Happy Solnol!

Well hello February! Happy Solnol (Happy New Year)! The new year, another national holiday which means a much needed vacation from the hagwon life! It may only be a few short days off, but it still is a great time for relaxation and fun. I was given Tuesday off, but only told the week before, so I had no time to plan a trip out of the country. Which was fine by me, I need to save the money anyway. I spent Tuesday sitting in coffee shops reading. I love reading and coffee. The quiet day spent reading was really great. I'm not sure why I don't spend more days sitting around reading. Since my laptop (the new one) crashed on me, I didn't have much of a choice. Really, I need to start turning my computer off so I can do more reading.

Wednesday I tried to go out for samgyetang with a few friends in Sang-mu. Unfortunately, since it was a holiday all the restaurants were closed. We made our way to Lotte Mart where I found kettle cooked bbq chips and Heinz ketchup. Thursday I borrowed Megan's laptop since she went on vacation to Jeju, so I could e-mail some friends/family. I then decided to head to Busan to spend a few days with friends. The 3 1/2 hour bus ride ended up being a 5 hour bus ride. We took back roads through tiny villages and sat in traffic for way too long. I thought I would never get to Busan and was beginning to think I made a bad choice by going. I assumed that all the holiday traffic would be done by Thursday afternoon, but alas, I was very wrong. My friends Josh and Emma left from Suncheon and were having the same traffic problem. We ended up arriving in Busan at the same time, they weren't so happy since Suncheon is a bit closer. We found a love motel called Click to stay in for the night. It was a large room for a reasonable price. We also had a delicious dinner at one of the only restaurants still open on Thursday evening.

In true vacation fashion, we slept in late and took our time getting around for the morning. There was no rush to see anything special or go anywhere, it was all about relaxation and a stress free time! We stumbled upon a little restaurant overlooking the beach that served an amazing meal. I had gorgonzola pasta that came with homemade gelato for dessert. Delicious! The weather was fantastic (51 degrees F) so we spent the day wandering around outside. We found a little temple that we spent some time checking out.

After wards, we headed to SpaLand. If you have never been to SpaLand, I highly suggesting going to Busan just for that. It's wonderful. Spaland is huge and kids can't come in, which makes it a perfect relaxing getaway. There is a joint area for men and women. They give you clothes to wear and you can go into several different sauna rooms. There's an outdoor foot bath, tv relaxation rooms, massage chairs. It's all just wonderful. After sitting in saunas, you go back inside, shower off and then can get in different heated baths. There is also an outdoor heated bath. Again, it's very relaxing and perfect for the winter time, since all we get here are sink showers. I left feeling refreshed and rejuvenated!

Saturday the three of us took our time getting around in the morning. We had a day planned out of visiting a Temple, hiking a mountain and another spa. It was wonderful to wake up to the sun shining in the room with a cool breeze coming through the open window. Ah vacation, you make things so much better. The temple was beautiful, the hike felt great, the sun was shining, it was warm. Everything was just perfect. The next spa we went to was quite different from SpaLand. Dognae hot springs was more known for the baths and Spaland is more for the saunas. After sitting in the few saunas they did have, we headed up to check out the baths. It was massive inside. So many different baths to choose from, a waterfall, a swimming pool, another outdoor heated pool. Ah bliss. Again, I highly recommend checking this out. You just have to be comfortable sitting in pools naked with lots of other naked women. This one allowed children too, so you have to put up with some loud kids!

Really, it was the perfect vacation getaway. Pure relaxation and stress free!

On another note, in Gwangju there is a Trick Art Museum at the Kim Daejung Convention Center. I went on 2 different occasions with friends. It is so much fun and again, worth visiting for 12,000 won! Here are some pictures from the museum!


Reminds us of home!


Quite the reflection in the mirror


When did I become a man?


Getting in trouble


The boys are scared.

A month late

I seem to be losing touch on the whole keeping a blog thing. I was so good at the beginning updating on what was going on here. And now, yet another month has gone by and not a single update from me. I'm not sure if anyone still reads my blog. But I guess, for my own sake of keeping up with memories.. I will update.

The other day as I was walking outside listening to my music, I couldn't help but smile just thinking of all that I have here in Korea. My life right now is wonderful. I can't even put into words how happy I currently am. I was thinking to myself that day how I felt like I was walking taller with more confidence about myself. I can see a change and I'm really happy about that. I decided to take a chance and come to Korea. To get away from the dead end job, the routine of boring life in the small town, and the emptiness of it all. Without realizing it over the past months I've been here, I've grown into a more confident and independent person. I've made new friends, done some pretty awesome/crazy things, and just have been living a happier life. Living abroad is such an awesome thing. No wonder I never want to go home (sorry friends).

