Weekend in Busan!

First of all, here is a fairly recent picture (taken at a staff dinner 3 weeks ago) of some of the people I work with... I say fairly recent because since this picture was taken we've had two teachers replaced. It's kind of a rebuilding time at my school. I was so blessed that when I arrived there were three other teachers (my best friends) who arrived at the same time. All of them, like me, stayed in Korea for two years. Funnily enough we are all planning on leaving the school within the next few months. With 4 out of 10 teachers leaving for good, it will be quite a different school in a few months.

Old Friends and New Faces

So last Friday four friends and I traveled down to the southern, coastal city of Busan (the second largest city in Korea) to celebrate on of my friends birthday. Strangely enough, out of my 4 best friends, 3 of us have birthdays between August 25th and September 4th! It would have taken about 5-6 hours by car to get to Busan but in Korea we have a magical invention called the KTX which is quite similar to the bullet train in Japan. We traveled from Seoul to Busan in less than 3 hours, traveling at about 185 mph! The train was so comfortable and had wireless internet which cost only $1 for an hour.

on the way!

this was my beachfront hotel room with a view (can you believe the view???)
It only cost $45 a night!

excited to be at the beach!

telling what must have been a riveting story

it was my first time seeing my baseball team play outside of Seoul - and they lost :-(

but it was still fun!

ready for a night on the beach town!

Summer Vacation

Once again, I apologize for the lengthy hiatus between blog updates. I had an amazing time in Thailand but I came back to an extra-rigorous schedule of classes and the month of August seems to have consisted of little more than work and sleep! As much as I love teaching, the long hours make work exhausting so I'm looking forward to next week when I'll be returning to a normal schedule and can once again truly enjoy my job!

So much news from Korea this month though! First up: Thailand!
Now I KNOW tanning is bad for you but I can't help sitting in the sun when I'm at the beach. I love the feeling of the warmth on my skin and the way it makes my hair and skin feel afterward. This time around in Thailand I really learned my lesson, however. I laid out for only 45 minutes with SPF 30 on and I was burned so badly for the next few days! It was horrible, blistering sunburn but luckily the only thing I had on the agenda for the next 7 days was...lie around and relax. Turns out that plus some aloe vera is perfect for curing sunburn!

Thailand was absolutely sublime. 7 days of perfect weather, clear blue ocean, and palm trees rustling in the breeze. I'm so glad I went back a second time - the beaches of Thailand are so pristine and gorgeous but the best part is they not covered with stores, resorts, and restaurants. Just some huts on the beach, a restaurant with few tables in the sand, and the occasional sparsely (but adequately) stocked store.

Enjoy the pictures:

Back to the Land of Smiles!

Yep, tomorrow I'm heading back to paradise and I can't wait. And these pictures are actually from one of the resorts I'm staying at! Aaah so happy to be going on vacation!! I love sightseeing & being a tourist but there's a lot to be said for just relaxing on the beach for a week!! Thailand here I come!

Studying Hard...

Mudfest Pictures

Off to Boryeong with my awesome backpacker bag that my parents got me for Christmas!

Tabi had a big bag too!

On the train headed down south...

All the girls pre-muddy in the pension room. A pension is a typical Korean motel. Basically it's just a room with mats and pillows (which you can see in the background) and you can have as many people as you want sleep there...since everyone sleeps on the floor, Korean-style. It's not exactly the definition of luxury but it's inexpensive. It was only 10USD per person. The train there and back (3 hours each way) was about 20USD per person round trip. Gotta love how cheap things are here...

Lots of muddy people

Behind me is the "mud jail" where you go if you're caught with no mud on your body... you go in the mud jail and people throw mud at you. So it's worth it to get muddy right off the bat...

...which we did! My skin didn't feel especially soft or anything afterward but it was fun to get covered in mud... for a short while anyway. It started pouring soon after this photo was taken and suddenly we were all standing around, freezing cold, and covered in mud. After that it was back to the motel for hot showers and fresh clothes. We went out for delicious soup and seafood and spent the rest of the night dancing on the beach to Korean pop music. Definitely a memorable experience...

