Pepero Day!

      

     Pepero Day has come and gone. Pepero is a cookies stick that is dipped in chocolate and sometimes covered in peanuts, almonds or other goodies. Pepero day is kind of a like a Korean valentines' day. On this day you exchange Pepero with your sweetheart. Supposedly it was started by some middle school girls in Busan who exchanged Pepero on this day and wished that each other that they would grow, "as tall and slim as a Pepero."
     I must admit, Pepero is super delicious and this might be my favorite Korean holiday as of yet. On Pepero day I bought a ton of it and gave it to my students. Some students also bought some for me. It was kind of an awesome day. I have to say though, since I just started a diet, it was really tempting to eat all of the Pepero. However, I was good and I gave away all the Pepero that I was given. Maybe on this day next year I won't be dieting!

Mmmm! Fancy Pepero!

My First Korean Wedding!

The happy couple!

Last weekend, one of my Korean co-teachers got married and as customary she invited all of her co-workers to the wedding. The wedding hall was in between Suwon and Seoul and I must admit I got a little lost finding it. Luckily my friend and I asked some Korean girls and they literally walked us to the hall. Sometimes Koreans are just so nice. Of course the wedding hall was on the 8th floor of a skyscraper. Inside it looked like your average wedding hall minus the fact that there were creepy teddy bears everywhere.

The wedding hall with guests chatting away

Irina the beautiful bride with all of the foreign teachers

     Once we got there and found the other foreign teachers we were asked if we wanted to see the bride. I was a little confused, because you never see the bride before the wedding in a western wedding, but of course said yes. The bride was in a small room next to the wedding hall getting pictures taken with everyone. She of course looked gorgeous and she was wearing a beautiful traditional western wedding dress. After taking a few pictures with her we went to find some seats in the wedding hall.

The mothers of the bride and groom bowing respectfully to each other.

       Unfortunately there were twice as many people as there were seats so we ended up standing in the back. The wedding started by ringing a gong three times and then the groom followed by the bride and her father processed down the aisle. For the most part the wedding was fairly conservative. I have heard all sorts of stories about light shows, dry ice, and rock songs being common place at weddings. The ceremony itself was entirely in Korean so I had no idea what was actually going on. I must note that there was an awful lot of clapping. It seemed like every two minutes we were clapping our hands for some reason unbeknownst to me.
     At one point the bride and groom stepped away from the priest and they faced a young boy who started singing a Korean love song. At first it was sweet, but I swear to god the song never ended. It kept going and going and going. It was like the energizer bunny of songs. In addition the young singer was Mariah Careying the hell out of the song. It was all that we could do to not start publicly guffawing. Finally he finished the song an the ceremony continued.

The young singer

      The last part of the ceremony was when both the bride and the groom did a deep traditional bow to both of their respective parents. This is a very Korean way of showing respect to your parents. After this the bride and groom recessed down the aisle to here comes the bride and two girls walked behind them with trumpets. All of a sudden they shot streamers out of the trumpet at the bride and groom. It was the one truly shocking part of the wedding.

And they're married!

      One thing that was strange was that during the ceremony they never closed the doors to the hall. So people attending the wedding kept wandering in and out. People in the wedding hall were also openly having conversations. Others were taking phone calls and talking on the phone as they walked out of the hall. Overall it was a very loud wedding.
   After the ceremony everyone took pictures with the newly wed couple. And by everyone I mean EVERYONE. The entire family, close family, close friends, and finally acquaintances and co-workers. I was in the last group and I was a bit surprised to be included in the wedding photos. After the long photo session we went next door and had a pretty nice buffet dinner. As we were eating the bride and groom changed into their hanboks, which is the traditional Korean dress. They entered the buffet hall and took a two foot long knife and put one cut into a cake, then they lighted this candle spire, and then they poured a bottle of sparking water onto a champagne tour. It was very boom, boom, boom no nonsense.

Lighting the candle spire!

Pouring the sparkling water

      The bride and groom walked by us and we congratulated them and that was the last I saw of them. We finished eating and left. Overall it was a fun affair and it wasn't necessarily as rushed as I had been led to believe. I hope I get to attend another wedding while I'm here and then I will have something to compare it to!

A Korean Halloween

   Halloween is definitely one of my favorite holidays. I love getting dressed up and just embracing my inner child. The weekend before Halloween I went out in Seoul and went on an ocean booze cruise. We left from Itaewon and it should have take us about an hour to reach Incheon. However, our bus driver got really, really, really lost so it took us over two hours to get there. THEN, once we got there we found out that the boat had left without us. It was not the way I wanted my Halloween to go. Luckily we got a hold of people on the boat and they brought it back for us. Overall it was a solid night out in Seoul. However, I have to say I actually had more fun at work.

