got the ball away from us, it was game over. In the end, they beat us but it was a lot of fun. 

Running to help Sandy!

Seoul Sisters

This team was a lot of fun and I'm super excited because they've invited me to go to the Philippines with them for a tournament in November! It's only for a weekend so it'll be kind of crazy but I couldn't refuse!

As promised... miss A's new song!

Artist: miss A

Song: I Don't Need a Man

Album: Independent Women Part III

Released: October 2012

The White Sokcho

Okay so this post is SUPER late, but better late than never, right? This one is about what I did for Chuseok, which is kind of like the Korea equivalent of Thanksgiving. We were off school from September 30th, to October 3rd, so most people took some kind of trip to another part of Korea.

I went with a group of seven people (including me) to a town called Sokcho. One of its main attractions is a national park called Seoraksan, where you can hike up mountains, so that was kind of our big plan for the vacation.

We ended up renting a place to stay from a Korean guy named Brian Kim. One of the guys in the group set everything up with him and it was pretty painless for the most part. (Except that Brian Kim accidentally gave us the wrong apartment number and we scared the crap out of this Korean lady by trying to get into her place...). Brian Kim called his place "the white Sokcho" and we could see why. EVERYTHING was white. 

We were also able to go on the roof, where there was an awesome view!

Saturday: The first night was pretty chill. We had Korean barbeque at a place near the water and then went to get some groceries for the trip. After that we just hung out at The White Sokcho and drank a bit. We actually ended up going to bed relatively early, which was good considering our hike was the next day.

Sunday, we went to Seoraksan. There are a number of trails you can choose from and we chose Ulsanbawi. In terms of difficulty, I think it's somewhere in the middle. There are other ones that will take you pretty much all day. 

 Massive Buddha statue on the way to the trails.

 It was actually more of a hike than I was expecting. I had been telling people that I was going to be climbing a mountain over Chuseok and I was exaggerating a little...turns out I kind of wasn't There were times during the hike when we were literally just climbing rocks. It started out pretty low key with only a small incline, but eventually we were climbing really steep stairs...and rocks. The following are pictures from the hike. I'm actually pretty frustrated because none of the pictures really seemed to do it justice.

This is probably about halfway through the hike.

Right before we started the really steep stairs. 

Same area...that's the same tree as the one in the other picture.

Some of the stairs. It was really pretty impressive. There were old women and young children on the hike, too.

Almost to the top, climbing up rocks.

View from the top!

Going down was almost as difficult as going up. You had to be careful about where you put your feet and it was difficult to control your pace. It was less physically challenging though, and we were able to relax and talk a little more than on the way up. We were expecting to be pretty sore the next day but I actually never ended up feeling it as much as I thought I would.

Monday: We decided we should recover from the hike, so Monday was pretty relaxed again. We went to smaller park area (that I can't remember the name of) with a temple and some statues and a really nice view of the water. After that, we sat on the beach for a while.

I wish I knew what this statue is but it was really cool.

I'm guessing this is some kind of "holy water" or something.

For dinner we went to a fish market. It was really interesting. They had all the fish, squid, crabs, etc alive in tanks and you just chose what you wanted to eat and they killed it and cut it up minutes before serving it to you. Everything was served raw except the soup.

I didn't know people ate these...

King Crab

Where we ate. There were tons of these places and they all looked pretty much the same. They were open on either end, so it was like being partially outside.

Our food! I mostly ate the fish in lettuce wraps.

The soup. This part of the meal was cooked.

After dinner, we made our way back to The White Sokcho where we spent the rest of our last night. Overall, it was a great first vacation in Korea. It was a really fun, easy going group which can really make all the difference.

Just introducing this group because they have a new song, which I'm posting on the next one. :P

Artist: miss A

Song: Bad Girl Good Girl

Album: A Class

Released: July 2011