The Great Flood

Ok that might be a bit of an exaggeration! Well, last week was quite the unpleasant week... it's monsoon season in Korea which really meant nothing to me before last week since the the supposed "rainy season" last year consisted of a few thunderstorms - not much more than we get in the summer months back home in NJ. But this season has been much more characteristically rainy and over the past several days this rain has come in the form of several monsoons where it comes down in relentless sheets and there is no hope for you if you're out in it, even if you have an umbrella. My street turned into a river and I'm sure there must have been flooding since the first floor apartments in villas like mine are partially below ground. I'm lucky to be on the 2nd floor so I thought I was out of reach of the water damage but sadly I was mistaken. I came home from work last Tuesday night at 9:15 to find a 1/2 inch of water covering my living room floor and coffee table. I had no idea the water was on the floor so this was discovered when I walked into my pitch-black living room to turn on the light and slipped in the rainy water. I got up and turned the light switch on - there was a huge POP and the light went out. I moved to a lamp and when the light came on I quickly realized with horror what had happened to my living room. Looking up I discovered the reason for the behavior of my overhead light - there was a huge water damage spot on the ceiling all around the light fixture and the water was dripping from the opening they made when the light was installed! Not exactly electrical safety considering at this point the wires up there for the light were sitting in water... I quickly turned off the electricity to that light and proceeded to clean up the mess and place an old pot under the place where the ceiling was leaking.

The next morning I talked to my boss about it as she is my liaison with the landlord. There wasn't really anything they could do because the rain, at this point, had not stopped so there was no way to do any work on the roof or ceiling until it did.. Sadly when I got home that night the ceiling was leaking in two more places! Now it's a week later and the rain has stopped and the ceiling is no longer dripping but there are still 3 large brown wet spots on my ceiling. The aesthetics don't really bother me but I'm nervous about what will happen next time it rains, particularly if it does do while I'm away on vacation next week...

Anyway this is what it looked like last week, it wasn't pretty!




how nasty is that rain water? I guess that's the color it turns after it seeps through the roof and ceiling... gross...

Time to Get Muddy!

This coming weekend I am off to the Boryeong Mud Festival! This is a very famous event that takes place annually in the coastal city of Boryeong, Korea which is about 2 hours (by train) south of Seoul. Near Boryeong they dig up special mud which is considered rich in minerals and thus great for your skin. Apparently the health and cosmetic effects of the mud have been proven by studies at several different universities and health research centers in Korea. The town’s mud products (which you can buy at the festival of course) have passed the rigorous standards of international health agencies such as the United States’ FDA. Anyway, they bring the mud to the beach area in Boryeong and create a 'Mud Experience Land' right on the beach. About 1 1/2 million people go to the mud festival each year!

What can one do at the mud festival you ask? Well I'll be able to better answer that once I return from the trip but I know it involves lots of mud-themed activities such as mud showers, mud baths, mud pool slides, mud massages, mud wrestling, mud races, and even mud skiing! There are even fireworks on the first and last night of the festival which lasts from 7/11 - 7/19. So I'll be going with a group of friends from Saturday to Sunday and look forward to reporting back about my weekend of playing in the mud!

ps Here's an article by TIME magazine on the Boryeong Mud Festival!

Summertime!

I'm sorry for not blogging in June, but I'm sure you understand how busy things get this time of year! Work and Korean class take up a substantial amount of my time and the warm weather makes it so that I want to be outside anytime I'm not asleep or at work!

Living in Korea has it's various ups and downs but the warm weather brings a lot of ups. One of my favorite things about the Spring and Summer months here is the readily available, cheap produce everywhere you turn. That might sound like a boring thing to be excited about but it's nice not to have to buy your produce in a big Wal-Mart like supermarket. Instead I have a variety of choices. I can buy gorgeous nectarines (5 for $1) from the old woman sitting on the road with her fruits and veggies in baskets in front of her. I can buy 10 plums for $2 from the tiny family-owned shop down the street where the couple behind the counter know me as a regular and smile genuinely each time I shop there. Of course I can always buy my lettuce and onions from the various men who drive around in pick-up trucks with a loudspeaker on the roof, blaring what vegetables they have that day and how much they are. The just drive slowly around town with a truck-bed full of whatever they're selling. It's nice to have so many options and it's nice to support small (sometimes extremely small!) businesses instead of large corporations. That's one of the many things I like about summer here.

Two downsides of summer in Seoul: mosquitoes and stinky streets. Something about the mosquitoes in Asia is not compatible with me. In the States whenever I was bitten, it was just a small red dot that itched a lot but was nothing more than an annoyance. Here my mosquito bites blow up to the size of a saucer and they BURN so badly! I showed the pharmacist and she couldn't believe it was a mosquito bite. It's not just Korea though, I seemed to have some kind of allergy to Asian mosquitoes - the same things happened to me last year both in Thailand and in Cambodia. Luckily it's only a problem in the hot weather when mosquitoes (Mo-Gees as the Koreans call them) seem to be everywhere. The hot weather also intensifies one of Korea's already existing drawbacks: stinky streets. Sadly because Seoul's sewage system is so bad, it almost always smell like...well...sewage. In the summer, that is. In the winter, it's not bad. Heat makes everything smell worse. But, after living somewhere for nearly 2 years, you get used to such things.

