A New Year Begins.

Last weekend, my friend Sun Jin got married. I took the day off, since the wedding was in Cheonan about an hour from where I live and couldn't make it back in time. I was clearly the only foreigner there. They weren't expecting me and the shuttle bus driver to her wedding tried to not let me on the bus . He thought I was a student at the university there, but then I read the sign to him and said "She's my friend!" so they let me on the bus.

It was a nice, Korean wedding. Luckily, she had her Japanese friend there, who is an English teacher, so we talked and then took the train back together.

















































Here's a hot spring/fountain outside. Lots of people had their shoes off and their feet in the water. That was interesting.

It has snowed a couple more times.

Korea has never heard of the word "salt." This results in horrible sidewalks of death where people slip and slide all over the place, or crash hard.

The picture to the right is what the sidewalks looked like walking home yesterday. Literally, a gigantic sheet of ice. Everywhere.

Days in my apartment are spent listening to cars squealing and spinning their wheels up my hill.

This morning, on the way to work, I slid down the hill and then managed to fall when I'd finally reached flat ground. I didn't hurt myself, so it's ok.

Caffe Bene has wonderful Christmas/holiday hot chocolate. Here's the picture.















Continuing my eating of interesting food, Hae Jung and I went to an Italian restaurant her customer owns.

There is our pasta. There was an entire crab in the pasta. No problem, still delicious. You just cut the crab up with scissors and ate it!

Also, it said "Crap" on the menu, instead of crab.

The pizza crust/dough was black. She said that was because there is octopus ink in it. Hmm....
We also had salad, which was delicious.
The meal was quite good and I will go back again I'm sure.


Tonight was New Years Eve. I know I'm writing this before it hits midnight for most of you reading this, but hey, it's 2013!

Ben, Miguel and I went to Gwanghwamun/Jongno to hear the bell ring in the new year.

To give you information on the bell ringing, here is a quote from Wikipedia. "Bosingak is a large bell pavilion on Jongno in Seoul. The bell in Bosingak gives Jongno its name, which literally means "bell street." It was originally constructed in 1396 but destroyed many times by both war and fire. It was designated Bosingak by Emperor Go Jong in 1895. Under the Joseon Dynasty the bell was rung to announce the time, several times a day and to signal the opening and closing of the city gates as well it was used as a fire alarm. In modern times, the bell is rung only at midnight on New Year's Eve. Because of the massive number of people who attend this ceremony, Metro trains do not stop at Jonggak station on New Year's Eve."

The pagota in Gwanghwamun, where we were waiting for Miguel.
It was the wrong pagota. Oops.

We had an early day today at school, so we taught from 10-4 instead of 4-10, so if we wanted to do something, we would have time to do it. I know, normal people schedules...I did have a bit of a panicked wake up though, because I looked at my phone to check the time, saw that I had 5 minutes before my alarm went off, closed my eyes, then........no alarm. I looked at my phone. It was frozen on the time it had said when I checked it. I was soooooo worried it was going to be after the time I needed to be at work. Luckily, I hadn't fallen asleep and it was 9 minutes after my alarm was supposed to go off. Lucky! I taught til 4, got something to eat with Ben, then went home. I took a nap for about 2 hours because I was very tired after waking up at 8.

I then headed to the bus to meet Ben. While waiting for the bus, a man announced his love for me via dictionary. I could kind of see him watching me, then he brought his phone to me and it said, "Love at first sight." Unfortunately, he didn't speak any English.
We caught the bus to Gwanghwamun. While waiting for the one we needed, I checked the other buses to see if there were others that went there. There were 3. This proved to be useful for later.

We arrived in Gwanghwamun, which is the location that we were told they ring the bell. We were meeting Miguel at the pagota. He gave us directions from the Pagota. We couldn't find him. We called and figured out where each other was, said "let's meet at the Olive Young," witness someone fall HARD on the sidewalk while walking there, got to the Olive Young and Miguel wasn't there. We called and he said, "I'm at Olive Young!" Apparently there are 2 very close to each other, because we were each at a different one on the same street. (By the way, Olive Young is like an expensive Bartells.)We kept being at the exact same things, but in different places, which meant we didn't find him for about 30-40 minutes. We had a very festive meal of McDonalds because it was the only thing we could find, then headed to hear the bell ring. There were thousands of people and massive amounts of police marching around.

