Weekends and Such

So my first week of classes went pretty well. I have one class that's a little bit more difficult than the others, but overall quite well. Highlights that have not yet been included in this blog: I asked one my classes who was a thief and a child said "BARACK OBAMA." I asked another class "What is in the olden days?" and a girl said "Michael Jackson's nose!" I have quite the humorous children in my classes.

So Friday night after work, a bunch of us went out to dinner (some to celebrate the end of the week, others like me, because we wanted to have fun and go, even though we had to work the next day.) We went to a place called "The Fish and Grill" which was really a bar that served soup. The name wasn't quite what it was claiming to be! We get off work about 10PM then headed over there. It's pretty close to my apartment building, which was good. We all hung around there til about 2AM, just talking and playing random games. One game we played with various people involved you saying a random word out of nowhere at the same time as another person (or 2 others as some of us did) then from those words you had to think of another word you associate with both words. You keep trying until you each say the same word, but you can never repeat a word that was already said. Queena, Steve and I said "pink, tree and cup" or something like that, ended up going through Discovery Channel, almost got us all 3 to say when Steve and I both said "Tarzan" then we both said "Jane" but Queena said "Eve," which led us through the Garden of Eden, through hell with words like "fire and brimstone" then back to earth then we finally ended when we all said gods names (Apollo, Zeus etc) and ended with "Jesus." It was pretty funny. Then, we all headed back to our various apartments and some of us had to go to work in the morning.

So then, Saturday, I walked to work and finally took pictures for you all of the street I live on! Well, almost...It's the street I see right when I get to the bottom of the hill.

Here you go:

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Example of the extremely unhelpful bus signs that led me to be lost in Seoul.
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My school
My school
Saturday, I taught my class, then I wandered back to my apartment for a bit, skyped with Alyson, then wandered back to the school to meet up with some of the teachers for dinner.

We took the subway to the City Hall exit, then wandered around for a while before dinner. They decided to show me some of the pretty spots of Seoul. We started out by coming out of the subway into this little square, which was pretty cool.







And then passed this pretty cool palace that I must go back to.







Then we walked down the lane that apparently is the couple hot spot and looked around. There were lots of flowers, a guy playing soprano saxophone and an Art Museum up this little hill, which had little figurines on the lights.

Also, these really strange statues that look like statues of people that were then sat on. They're very strange to look at because it makes you think you're going blind or developing strange squashed vision or something!

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Then, we went to this place that served food that I can't remember the name of, but you boil the broth on the table then when it's boiling, add vegetables and meat to the soup and the meat cooks in the soup. It's quite delicious I must say! We hung around there for about 2 to 2 1/2 hours, until we all got uncomfortable sitting on the floor. So, Cindy (one of my fellow teachers) led us to this other place where we loitered some more, then we went to a Karaoke room.

Here in Korea they don't have places where you sing Karaoke in front of a bunch of people (well they might but I don't know). But you rent out a room here instead for an hour or so and choose a bunch of songs to sing and you sing them. There's also a video that plays in the background, which does not sync to the music, so many times there was a very fast song playing and then a woman singing really dramatically on stage in the background, clearly singing quite slowly. It's pretty funny. We did that for a bit (well I did it as much as I could, but my voice is still a tad gone), then headed home a bit before 12. It was a very fun night. I'm definitely enjoying myself here! Tomorrow ish I'll write my post about my day Sunday going to Gyeongbok Palace with Elaine, which was awesome.