Cultural Experience

On Saturday a group of friends and I went to the ballet. They put on Cinderella and it was awesome. The stepmother and step sisters did such a good job making me hate them, through dance no less. And for 5,ooo Won (which is less than five bucks) it was an amazing experience.

Here we are with Prince Charming. We are pretty, pretty princesses and ballerinas!

Sunday: In honor of Brendan wearing a suit for the first time we took a picture. The Irishman flanked by the two redheads.

Me and my new friend Amber - we're like long lost sisters.

A Birthday Bash

On Saturday was Rebecca's birthday party. The party went as follows:

Manicures at Pro Nails. This is Cindy showing off her purple nail polish.

Dinner at a Jordanian restaurant. There was lots of yummy food like saffron rice, pita bread, lamb, and chicken. We ate heaps and heaps.

Friends at the restaurant. This is my new friend Brenden from Ireland. He just got baptized two weeks ago.

A surprise belly dancer at the restaurant. She was pretty amazing.

Singing at the Noraebang (aka karaoke room). This is Jessica and Maureen partying it up with the tambourines.

We also went dancing at a club complete with tables and poles. I did not take my camera in the club - so I'm sorry I have no photographic evidence of this. It was a blast.

Cindy stayed at my apartment that night and we got in a taxi with a driver that spoke zero English. Cindy tried talking to him and he told her "Shut up girl," in Korean. It was highly amusing.

Friends and Recordings

On Monday I finally got to see my friend Haejin. He works for Johnson and Johnson Korea, and seriously he works like 80 hours a week, so he's very busy. But he texted me and said he wanted to take me out to dinner. He picked me up at 6:00 pm and the poor guy was sick. I told him he could have bailed but he said he didn't want to break his promise. He ended up taking me to this place that specializes in porridge (because he was sick). I know what you're all thinking - gross. It was not gross. It was actually really, really good. Mine had crab and vegetables in it. And one thing you'll learn quickly about Korean cuisine is that no matter what you order, you will always get several side dishes with it. The normal side dishes are kimchi and this yellow radish thing. With our porridge we got kimchi, some sort of spicy mushy stuff, and shredded beef. The shredded beef was delicious; so good in fact that I ate mine and Haejin's. He didn't mind. It was great catching up with him and just spending a meal with a friend. When we stood up to the pay the owner of the restaurant commented on how tall I was. I don't hear that enough it seems. But I was standing next to Haejin who happens to be one whole inch taller than me. Geez!

If you read my last post than you remember my traditional Korean meal with my co-workers and the Korean guy who sat next to me and said, "I'm very satisfied with my seat." I usually don't see him because he works at the elementary school and I work at the middle school. Well today he was here at the middle school. He's kind of cute (but not that tall). Anyway I said hi to him on my way to class, and then he came into my class and asked if he could take a picture of the class. I was like, um ... sure. I figure why not take a picture of the class? But it turns out that what he really meant was that he wanted to record the class, because he came in with a video camera. This was slightly nerve wracking on my part. A picture is one thing - a recording is a whole different thing. My class was on it's best behavior with him in there. He stayed about 15 minutes, and when he left my class let out a huge sigh of relief, literally. And so did I. He did not record me and my class because he has a crush on me (although he might, ;) I'm not sure). Turns out he's the manager at the elementary school and is in charge of AV stuff and recording some classes for review. I just thought it was kind of funny.

A week gone by

Sorry for not updating sooner – I’ve had a very busy week! On Tuesday Joanne and I went out to dinner and then watched Avatar in 3-D. I didn’t really think it would be my kind of movie; sci-fi isn’t really my thing. But actually it was pretty cool, especially in 3-D. The only problem was when the Navi people spoke their own language it was subtitled in Korean. I didn’t think much of it until about half way through I realized it had probably originally been subtitled in English. I leaned over to Joanne and told her I didn’t know what they were saying – she laughed. And then translated for me.

On Wednesday my boss took me, the two other American teachers, and about seven Korean teachers out to dinner. We had a traditional Korean meal; we sat on the floor and they just kept bringing out more and more food. I ate fish, squid, seaweed, rice, soup, pork, and lots of other things I can’t remember or didn’t know what were. I sat next to one of the male Korean teachers who turned to me and said, “I’m very satisfied with my seat.” But then didn’t say anything else to me the rest of the night.

