Buddha's Birthday, Movies and BBQ

Well, I haven't blogged for a while. Sorry guys! There usually isn't enough during the week since I'm mostly just working to blog about. But here is a post after several days!

Random story: I made hard-boiled eggs to eat for breakfast for a few days. I put them in the water, then forgot about them...Apparently if you forget about them, the end will crack, then some of the egg will come out of the egg shell, then cook so it's stuck there. It looks like this:

Tuesday was Buddha's birthday, which meant working at 9:30AM instead of 3:30 again for the holiday. My students were tired but pretty well behaved considering they could have been home. A few of the students did stay home though. Apparently many other kids did too, because I had 9 extra students in my Wednesday class.

After work, Bree, Craig, Octavian, Kim and I went to lunch. I got chamchi Kimbap (tuna kimbap, which is still my favorite thing) then went to see "Source Code. Here we are at the movie theater.


It's the Megaplex seen in previous blog (the one where I got lost), which has enormous theaters inside. and an elevator that looks over Sinchon. and I believe it may have been several floors. Kind of awesome. The movie was interesting. It was definitely entertaining, but this one actor really ruined it for me. http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0942482/ He played the guy who created the "Source Code" technology. The problem was that he spoke sooo dramatically that it was completely unrealistic. I was thinking during the movie, "Wow he's not doing very well right now...He's being so dramatic." It was at about that point that Craig leaned over and said "He's talking like he's Yoda" which was very true.

After the movie, Kim and Octavian went to the Apple Store to buy Kim's new computer. Craig, Bree and I went to a coffee shop to sit and chat for a while. We ended up staying there for about 2 1/2 hours just talking. It was about 9:30 and we hadn't eaten, so we went to get dinner. We just had something small. I have absolutely no idea what I ate. One was a Kimchi Crepe thingy that wasn't a crepe, but there's no other way to describe it. The other had egg and meat and was in the shape of a circle. Both were really good. We ended up talking for about 3 more hours, then headed home for the night. Luckily, we didn't have an early day again!



Wednesday, I taught my enormous class, which required me to teach in a different classroom because I didn't have enough desks, then still have to borrow a desk from another classroom because there wasn't anywhere for a student to sit. It was a bit crazy, but the kids were well behaved. Wednesday's one of the days I just have one class while everyone else has two, so after class, I went home to relax a bit and watch my Tuesday night shows from home. Aka Glee and the Good Wife, the two best shows ever. I was just hanging around being lazy and in my pajamas, when at about midnight, Queena texted and asked if I wanted to go meet her friend in Hongdae (about 10-15 minutes walk from where I live). He is leaving Korea soon, but was in the area and she didn't want to go there on her own. I said yes of course. We went to a Music Bar, which of course had darts. We hung out with her friends and played darts. These friends were also very nice. I continued the illusion of being amazing at darts for another night. I got 3 bulls eyes this time. I have no idea how that happened.

Thursday was a normal day of work.

Friday after work, Bree, Craig, Jane and I got sam-gup-sal (Spelling? who knows). It was this:

Pork with various vegetables, garlic and other things. It was very good of course. As you can see, you cook the meat on the table and just move things around. The frying pan was tilted, so the grease ran downhill off the pan, which is gross, but at least it was going somewhere. It also kept crackling up and hitting us in the face, which was fun. haha. At one point, Bree was moving the meat around with the tongs and all of a sudden an enormous flame came shooting off the stove and straight in the air, which left us all looking really shocked and horrified. We hung out and ate for a bit, but went home relatively early, since Jane, Bree and I had to work early on Saturday.

Saturday, J and I walked to work in the morning. Then, I taught my class. After class, Queena, J and I went and got Shabu shabu (again spelling no idea) the soup where you cook the meat in the soup, then they make fried rice. Afterwards, we went around the neighborhood looking to see if there were apartments available for J, since she's moving closer to the school. She lives about 90 minutes away right now. We then went to the store and bought watermelon. J had to head home after that. Queena and I met Octavian, Kim, Peter and their friend Will Smith (yes that is his name) and we headed to the Han River to BBQ and eat lots of food. We took separate taxis because there were 6 of us and we were slowly quickly losing daylight.