I was Calvin and I had my Hobbes doll with me all night.

      Since Halloween was on a Monday all of us foreign teachers decided to dress up in scary costumes and give out candy to our students. I was a very scary witch. It was so much fun to see how scared and excited all the kids got. Plus it was really cool because one floor of our school had been decorated like a haunted house. It really made me miss Halloween house parties.

This is Tim. Tim is very loud and special.

They all loved the witch glasses.

Some of the teachers who dressed up.

Irina, the mouse on the end, is getting married soon!

This is Sally. She is one of my Little Avalon students and is absolutely adorable.

Nick loves to throw temper tantrums, but he liked class today.

I think you can tell from that expression that Rose has quite an attitude.  She's fun though.

He was not scared.

An evil doctor and a zombie zebra.

This is Rose feeling less photogenic.

This girl's name is Tinkerbell and she owns it.

Two of my troublesome trio.

Some of the students got in the Halloween spirit.

Trust me..he only looks sweet and cute. And I swear this must have been the one second that the student behind him was actually focusing.

I have now taught William for two semesters. We don't exactly get along.

Scream is apparently popular over here.

This is her usual face in class.

Jeff's awesome. Enough said.

Evidence of his awesomeness.

Angry Bird Pumpkin!

Check it out!

 

 

Minnie is one of my favorite and only partially because I get to call her Minnie Mouse.

Jinju Lantern Festival

     This past weekend I attended the Jinju Lantern Festival. The tradition of floating lanterns on Namgang River in Jinju City dates back to the 1592 Japanese invasion of Korea. In October 1592, during a battle between Japanese and Korean soldiers around Jinju Fortress, Jinju people flew lanterns high up in the sky as a military signal and communication tool with soldiers outside the fortress, while floating lanterns and torches along Namgang River. Sadly, most of this information I learned after attending the festival.
   We left Seoul around 7 a.m and we were on the bus for about 3.5 hours. It was a very long day because I couldn't sleep the night before and we were stuck in Jinju until 2 am. This meant that I would be getting back home to Suwon around 7 a.m the next day. We got to the festival very early so we had a lot of time to kill since most of the festivities were at night.  We spent most of the time wandering around and exploring the area near Jinju. We walked some of Jinju fortress and took a lot of pictures with the lanterns. The lanterns were all so ornate and it must have taken weeks to make them. I also went to the Jinju National Museum, which had a lot of history and information about Jinju's involvement during the Japanese invasion. Luckily most of the exhibits were in English.
   One Korean man told my friend that this is the largest festival in Korea. Jinju has a population of 300,000 people. However on average 3 million people attend the ten day long festival. I am very happy to have been one of the 3 million.

  I love this last video. This is why you beware of ajummas!

Goldilocks

    I have come to realize that no matter where you are in Korea it is impossible to regulate the water temperature. What I mean by this is that it is either too hot or too cold. It is never "just right." I'm tired of burning my hands and body with hot water just because I'm trying to warm up! Anyway, I'm searching for my "just right" water temperature.

It's official!

    I'm officially a teacher. I know what you're thinking..hasn't she been there for over four months?! Yes, yes I have. However, today is the first day that I have made a student cry. He was goofing off all class and just being a real pain in the ass so after several warnings I gave him Daily Bridge (which is my school's strange word for detention). He then started crying and I kept on teaching. I'm actually truly surprised it took me four months to get this one checked off list. 

Re-dedication

     My life here is so busy. It just dawned on me this morning that I have more of a social life in Korea than I think I ever have. There is always so much to do and so much going on. However, I do have goals for being over here and it's about time that I start more adamantly working towards them.  Below is a list of my goals for the remainder of my time in Korea.

1. Learn more Korean: at least enough to be able to have basic conversations
2. Post a blog update at least once a week even if it's short and simple
3. Attend more festivals and cultural events to learn more about this amazing country
  
Ok, well for now that is it. Short, simple, sweet and doable.

The start of a good story: Remember that time I got naked with 100 other women?