On Friday I got together with Cindy to hang out. We went into a restaurant where she pointed to a table trying to indicate that we wanted to eat that. Luckily there was a nice man who spoke English and translated for us. We ended up getting some sort of pork thing that you wrap in lettuce, and oysters. I ate one oyster – it was slimy and gross. The heap of oysters together looked like brains. After dinner we went to the musical stage play “The Wedding Singer” – in Korean. That’s right, they translated the whole thing. It was good we knew the story beforehand because obviously we don’t speak Korean. It was very, very amusing. Especially the club scene where there was some guy dancing in very, very tiny shorts and what looked like a leash, and Holly danced on a platform and got drenched with water. Water fell from the ceiling onto her, literally. That scene alone was worth the money we spent on our tickets.

On Saturday I got together with my friend Chris (aka Seong-Cheon). I tutored him at BYU-Idaho and I hadn’t seen him in two years. He took me to Gangnam (an area of Seoul) where we went to lunch and walked around. We decided it was too cold outside so he took me to Times Square, a really humongous shopping mall. There were a TON of people there. It was crazy, insane – welcome to life in Seoul, population 11 million. But it was fun to look around at the shops.

Cindy eating an oyster - yuck!

Me and some sort of food creation

In front of the Arts Center

Weekend Fun

Saturday morning I was pretty much a bum. It was nice to sleep in and lounge on my bed. I messed around on the internet and read a little. But I did manage to clean my kitchen – the cupboards were kind of gross, I’m assuming from the previous tenant. But now they’re nice and sparkly. Okay, maybe not sparkly but clean. In the afternoon I ventured onto the Metro for the first time by myself. I went to a place called Gwanghwamun Square. It’s a square (obviously) that has two huge statues – one of Admiral Yi Sun-shin, and one of King Sejong, the inventor of the Korean alphabet. Under the statue of Sejong is an exhibit all about him, his reign, and the evolution of hanguel (Korean alphabet). It was all very interesting. Further down the square they had ice skating and some sort of ice sledding. It looked fun. Then I went into the Kyobo Book Center. It’s a pretty big bookstore and there were a TON of people there. People were all over, sitting on the floor reading, browsing the bookshelves – it was fun and crazy.

On Sunday I met up with Cindy (a friend of a friend, but now we’re friends) and went to church. It’s an English branch and it was actually really big. There are military people, English teachers, and regular workers. After church the singles all get together at this guy Mitch’s apartment to eat and socialize. Mitch is military and has a much, much bigger and nicer apartment than mine. There were probably 20 singles there and it was nice to get to know people. Thank goodness for the Church – I now know people in Korea! On the way home I accidentally got on a train going the wrong way. Luckily I noticed right away and got off at the next stop to get on the right train – no harm no foul. I have a feeling that might happen to me a lot while I’m here. Seoul is so big and the metro system is humongous.

Ice skating on the square.

King Sejong

The Admiral

Pretty

I survived the week

One week down! It's been fun, and crazy, and exhausting. For the most part the kids are great, but they are teenagers so that says a lot about them. Whenever I asked them if they wanted to know anything about me the first question was always, "how old are you?". The second question was always "how tall are you?". When I replied 180 cm (aka 6 feet) there was always a collective gasp of disbelief. I mean, I know I'm tall but have these kids never heard of Yao Ming or his wife, who happens to be two whole inches taller than me (congrats to them by the way, they are going to have a baby - that kid is going to be huge). I think these kids need to meet some NBA players. And I will have you know that I have walked by at least four Korean men who are taller than me. Geez!

It's cold enough to see your breath here, and today on my way to work I saw the cutest thing - two little girls blowing air at each other to see their breath combing. It was just adorable. Also today on my way home from work I carried an ironing board. At least it was not a full size one. Here is the story; a couple of days ago one of the Korean workers/drivers and one of the Korean teachers (who speaks English, her name is Joanne) took me shopping to get some more things that I needed. Well, apparently the driver was in a very big hurry and Joanne and I literally had to run after him to keep up. He was a crazed man on a mission. We were done shopping in seven minutes. But it turns out I forgot to get an iron and an ironing board. So today the same driver comes in and hands me an iron and ironing board - hence I put the iron in my backpack and carried the ironing board as I walked home. Also, everyday when I get home I have a new takeout menu attached to my door. There are tons of little restaurants everywhere and I think they all deliver. If only I could read the menu and actually order something. Goal for the week - learn Korean alphabet!

The street I walk down to go to work everyday.

The street where I live. My apartment building is the one on the right with the white car out front.