This turned out to be a problem. Kim, Octavian and Will's taxi dropped them off at the right spot. Queena, Peter and my taxi dropped us off reallllly far away from the area where we were allowed to BBQ. We kept trying to get there, but had different directions from various people. Finally, a bus driver and passenger lead us in the right direction, which involved walking on an overpass across the highway, which had a lot of traffic,

down these stairs to the riverside, along the river for a long time,

and then finally getting there. Queena kept asking people if we were going the right way and each time the answer was "yes but it's really far." Poor Peter was carrying a watermelon We ended up at the wrong group of tents for a bit, which we realized when the entrance tickets were 66 dollars. Finally, we got to the campground where we could BBQ, just as the food was ready.

We ate lots of food, which including the watermelon that was amazing and just sat and talked. The campground was very busy and did not seem like the ideal place to camps, since the tents were very close together and not really near anything...but there were lots of families there Barbecuing and camping. We had lots of fun. We just chatted and hung out and ate food. Three of Kim's friends joined us. We played cards and talked about girly stuff that made Peter feel uncomfortable. haha. It was lots of fun!

When we left, we accidentally left at the same time that some sort of spring concert on the river was getting out. We knew we needed to take a taxi, but saw this line and thought it was for the taxi:

Thank heavens, it was for concert shuttle buses, otherwise we'd have been doomed! We hopped the shuttle bus' fence for the line, then walked up the hill. Then we kept walking and walking, until we finally got to a street that would lead us to a taxi. It didn't take too long to find one, so we managed to get home pretty quickly.

Sunday I went to Hwaseong Fortress, which I will write about in the next blog post!

A fairly quiet week.

Well this week has been fairly quiet after Monday night's adventures. It was level up testing week this week (the test that determines if they go to the next level of English,) which involved me sitting around staring at my students while they took tests, which is as exciting as it sounds.

Thursday was "Children's Day," one of the Korean national holidays that everyone gets off. Everyone, that is, except for my school. Instead, we had to work 6 hours earlier than normal. My students were complaining a bit, since it was also their testing day. But, we got off work at 4PM, which was great. It was 78 degrees outside. J and I were going to get dinner together, but then Tae, Kim, Octavian and Craig called us to join them, so we did. We got to the restaurant they wanted to go to, which basically is a buffet that serves a bunch of delicious side dishes (the same place Queena took me to my first weekend here) at about 4:30. They told us they didn't open until 5PM. Their sign also said they didn't open until 5PM. We said "ok" and went to Holly's Coffee for the 30 minutes to sit and chat. Then, we returned to the restaurant. All the doors were closed and they had changed the sign. They had taped a little piece of paper over the 5PM and changed it to 5:30. So, we went back to Holly's Coffee and sat around and talked some more. We also walked by this cafe:


We discussed how nice and welcoming our branch is and how lucky we feel to be here. I agree too. Then, we had dinner, which was pretty good and headed home for the day.

Friday, Queena, Drew and I went to Costco. On my way to work a woman from Vancouver said hello to me on the street. I'm pretty easily spotted as a foreigner. We chatted for a bit. Her husband works for the Canadian Embassy and she was waiting for her kids to get out of the Seoul Foreign School, which is on the same street as my school. Random Fact: Ken Jennings went to Seoul Foreign School for a while.

Friday evening everyone was quite exhausted for some reason, so we didn't do anything. It was rather cold at 3PM when I walked to work and considerably warmer and more humid when I left work at 10Pm. That was a bit strange to me.

Saturday, I had to work. Then, Queena and I went to dinner and had some delicious delicious chicken. I'm not exactly sure how to spell what it's called, but basically it was half a chicken with dumplings. Quite fantastic. Then, we got desert, which looked like this:




It's called Patbingsu. Basically it's a bunch of frozen fruit and this sweet red bean paste (which, yes, sounds really gross but it's super delicious and I don't even like red beans) topped with vanilla frozen yogurt. Clearly we only needed one order. It's a traditional Korean desert.