This past month I made two separate trips to Seoul. One was purely to go to the Embassy to add pages to my passport. The other time I spent a weekend there. Did some shopping, ate some delicious food and made some memories with good friends. The last time I had been in Seoul was back in May, so it was nice to make a trip there again.

Christmas left just as quickly as it had come. Christmas morning I skyped with the family, which was really nice to talk to them. I then went to Dan's apartment. We made breakfast together, exchanged gifts, watched a Christmas movie and of course, drank some wine. It was a nice morning together. It may not have been a breakfast cooked by Gene, but at least I got to spend the morning with a really good friend. A little later we both made our way downtown to a buffet restaurant called VIPS. We met up with a few friends, including Megan and Danielle for a Christmas dinner. It was a great afternoon spent with of course, wonderful friends that have become my family here in Korea. It was a Christmas complete with snow as well! After dinner drinks and laughs were had at Dan's apartment. We then made our way downtown for another fun filled night.

After Christmas I only had a two day work week, followed by Wednesday-Friday off. Half of Wednesday was spent on my quick Seoul trip. Thursday I woke up feeling like I got hit by a bus. I still made the trek outside to run some errands, in a blizzard. Later I decided to go visit a friend outside of the city in a small town. The blizzard was continuing and I ended up getting snowed in there on Friday as well. Which worked out nice since my sickness had gotten worse instead of better. So my New Years was spent watching movies and hanging out. I saved money and still haven't gotten over this stupid cold!

On Saturday I made my way back to Gwangju and joined a few fine ladies on a trip to Boseong Green Tea Fields to check out the lights Festival. It was a small but fantastic light festival.

A few of my top favorite foods

1. Galbi

2. chamchi bibimbap (tuna and veggies mixed with spicy sauce and rice)

3. jayeuk dapbap

4. chamchi kimchi jjigae (tuna kimchi soup)

5. samguypseol

our little kinders on Christmas Eve

Meg, Tanya and I in the Seoul Tower bathroom

me, Dan and Chen

friends

Christmas dinner with lovely friends

Boseong Light Festival in the Green Tea Fields

family

Megan and I

New Address!

Hi friends and family!

I just wanted to post an update letting you know I have a new address. My school recently moved to a new building. We are no longer Little America and have become Langcon English Academy. Rest assured that things will not get better at this new school..... no, not until I walk out of that school and never have to return again. Currently I teach over 6 hours a day, which isn't much, I know. But after 6 hours I am suppose to get overtime pay. It has yet to happen after 7 months of working overtime. Now, I start teaching at 11 am and finish around 7:10/ 7:40. Explain to me how I can work from 10:40 - 6:55 and be working over time and now work 11 am to 7:10/7:40 and be only working 6 hours? Something doesn't add up.

Anyway.... here is my address

LangCon English Academy
Cheong-yong Building 2nd Floor
19-2,3 Mae-gok dong Buk-gu Gwang-ju
South Korea
500-815

my kids wanted to wish everyone a Happy Thanksgiving!

Time flies

It's amazing to me how fast my time in Korea is going. Sometimes I don't even realize how far I've come or how fast the time is going by. Take for instance my blog, it's been a month since my last update. I looked at it the other day and thought, "that can't be right I just updated it!" I went from updating every week to now forgetting about it and coming back to all this time that has gone by without an update for friends and family back home.

happiness....

A lot has been going on in the past month. From stuff at school to the weekends spent with good friends, they are all good memories that lucky I have lots of pictures to remind myself of those times. It has been quite some time since I've gotten out of Gwangju for a weekend. I guess I have been busy with celebrating friends birthdays, events in the city or just pure relaxation that there hasn't been much time to get out and explore more of Korea. The cabin fever is setting in and I'm ready for some weekend adventures elsewhere. Hopefully I'll remember to update about them when they happen.

rooftop gathering with friends...