View one of my apartment. Nice kitchen, heh?

View two of my apartment. Look mom, I made my bed! Still haven't figured out the TV though.

Me and my new ironing board!

Stupid American Tourist

Okay, so I kind of feel like a really stupid American tourist (which I guess basically I am), but here’s the reason why. Remember how I said I couldn’t figure out the hot water, how to turn on my shower or how my stove worked? Well yes, I couldn’t figure these things out because I’m retarded – I fully admit it. So last night one of the Korean teachers came over to my apartment to help me figure these things out. I had figured out the hot water on my own, but the shower was still a mystery to me. So Yung comes in and turns on the shower in about two seconds. Turns out you have to lift the knob up, not turn it. Do you know how hard I tried to turn that knob? Really, really hard! For the stove he came over and turned the gas on – yes it was really complicated, let me tell you. But in my defense I’ve never had to do that at home. Also my refrigerator wasn’t working, so Yung opens it and turns the knob to “on”. Again in my defense the thing was in Korean. How was I supposed to know that’s what it said? I need to study Korean. So in the span of about two minutes Yung had solved all my problems that had plagued me for two days. When he left I could only shake my head at myself and laugh – they were definitely palm to forehead moments. But at least this morning I could take a decent shower and cook eggs – I thoroughly enjoyed it.

I’ve now finished three days of teaching. I see each class only once a week, so I teach the same lessons all week. There are two lessons depending on which grade they are in, and each class is at a different level. With some classes it’s like pulling teeth to get them to talk or answer questions; they are so quiet I get sick of hearing myself speak. The more advanced classes tend to be more talkative, and I really like that. When I told one of my students to explain in English, he told me to study Korean! Further proof I suppose, but so far so good. We’ll see how things progress as the weeks carry on.

Welcome to Korea

My journey began at 5 am on Saturday morning. My very kind sister Alesha drove me to the Sacramento Airport. I checked in my bags, but was told that because of fog my flight to San Francisco was delayed. So Alesha and I sat and chatted. The airline decided it would just be better to shuttle us over to SF, so I got my luggage back and got in a shuttle to the SF airport. After a couple of hours of wandering around the airport I boarded the plane to Seoul for the 13 hour flight. I sat next to an American who has worked in Seoul for two years. She gave me some good pointers. I asked about the weather and she said it hardly ever snows in Seoul but it does get cold. The flight was long, but bearable. Watched a couple of movies, read, listened to music, and attempted to sleep.

At the Seoul airport I went through customs, grabbed my luggage and headed out to meet my driver. I met him in front of Dunkin’ Donuts – a little Korean middle aged man. The only English word he spoke to me was my name. The only Korean word I said to him was thank you. It took about an hour to drive into Seoul. Along the way I saw a lot of lights, the Han River, some awesome bridges, and the annoying GPS that kept dinging and flashing blue and pink. Don’t ask me why it did this – all directions were in Korean. When we reached Seoul it was 8 pm Sunday night. The driver dropped me off at the school I am working at, where I met the director, Simson, and two of the Korean teachers, Yung and Jennifer. Yung and Jennifer took me to my apartment to drop of my luggage then took me shopping. I had to get kitchenware, bathroom stuff and some food – all of which the school paid for. By the time I got back to the apartment it was 10 pm and I had been up for I don’t know how long and was exhausted. I went straight to bed, but my hours were all messed up so I kept waking up.

My apartment is one big room with a hard bed, a couple of dressers, a sink, refrigerator, stove, and a couple of kitchen cabinets. There is a small bathroom and a balcony with a washing machine. In the morning I woke up to a foot of snow. So much for it not snowing a lot! I couldn’t get the hot water to work and I couldn’t figure out how to turn it to the shower, so I washed my hair in cold water under the faucet. I was going to make eggs for breakfast but I couldn’t figure out the stove either, so I ate an apple instead. At least I have heated floors :). I walked to work through the snow, which I actually quite enjoyed. It’s about a 15 minute walk and there were a ton of people and it was just kind of fascinating and exciting. I got to work at 8:30, where they gave me a couple of science books and told me I had to teach at 9. I taught four classes that day, and winged all of them. It actually wasn’t that bad; but here I am, a girl whose least favorite subject is science, and I’m teaching 14 and 15 year old Korean kids about cells and DNA in English. I didn’t even remember what the mitochondria was or how DNA duplicates, but now I’m teaching about it in a foreign country. Life is funny.