I also had to take a picture of the bathroom sign, which was promoting extreme creepiness by men:


After desert, we went to Hongdae and met Queena's friends from her training. We went to a Music and Darts bar and hung out. They were very friendly. We played a huge game of darts, where I gave the illusion that I was really good at darts by getting a bullseye and 2 triple-17s. I was very impressed with myself. And also very impressed that I didn't break any darts this time. Also, I learned that since there isn't a "v" in the Korean language that my middle name would be pronounced "Gene-bieb-uh" which I thought was kind of hilarious.

Today, I went to church with Kim, Octavian, Feng Xia, Steve and Steve's sister. Kim, Octavian and I didn't really know where we were going and just planned to wander around a bit until we recognized the right exit from the Subway. Kim thought it was Exit 12, I thought Exit 8 (I was correct by the way). But, just as we were getting on the train, I heard "Lauren?" and it was Steve. I am pretty easy to spot here, so he recognized my hair. He knew where we were going since it's his church, so that made it pretty easy.

After church, Kim, Octavian, Feng Xia and I went to Thunder Burger and had hamburgers. Pretty delicious. I hadn't had a hamburger for a while and when I walked in, I immediately smelled ketchup and thought "oh that smells delicious" which was strange since I don't even really use ketchup...

Then, tonight, Queena and I went to dinner at a Chinese restaurant and had fried rice and soup. I'll make this statement now so I don't have to repeat it all the time: Food in Korea is delicious.

This evening, I've watched a few episodes of Modern Family and procrastinated learning Korean letters. I can write my name now and might be able to recognize about 10 letters...I'll catch on pretty soon!

Changdeok Palace, Lipstick and Jane Eyre

So that past few days have been mostly quiet, but fun at the same time. Thursday, the female teachers and Bree (the Faculty Manager of the Korean staff) went to brunch at this cute cafe called Joey's Cafe. It was decorated with a lot of English style things. One wall was painted with the underground, then had very tasteful "Mind the Gap" signs cut out from paper and taped to the walls. I think they could have left that off...But we had fun!

Left-Right: Jane, Kim, Queena, Me, J, Blossom, Bree

Friday, Queena and I had our night classes cancelled, so we went out to dinner. We were going to go to a movie, but she had to redo a couple of her student evaluations and they were due the next day. We had chicken that is cooked in this pretty spicy spice that was pretty delicious. Then, at the end they give you rice, which they fry on the table and it's delicious.

That evening we had a massive thunderstorm. I'm on the top floor of my building, so the rain was unbelievably loud. I could not sleep for the life of me, even if it had been raining less because the lightening was so bright!! I took a video to document my experience. It is at the end of this blog post.

Saturday, I had to work from 1-5. The weather was still horrendous. It was thundering and lightening-ing through much of my class, with occasional downpours. Then at about 3PM, if you looked outside the window, it looked like it was completely dark outside. It was pretty crazy. My students kept looking out of the window and yellow "OH MY GOSH IT'S DARK!" or "OH MY GOSH LOOK AT THE RAIN!" Then, I met up with Carrie and we had a very exciting night that involved going to E-mart (which is basically like a Walmart or Target,) where I bought a broom and a mattress pad and she got a pillow, then going to dinner. We got kimbap and later got desert.

Sunday, I decided to go to Changdeok Palace and wander around, since it was my day off and I figured I should explore Seoul on my one day off a week.

Here's a picture of the subway stop where it is located.

I planned on arriving at the Palace before 2:30 so I could take the "Secret Garden" tour. The secret garden tour leads you through a bunch of gardens and buildings in the back that you can only see if you're with a tour guide. But I got a little distracted by this bear:


And I thought this was pretty:



And I took a picture of the entrance:

I got there at about 2:22, so barely in time. There was a bit of a line, so it took a little time to get through the ticket counter. Of course, right as it's my turn, she shuts the little door to her counter. I thought "oh well, I can come back for the garden tour. But, there was a nice couple behind me (Ingrid and Jim) and their Korean friend with them who went up to the counter to ask the lady why she was closing the door. She said that she couldn't guarantee we could get into see the gardens because we were late, but sold us entrance tickets so that we could sprint to the back gate and hope they let us through. So, I ran along with the couple that I accidentally joined up with and we made it to the entrance and they let us through the gate! It was a nice surprise!