They had groups of traditional dancers and music players, which was cool and very loud. They had several playing really close to each other, which made it a little difficult to hear the music.

We then headed to hear the bell ring in the new year!

People were very impolite and extremely pushy and kept trying to elbow their way towards the bell or away from it. Then, there was a countdown to the ringing of the bell.

Then, the bell rang slowly and in a very somber way.



can't get taxi. bus arrives suddenly.

We knew it would be very difficult to get home at the time, so we escaped into a Starbucks and watched the festivities through the window. Those are all people that did not escape into Starbucks. We hung around drinking our drinks and chatting, then decided to head home.





We didn't think the buses were running, so we tried catching a taxi. Taxi after taxi drove past us, usually to go pick up someone Korean just down the road. We tried various tactics, like getting in the taxi or waving dramatically, but they didn't stop, which was irritating. We decided to try a different spot to catch a cab, which is when we tried the getting in the taxi, which had it's lights on and he said no, get out. Then, the bus I'd seen earlier that went to our area pulled up next to us. It was about an hour after it usually stops, so apparently they have them running longer on New Years. Thank goodness! We would have never gotten home! Then, I went home and wrote this blog. Overall, it was an exciting New Years!

This is the bell, but we couldn't get closer. It's very small on the right side.

Here's the video of the bell ringing and us saying hello. I hope you can hear  it!

The Unwilling Flower Girl

Many moons ago, when the weather was still hot and humid, I was invited to the wedding of one of my Korean classmates, who I didn't know very well. Her name is Michelle.

I went with Leah and Ok Hyang. The wedding was close to my house and I had to work that day, which was convenient. I met them at the station and we went to the wedding hall.

This was my second wedding in Korea. This was my first wedding hall experience, which I have now heard referred to as "factory weddings" from several sources. They are extremely common and basically people run in, get married, and run out. They are scheduled at strange times like 11:50 or 1:25.The wedding hall has several rooms where weddings occur and then there's some sort of buffet meal afterwards. It is tradition to give money as a gift, rather than a gift, which basically go towards paying for the wedding and honeymoon, which I think makes sense.

We arrived and took pictures with Michelle. They made me do the pose to the right for her official pictures, which was slightly humiliating and then someone captured it with my camera.

My own weapon was used against me.

Then, just as we were about to walk into the wedding hall to attend the wedding, the wedding attendants grabbed me, Leah and Ok Hyang (in her jean shorts,) dragged us near the room where the bride and groom were sitting and said in Korean, "Here takes these."

And by "these" she meant 2 baskets of flowers for me and Leah and 2 bells for Ok Hyang.

She then said, "When they walk by, I will point to you and you will throw the flowers at them" (them being the bride and groom).



I had unwillingly become the flower girl for the wedding. And I had no idea how it had happened.

This was all being videotaped and broadcast into the wedding hall room and photographed.

Leah and I both said, "We just want to sit down and watch the wedding!"

So we awkwardly threw flowers at them as they walked by (I of course didn't throw enough of the flowers and they walked by really fast) then had to awkwardly walk to our seats in the hall, with a lot of people looking at us.

One thing I noticed about the wedding was no one was paying attention and they were all talking to each other, instead of listening to the officiant and watching the wedding happen. Some people were turned around in their seats talking to the people behind them. I asked Leah, who's married to a Korean man, what that was about and apparently it's very normal.

Also, the foreigners tended to send looks at the people talking, but no one was noticing because they were too busy chatting away.

I didn't understand any of the wedding, of course, since it was in Korean.

After the vows were said, they bowed to all the parents, as is tradition, took pictures with everyone and then it was finished. It was about 15 minutes total.

After the ceremony, we were ushered out to the room, so the next wedding could commence, to the next room where the meal was held. We showed the ticket we were given when we gave our gift, then ate. Afterwards, I had to head to work fairly quickly.

Ok Hyang and I are in the picture above this one. That's Leah and I to the left on the bottom.

And that was my second wedding experience: The Unwilling Flower girl.

Weddings, Cemeteries and Cockroaches

So the day Kellie arrived in Seoul and all the new teachers arrived at our branch, I had to completely ignore them because I went to a wedding.