I'm really enjoying studying Korean despite the fact that it's extremely difficult and I feel like I'm not making a tremendous amount of progress. It's just so refreshing to be challenged academically and to be on the other side of the classroom after nearly 2 years of teaching. The hardest thing about Korean is that unlike many languages where my understanding of English, French & Latin would be very helpful, Korean is completely foreign and I can't find hints or clues in roots or prefixes. It's exciting to be studying something so different from my own native tongue, however, and it's fascinating how learning a language gives you insights into the culture itself. For example, Korean has certain endings and forms to be used when one is talking to an older person. You would be considered very rude to say hello to an older person without the appropriate form of the word. This is indicative of the huge importance Korean culture places on age and respect of the elderly. Also it's just interesting to learn the way a different culture says different things. One of my biggest gripes with the Korean language is that they have two entirely different sets of numbers. They have one set of numbers for counting and age and then a whole different set of numbers for money, months, dates, etc. The worst part is talking about what time it is. With time, you use one set of the numbers for the hour and the other set of numbers for the minutes! Aaahhhh! These two sets of numbers sound nothing alike either. Oh well that just makes learning the language even more exciting! Right now my study of Korean is just a hobby but it could turn into something more down the road which would be great!

I recently went on a ferry boat trip up and down the Han River in Seoul. Here are some pictures!
It's fun to be a tourist in your city - I never really feel like one anymore. Seoul is just where I live! Wow I bet you could have fun comparing that statement with some of my first blog ever posts in Korea! Anyway, enjoy...

watched the sunset over the river

one of my very best friends

The 63 building - famous in Korea

After the cruise we went to a place called "Vinyl" where you order your drink at a walk-up window and they give it to you in a plastic bag with a straw - I chose a "Melon Baller" - it was very yummy - lots of fruit and not a lot of alcohol which is exactly what I like! :)

I almost forgot to mention that for my one-week vacation this year (7/23 - 8/1) I will be going back to Thailand with friends since I had such an amazing time there last year and have been dying to get back ever since. I am so looking forward to cheap pad thai, fresh seafood grilled on the beach, drinking out of coconuts, sleeping in bungalows on the beach...but I promise to blog before then!

aMAYzing News

As I'm sure many of you are experiencing, as the weather gets warmer, the schedules get busier. The weekends fill up and the sunshine seems to make time fly by. It's been in the mid 80's here all week! I spent a lot of my May mornings substitute teaching kindergarten at a friend's school and then heading to my usual 2-9 job. Teaching continues to be wonderful. There have been some cases of swine flu in my town of Gwangmyeong so everyone's a bit on edge and parents are concerned but it's still business as usual. When people aren't concerned about swine flu, worries of N. Korea's latest threats are always enough to keep you on your toes. These latest developments are definitely the worst since I've been in Korea but I'm registered with the US Embassy and their latest email said there's no immediate threat as things stand. Still it's enough to make one nervous...

In happier news, I've been taking a wonderful course in Korean language at a local center for migrant workers. The other students are Chinese, Vietnamese, and Filipino. My friend Sarah and I are really enjoying the class. It's 6 hours a week and the teacher is excellent but the language is just so difficult. I know a lot of survival Korean - the word for this, the word for that, how to say basic things. But actually learning the language with all the grammar and sentence structure and pronunciation is proving to be incredibly difficult - plus it's showing me how little vocabulary I actually know. Still it's nice to be in "school" again and it's refreshing to be challenged in a new way.

I recently took a trip to Lotte World, one of the three amusement parks Seoulites have available to them. It has the unique status of the being largest indoor amusement park in the world. It also has a small outdoor section. It was fun...the decor and atmosphere were excellent, although quite the Disney rip-off (see the castle below). It had a lot of things to do and lots of gimmicks as all parks do but it's big rides were really lacking. It wasn't as good as Six Flags. The rides were quite short which is always a bummer but on the positive side the lines were short. All in all it was fun, but I'm looking forward to checking out Everland, the biggest amusement park in Korea, sometime this summer. Enjoy pics!