The week of October 18th was the Kimchi Festival in Gwangju. It was the Festival that I was most excited to check before I even came to Korea. Kimchi is such a huge part of Korean culture. They eat it at every meal. I was really excited that the festival took place in the city I was going to be living in. There were concerns about the festival. The weather in Korea had ruined a lot of crops and there was the "Kimchi Crisis" going on. It didn't affect Gwangju as much as the Northern cities, though. I went on the weekend with a few friends to check out all the hype. It was about 10 minutes away from my apartment so it was easy to find. We walked up to see a huge stage with musicians playing. There were people and stands everywhere. We went straight to the tent where we could make kimchi ourselves. The foreigners go to one table where we had some friendly Koreans helping us and who spoke English. The Koreans were on the other side making their own kimchi. We were given a head of cabbage and the ingredients. We mixed the ingredients together and then began rubbing it on to the cabbage. It took us about 10 minutes after we put the ingredients on the cabbage we were given a taste of our own kimchi. It was pretty good, but not really spicy enough. They put it in a bag and then a container (kimchi is pretty rank smelling...). On we went around the area to check other things out. There was stand after stand after stand of different kinds of kimchi. There are so many different tastes and ways to make kimchi, you can use cabbage, lettuce, radish or cucumber. They are all tasty, sometimes you find ones that are better than others. We stopped at a little food stand, sat down and ordered kimchi soup and some other meat dish. It was definitely a great experience!

Sarah, me, Danielle and Marleen making some kimchi

The weekends have been pretty low key lately. I'm going to skip the weekend night life stories and go to talking about school. I've already talked about how frustrating my school is with all the things going on. My school is turning into a Langcon, which could be a good switch. They have a set out curriculum to follow, which we definitely need! I have doubts that many of my students will be able to keep up with the new curriculum though. I have probably the rudest kids in the city and ones that don't care even the slightest. It's unfortunate really, for Dan and I, to be at such a poor academy. It kind of ruins the whole experience. But then again, we are over halfway finished and have managed to find ways to get through. Besides the afternoon classes, which really aren't fun or worth teaching. The kinders.... are little kids. What to say about them. 5 crazy kids that drive us nuts sometimes, they are whiny, fight all the time, don't listen, those 5 little kids are pretty awesome, to say the least. Dan and I both are really proud of our kinders. We have gone through several Korean teachers, for the last several months the only teachers they have had consistently have been Dan and I. They are forced to speak English, try to translate their problems to tell us. They do a great job at it, too. It's amazing to think back 6 months ago and realize how much they have truly learned in those months. Their speaking is better, reading is better, they still have trouble with spelling, their coloring skills have improved. It kind of makes up for the rest of the kids that haven't improved at all. Take for instance Samuel, I have been teaching him for about 5 months. His reading use to be really bad, his speaking not so great.... but now, his reading is really good and you can't get him to stop talking in English. He loves to tell me stories, they usually take a good 20 minutes to get out, but it really is a great feeling. My boss has actually been telling me how much Samuel has improved and his parents have complimented on it, too. He use to never want to sit down and study, it was almost impossible. Now he is actually excited. I think a lot has to do with the fact that he wants to catch up to his classmate, Brenda. Who is a smart little girl and is really far ahead of any 7 year old (and a lot of my 13 year olds too!!) We use to hide from the kids during our lunch breaks, lately we've been going into the big room with the kinders and playing soccer with them. They love it and it really makes for a fun 30 minutes.

Stella, Paul, Samuel, Brenda and Iris... love their smiles in this... Dan and I have some good kids

For Halloween, Dan had the kids make tiger masks.

we gave them lots of candy for Halloween

I'm coming up on my 7 months in Korea. 5 more to go!

I'm Grandfather, you are young. GO!

The title is a line that an old man said to my friends and I on Saturday while we were hiking. We had stopped to take a break before continuing the hike. I guess it was his way of encouraging us. Either way, we made it to the peak to show him

Fall in Korea!!

Saturday morning a few friends and I got on a bus and headed to Yeongam. It's a town a little over an hour away from Gwangju and is the entrance point to Wolchulsan National Park. Wolculsan is marked by mountain ranges mostly covered in enormous rock formations. Getting off the bus we were quite intimidated by the huge rocky mountains, thinking we were going to be rock climbers instead of leisure hikers. We squeezed into a taxi and drove to the entrance of the park. We walked up a little hill and found the entrance to the hike. We were met with the map of the park and some basic stretches they suggested doing, oh Korea. We began the hike thinking it was easier than the hike we did 2 weeks prior, despite hearing from various friends that the hike was "a bitch." We soon began to find out that they weren't lying to us. After about an hour and a half of hiking we made it to the Cloud Bridge. It had a phenomenal view of the surrounding areas! We even saw trees with beautiful fall leaves. The suspension bridge was pretty awesome and we took several pictures on it.