I'm not sure if I've mentioned Liz in the blog, but she taught at my school for the summer as a sub. She'd worked at our branch for a couple years, went home for a year and came home for the summer to get married in a traditional Korean wedding, but subbed at our branch as the wedding approached. She and I wandered around, saw Harry Potter and went to lunch a lot during intensives.

We got there a little bit into the ceremony, because our cab driver wandered around for a while and then dropped us off nowhere near the restaurant where the wedding was held.

Actually, that's not true. He dropped us off on the backside of the building, but to get to the entrance, it was a couple blocks around the corner and lots of wandering and I was wearing heels, so it felt like nowhere near the entrance.

Here's the pretty fountain at the restaurant:


Her wedding was very interesting. Obviously I have never been to a Korean wedding before, so it was a new experience. It was on the 18th floor of a building, which had a great view, which I didn't take a picture of. Oops.

They began by having a ceremony in Korean. He was wearing a suit and she was wearing a white/cream wedding dress. See:

Though my favorite part was definitely when the Mother-of-the-Groom sang:

Then, they cut their cake with a sword.

After the sword-cake cutting, they changed into the extremely traditional garb and had tea with his parents/grandparents/various Korean relatives. It was behind a folding separator (No idea what it's called) but of course I went behind the foldy separator and took pictures.

Aka, they said it was perfectly fine. This is what it looked like:

While they were having their tea and secret meeting, we all ate our meal. And met Liz's mom who showed us the bloomers she had to wear under her Hanbok, the traditional Korean outfit. Then, Liz came out in her Hanbok and chatted with us all for a bit and showed us her shoes and socks and the pretty part of her Hanbok that was under the jacket.



Then she made the rounds to talk to the various other wedding guests. We said goodbye and headed home. Afterwards, a bunch of us went to Hongdae and wandered around a bit for the evening, staying out til all hours as usual.

That Sunday I met up with Kellie and her dad. And I saw this statue:

We went to the Jeongneung Imperial Tombs near Gangnam, which were very interesting. Unfortunately, the Museum part explaining each individual tomb was entirely in Korean, so I'm still not entirely sure what we were looking at. The only part not in Korean was this sign:
Look at all that Helpful English! Again, I'll just have to return when I can read Korean decently.

And I thought this one was kind of funny:


Then we looked at these buildings, while also sweating.



Then we walked up a hill, while sweating.

Then we wandered over to this bench in the woods, all the while sweating profusely.


Then we looked at some tombs, while sweating.




Did I mention it was hot? It was so incredibly hot and uncomfortable and humid. Completely awful. We had to stop for a water and cool down break.

We wandered around for a couple hours and then headed back to Gangnam, where Kellie's hotel was and had ice cream due to the horrifying heat. Then, Kellie's dad left. We hung out with her roommate for a bit and then some of her fellow-trainees and then we all went out to dinner. I got my new obsession, Jjigae, which is basically spicy soup with various things in it. It looks like this:

Also, they served 'Nude' Kimbap. hmm


Then, I wandered home to plan my new lesson for my upper level classes.

I saw Kellie one more time for a couple hours, then she decided to go home.

I had a cockroach a few days ago. It was the worst. and it was enormous. And cockroachy. It climbed out my air conditioner while I was using it and then I was running about panicking. I grabbed a shoe and it met it's death, as usual. I apologize to those who think killing bugs is wrong, but I cannot help myself.

Also, I love when my students attempt to say "Heaven" but inevitably announce that the person "lives in the sky" it's so cute.

I have begun teaching upper levels, which is an entirely new experience. I keep getting surprised by questions.

For example, I was explaining what an Embryo was and a student said, "Isn't that a fetus?"

Also, I've had to explain what "amniocentesis" means and "Pleistocene Glaciation." It's fun, because they're very smart. It's definitely something to get used to, since normally I have to explain words like "sometimes" and "Both"and that "Mum" and "favourite" and "Colour" are not misspellings, just different ways of spelling them (Aka In England) which is perfectly fine and I love that age and teaching those classes, it's just an interesting shift to the upper levels.

Anyway, I will continue writing later! I have more blog posts, because I am behind, which seems to be an usual occurrence now. I have started Korean classes now, which is making blog-updating more difficult again. One of them is half written, so it should be soon!