     Korea is well known for their bath houses or Jimjilbangs. They are places that people go to relax, hang out and have a spa day of sorts. However, for some of us they are places to crash after a late night in Seoul after the trains stop running.
     There is a jimjilbang right next to Yongsan station, which I have been to on several occasions. It's a convenient place to sleep because it only costs about 12,00 Won ($11), which is much cheaper than getting a hotel room for the night. You sleep in a communal sleeping room on the floor with thin mats and strangely hard pillows. It's certainly not the best sleep in the world, but it gets the jobs done until the trains or subway start running the next morning.
    The main attraction of jimjilbangs is the communal bath house, there are separate men's and women's areas.  When you walk into the bath house it is very warm and very humid. In this particular jimjilbang, Dragon Hill, there was probably about ten different baths including three that were outside. All of the baths claim to do different things for your skin. One bath was called an Event Bath and since the description was all in Hangul  I had no idea what it did so I passes on that one. I particularly liked the sea water (salt) bath as well as the bath that was like a jacuzzi because it had a lot of jets.
    If you ever plan to go to a jimjilbang, as a non-Korean, be prepared. You will get a lot of stares. Let's face it, it's not everyday that a Korean sees a naked white person. I perhaps got more stares than usual because of how busty I am.  I just smiled and didn't let it bother me.
    Once you pay your entrance fee a lot of things at the jimjilbang are free. However, they offer additional services that you pay for.  They were actually really convenient to do because when you walk in they give you a bracelet with a locker key on it as well as a waterproof  bar code. Anytime you wanted to buy something you just swiped your bracelet and then you paid at the end.  I took advantage of this and bought some food. I also had a scrub while I was in the communal bath area. You lay down on this slabish bed and an ajuma comes and scrubs your naked body down. It's a very cultural thing. I tried to relax and enjoy myself, but parts of it got a bit rough. Especially when she was scrubbing down more sensitive area of my chest. In the end my skin was very smooth and I wasn't too much worse for the wear.
     I'm convinced that one could easily live in a jimjilbang. The one at Dragon Hill has six floors to explore that are filled with all sorts of excitement. For example it has several snack bars and restaurants, a PC Room, a proper swimming pool, a huge arcade filled with every game you could want(including 3 air hockey tables), a large common area for mingling with the men folk, and even a place to get your nails done. I highly recommend that if you are ever in Korea you take part. It's definitely an experience you will never forget. 

One down three more to go!

   I have now officially finished my first semester as an English teacher. Albeit, summer semester is the shortest semester out of the year. It has been a lot of fun getting to know some of the students and it has been less than fun getting to know some others. Overall though, it has been a good semester. The one thing I have learned from this semester is that no matter where you are in the world, kids will be kids. I was under some delusion that kids in South Korea would be so polite and overly respectful to their teachers, which is just not the case. However, it has been a challenging but fun experience. I have one day off and then alas the new semester starts. To get refreshed for the new semester myself and some other teachers are going to to to Caribbean Bay, which is a huge water park not too far from Suwon. Hopefully it will be a blast.

One of my students drew this for me on her first day in my class.

On the last day of the semester my awesome student Rachel gave me this card. So sweet!

Bunnies in Suwon Station!

Last weekend I was hanging out with some friends in Suwon Station. This is an area where there is an actual train and subway station, but it's surrounded by bars and restaurants. We were walking down this pedestrian street that is filled with all of these vendors. Most of them sell street food or different trinkets. All of a sudden in the middle of a street there was a man selling bunnies. Yes, bunnies in the middle of a bar district. How bad of an idea is that, drunk people buying bunnies!The bunnies were also wearing little colorful capes. A few of my friends I was with suggested getting a few, tying them to watermelons and dropping them off of our building. They were of course, thankfully, joking.  Boys have the strangest sense of humor sometimes.

My Vacation in Busan!

I know I have only been in Korea for a very short period of time, but I have already had a small vacation. I got three days off from work for summer vacation and the weekend, so a total of five days free from the tiny humans! A lot of the teachers I work with took trips out of the country, but I haven't been able to save up too much money since I've been here, so staying in Korea was the only option for me.  Busan is the second largest city in Korea. It is second to Seoul of course. It is located in South East Korea.  I went down by myself to just explore and see what this new city had to offer. For the most part I had a pretty good time.  The only downside is that I kept getting asked if I was Russian. Which, in Korea and a lot of Asia essentially means that they were asking me if I was a hooker. Proof that it's not always convenient to be pale, blonde and traveling by yourself. Some of my trip highlights included seeing a baseball game, having Mexican food at a restaurant called Hello Kimchi and enjoying the beach and ocean!

Jellyfish!

Broke back shark!

Quite a silly looking fish.

There were just a few people at the beach.

...and just a few umbrellas.

I got to see a Lotte Giants baseball game! It was really fun and made me feel like it was really summer!

Koreans love to sing at sporting events! It's quite entertaining, but a little hard to join in because go figure...it's all in Korean.

Go Giants! We did totally win by the way!

You are probably asking yourself, what the hell?!

Believe it or not, this is how you support your Lotte Giants.  These are two cool English guys I watched the game with.

Self portrait on the beautiful coast line walk to the APEC house.

APEC house

The conference room where the meeting took place.

Do I look like  I belong?

The Diamond Bridge at night.