heading up the Mountain

We decided to continuing hiking, but weren't sure if we really wanted to go to the top. Seeing as we were all pretty tired as it was. We kept on going though, pushing through the burning in the legs! As we got closer to the peak, it got a little scarier. From the bridge up we were climbing up steps like a ladder. It was incredibly steep and we were all but pulling ourselves up these steps. After making it up the steps there were rungs that we had to climb up to go further up to the peak. Being afraid of heights, it honestly was pretty terrifying. But I wanted to see the spectacular view for myself so I kept going!

first view of the Mountain

I sat by a rock and enjoyed the view and peace at the top. Koreans would walk by and smile at me and say Annyong or ask where I was from. At one point a Korean lady opened up some food and offered it to me. It was really sweet, but I unfortunately had to decline the free food as she was offering apples and I'm severely allergic. After sitting at the top for quite some time we started our decent. We found a new way down and it was a lovely walk to the bottom. After we walked to the opening where we started we were greeted with claps from other hikers who had finished the hike, too. It was pretty cool.

Suspension Bridge

A perfect Saturday spent with some pretty fantastic ladies.

Danielle, Kelsey, me, Megan, and Kate on the Cloud Bridge

Many the Miles

It's really amazing where the paths in life can take you. A little over a year ago, I had quit my jobs and made the decision to move. My life would be so different right now if I didn't decide what I was doing wasn't what I really wanted for my life. I knew from the time Caley and Chris had come to Korea, that I too wanted to come. But there were lots of things holding me back from what I really wanted to do. When I finally made the decision to come here, I couldn't have been happier. It was really awesome that Danielle and Megan decided that they too wanted an adventure and could be part of this experience with me.

I have officially been in Korea for 5 months. There have been so many ups and downs. Most of the downs have come from the job. But really, I knew what I should expect signing on with a Hagwon. Hagwon's are a business, its more important to make money that see improvements in the children's English language. I have met so many great people and had some really awesome times with these new friends. I've also been fortunate enough to travel to China, twice, to see some old friends from college.

School isn't all that bad. I mean, I love my walk to and from school and the talks and laughs I have with my coworker. And my kinders, Samuel and Brenda. I sometimes get really frustrated with them. But they are smart little kids for being 7 (well, really by our standards they are 6). Brenda translates so much for Dan and I during the day. She is a smart little girl and is pretty respectful. Samuel is a little independent kid. Sometimes he can be a little brat and not do his work, so can Brenda. Usually if one is being bad and not working, the other is really good and going out of their way to do MORE work. I love the hugs they give me everyday and the really awesome days are when they stop what they are doing and give me a massage. Sounds weird, but it isn't. Brenda likes to give hand massages. Samuel usually climbs behind me on the chair and will give me a shoulder massage. He is pretty strong so sometimes he hits me pretty hard. But, he means well. The kids have really changed a lot since I arrived 5 months ago. Iris use to be a really shy girl and every time you talked to her, she would cry. She was usually the only one to not run up and give Dan and I hug. Now she won't let you go and rarely cries!

This past weekend the girls plus Geoff and I all went hiking on Mt. Muduengsan. It was a beautiful fall day and we had a great hike together! On the way down we met this awesome Korean man, who for being older spoke great English. He gave us all these random facts about the mountain and himself. He was 62 years old and for the past 36 years he had been climbing the mountain, everyday. He said he's climbed the mountain over 10,000 times and they call him the Mountain Tiger. He was cool!

The past few Sundays, Meg, Danielle and I have been getting lunch and then going to the DVD bong and watching movies. The DVD bong is where you can rent a movie and you get your own private room to watch it in. The rooms are always very comfortable with a bed and/or couch in it. It's great for a lazy Sunday!

This coming weekend there is an International Community Day in my city. I'm looking forward to it and afterwards we are having a roof top gathering. In 2 weeks is the Gwangju Kimchi Festival as well!

There are so many things to look forward to and I'm excited. I'm so happy to be in Korea. Life here is so comfortable and fun. I can't even begin to imagine how things would be if I didn't decide to come here....

Until next time.

Vacation!

I just got back a few hours ago from an amazing vacation in Beijing. My friends Keith and Ithzel went out of their way to make our vacation fantastic. There is something about Beijing that makes me want to stay....

Anyway, instead of writing about my vacation Danielle and I decided to do a video blog of our daily happenings. We are going to spend some time putting the videos together and editing things. Stay tuned for that update!

Enjoying the view on the Great Wall