So, we joined up with the Secret Garden tour only a couple minutes late on this pathway:


The first stop was this place:

We then continued to wander around the palace grounds and see some pretty cool things!



I thought this staircase was really pretty.






The only building in the gardens with a thatched roof. Twas cool. However, this was in front of it:
This was gross. I'm hoping it didn't only look like that because of the rain.

The kings well.

















































The gardens were just beautiful as I hope you can see! The last part of the tour was this tree:



It's a pretty awesome tree I think. I believe the tour guide said it was a shrine and that they discussed seeing a monkey in the tree, but I couldn't really hear her. This poor couple asked me what it was and I blundered something about a tree shrine and a monkey and they looked at me like I was crazy.

After the tour I exchanged information with Ingrid and Jim, then wandered around the rest of the palace. The other parts of the palace looked a lot like Gyeongbok Palace, though obviously it was different. As I was walking around, I heard this group said "Ichiban" a LOT. It made me think of "Ichiban: Lipstick for Men." Can anyone guess that reference!?

Sunday night, Queena and I went to dinner, which was delicious as always. I really enjoy Korean food, which is great since that was one of the things I was worried about.

Last night, my evening class was canceled again. Bree had the day off because she was just coming back to Seoul from a wedding this weekend. We decided to go out and go to dinner and a movie. We met up and headed to Myeongdong. We wandered around for a while to see what we wanted for dinner. We decided on a dumplings place. I love dumplings, so I thought it was a good choice. We ordered dumplings, obviously, and this noodle soup thingy. Both were quite delicious.

After dinner, we had some extra time, so we decided to stop in at a cafe. We passed a cafe that specialized in Green Tea items. We decided to go there since Bree's always wanted to try it and it looked pretty good. I got some Green tea ice cream and she got a latte and this:

Green Tea tiramasu. It was very fluffy. My dictionary wanted me to change "tiramasu" to "taramasalata"



We hung out and chatted at the cafe for a while, then headed to the theater to see Jane Eyre! Before the movie, they had a bunch of Korean commercials, which obviously I couldn't understand. Every once in a while, in the midst of the Korean, they'd say something like "whitening" and I'd understand a word...or a sentence then it would go back to Korean. Their commercials don't seem to match what they're talking about at all, so Bree was having fun trying to get me to guess what a commercial was about. Example, there was a commercial that had a bunch of cars falling from the sky and landing in the ocean. I had no idea what it was about, but apparently, it's about keeping your leftover food.

Then, the movie started. It was a very good movie. I enjoyed it a lot. I did run into a slight problem. About 5-10 minutes of the movie is in French, which would have been fine except I don't speak French and the subtitles were in Korean. That was a little unexpected. I understand some French and could understand about 1/2 of what they were saying, which was cool, but the rest was lost on me. For example, at one point Adele asks "what are you doing with your hair?" I understood, "what are you doing?" but could tell that wasn't exactly what they were talking about. Luckily, Bree was patient and didn't mind me saying "wait what is she saying?" during those parts of the movies. I'm glad most of the movie was in English. But, I still enjoyed it!

When we entered the movie theater, there were tons and tons of people around Myeongdong, since it's a bustling shopping area. When we left, it was completely empty. That was strange. It was late, so the subway was closed. That would have been fine if we'd been able to find a taxi in a decent amount of time. We tried for a while in one spot, but no taxis even drove by. Then we moved to a different spot and a few drove by but none stopped. Then we walked even further and finally one drove by. It took about 30 minutes. The taxi driver said that as soon as the shops close and everyone leaves, no taxis come to Myeongdong because no one is there at that time of night. Oops! Well, now we know. No late night movies in Myeongdong if it gets out after the subway closes! But, we still had a good time so it wasn't a problem.

The storm: