Where East Meets West

And this is exactly what I thought Bulgaria would look like...

2011-01-22T00:15:00.004+09:00

Last weekend, Katy and I embarked on a weekend adventure to Sofia, Bulgaria to visit two of our friends from Korea – Mark and Byeong-Hun. We arrived around 10PM last Friday night, and headed towards their apartment with the most offensive taxi driver I’ve ever encountered. During our twenty minute drive through the city, he managed to insult just about everyone from the Turks to gay culture. Welcome to Bulgaria. I, unfortunately, was stricken with food poisoning, so Friday night ended early for me. Everyone else enjoyed a great Bulgarian night on the town.

Saturday morning, we headed out to see Sofia. I’m not sure why I was so antsy to get out the door early because one can see everything Sofia has to offer in only one afternoon. We walked from the boy’s apartment towards downtown while exclaiming, “This is EXACTLY what I thought Bulgaria was going to look like!” However you are picturing Bulgaria on a cold, cloudy January day is pretty much exactly what appeared in front of us. The architecture was blocky and concrete. The cars were old and distinctly European, the clothing on passerbys was quite popular in the 90’s, and a car being towed drove by attached to the car in front of it with a long piece of rope. It all looked so… stereotypical Eastern European?

Downtown Sofia was nice – I shouldn’t mock the city too much. The town center had some stunningly beautiful cathedrals, nice stores, restaurants, and a lot of museums. We visited St. Alexander Nevsky Cathedral, the Russian Church, and another landmark church with a stunning interior. It was really refreshing to be inside a church after only seeing the inside of mosques for the last four months. Even if the insides were of the church were unfamiliarly dark, ornate, and smelling of incense, it was still a welcome change.

Following our church tours, we headed to the National Gallery for Foreign Art. Most of the permanent collection here was not terribly impressive, but we were able to see Dali’s Divine Comedy Exhibition which was interesting and worth the trip. Exhausted from our busy afternoon of sightseeing, we ducked out of the rain into a Bulgarian chain restaurant that looked a lot like the inside of an Applebees. Not only have Katy and I not been inside a church in four months, but we also haven’t enjoyed any pork in the last four months either. We were thrilled to order dishes that included bacon and pork loin. Success!

Sunday, having seen everything Sofia has to offer, we decided to venture outside the city. We chose to visit Kremikovtsi Monastery about twenty minutes outside of Sofia. The four of us piled in a taxi and headed out into the boonies of Bulgaria- passing dilapidated buildings, forest, and shabby apartment buildings. It was really nice getting out of a city for once though, and we spent a good hour or two exploring the Monastery grounds.

After eating more pork at an outdoor stand outside the monastery gates, we had no other choice but to walk back to the small village at the bottom of the mountain/hill. We walked down a scenic road, through a scenic cow pasture, and a across dilapidated town before finally boarding a “bus” headed back to Sofia.

We ended our weekend at an adorable little restaurant in downtown Sofia. I again indulged in pork. We made it back to Istanbul late Sunday night after a brief and terrifying flight on an almost completely empty airplane. It is still not winter in Istanbul – the weather has been sunny and only mildly cold all week. We are getting ready to enjoy another great weekend in Turkey!

Turkey in Turkey

2010-12-05T18:34:00.002+09:00

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays from Istanbul!

Last week, Katy and I kicked off the holiday season right with a (surprisingly) sensational Thanksgiving dinner party. This year was my third time missing Thanksgiving, and while it’s not as much fun without the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, football, family, and traditional cranberry sauce (still in the shape of the can, of course) there is an element of fun that comes from celebrating traditional holidays abroad. Without the comforts of a home kitchen, the ability to readily read labels or navigate the grocery store, and without the crafty skills and holiday prowess of Martha Stewart, it is difficult and amusing to get everything together.

On Thanksgiving Day, obviously, we had to work. Katy and I consoled ourselves that evening by going out to a nice dinner with a lot of her American co-workers. After some beer samplers and delicious food in a quaint neighborhood of Istanbul with a nice view of the Bosphorus and the bridge, we moseyed over to Cevahir - the largest mall in Europe – to do some Christmas shopping. This will be the first Christmas either of us has missed at home, and we decided if we couldn’t go home this year, we would make it the hap-hap-happiest Christmas ever. We were shocked to be able to find such a jackpot of Christmas décor in a basement home goods store, and after wading through lots of ridiculous excuses for holiday decorations (think cloth Dora-the-Explorer lookalike treetoppers and stockings only sold in bad gem tones), we finally came away with a poinsetta, some wreaths, a medium-size Charlie Brown tree, ornaments, and several strands of flashing lights (because they actually don’t sell Christmas lights that don’t blink. Apparently.)

Our new front door decoration.

Thanksgiving, however, would not be complete without a huge feast and a turkey. On Sunday, we invited many of our friends over for a “traditional” Thanksgiving dinner. Most of our friends aren’t American so Katy and I decided to provide a few of the staples then see whatever else turned up on the buffet in the potluck style dinner.

Our acquisition of a perfectly cooked Thanksgiving turkey overcame many obstacles. First, finding a whole turkey was quite difficult. Katy requested the man at the grocery store order us one, but when I went to confirm the order – “Turkey. I want. Please. Turkey. One turkey. Please. I want. Sunday. I want. Thank you.” the butcher informed me that the turkey only came in pieces and that we would not be able to carve our bird like a proper American should do. As I struggled to converse with the butcher, a man walked by and said, “Celebrating Thanksgiving?” Thank you, God. As it would turn out, he was a Turkish man with an American wife, American citizenship, and, most importantly, fluent English. He decided to help me order a bird. We left the grocery store where he called the “chicken store” in our neighborhood and instructed them to have a bird ready for us the following day. He and his wife even accompanied me to pick up the turkey. I think this might have been one of the nicest and most helpful things anyone has ever done for me.

Setback number two happened when Katy and I placed the bird in our “large” toaster oven that night. Unfortunately, we realized that the bird was just not going to fit.

Uh-Oh...

Luckily, some hardwork on Katy’s part minus the bird’s large legs enabled the turkey to get crammed into the toaster oven Sunday morning for a day long toaster oven miracle.

Sunday night went very well, and we had about fifteen people over for an amazing meal. We even managed to cram everyone at the same table. It was a very Happy Thanksgiving despite the lack of America.

Katy and I are currently getting ready to have the hap-hap-happiest Christmas ever. It’s been pretty non Christmasy here – the weather has been hovering at about 70 degrees for the last few weeks, and it is a Muslim country of course. However, we have our apartment festively decorated, Christmas music constantly playing, and we are planning a Christmas Eve party, a Christmas movie watching party, and a cookie making day.

Our festive living room!

The tree!

My flashing bedroom Christmas lights...

I hope all of you are having a fabulous holiday season.

Merry Christmas,
Andie

The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan

2010-11-30T03:29:00.007+09:00

Merhaba!
I’m back safely from an adventurous holiday in Jordan! Since last week was Kurban Bayram in Turkey (roughly translating to the Sacrifice Holiday for Muslims), everything was closed and we had a weeklong work break. Friday night, Katy and I flew from Istanbul to Amman to begin our adventure vacation.

After sleeping late on Saturday, we woke up and carefully peered from our hotel window in Madaba- a town just outside Amman. We were hesitant about what we would find outside – how were the women dressed? Who was walking around? Did it look safe? Fortunately, all of our deep harbored and American fears about the Middle East turned out to be perfectly fine—the scene outside looked like any other city. People mulled around the dull desert streets, and shops looked open and friendly. Moreover, even though almost every woman we saw was covered, at least they were out and walking around the town.

We began our day by heading to St. Georges’ church where we viewed some amazing mosaics. Somehow, we ended up with an elderly French tour group. While this was not ideal (since the entire thing was in French), we ended up not having to buy a ticket because we apparently blended in so well with the old folks. Following the church, we viewed more mosaics at the Archeological museum.

Mosaic at the Archeological Museum in Madaba

In the afternoon, we decided to book a car through our hotel and tour multiple sites. We began with Mount Nebo- the memorial of Moses and a spectacular viewpoint of the surrounding area. While there isn’t that much to see there, it was nonetheless exciting to be at Moses’ old stomping ground. After Mt. Nebo, we headed out to the Jordan River to Bethany Beyond the Jordan where Jesus was supposedly baptized by John the Baptist. While I found the Jordan River, the view of Israel’s West Bank, and the tour interesting, I’m still not totally convinced of the historical accuracy that this exact spot was were Jesus was baptized. Finally, our driver headed us out to the Dead Sea. Since it was almost sunset, we didn’t buy a ticket to the public beach, we just stopped and climbed down a rocky embankment to the sea. Sans bathing suit, I just admired the view and the absurd amount of salt deposits on the bank while Katy buoyantly floated around for a little while.

View from Mount Nebo

John the Baptist Church at Jesus' Baptism site

River Jordan!

The Dead Sea at sunset

The following day, we were up early for our day long van ride down the scenic King’s Highway to Petra. The road is windy and long, but the views of Wadi Mujib, the canyons, and the dry Jordanian landscape was completely worth the trek. We stopped several times along our route- once at Wadi Mujib (the Grand Canyon of Jordan), once at the castle at Karak, and other various places for amazing photo opportunities.

We spent two days in Wadi Musa, the small town outside the gates of Petra. Petra was most definitely the highlight of my trip. The 3rd century BC Nabataean capital is amazing, and I highly suggest that everyone head to Wadi Musa immediately to see everything Petra has to offer. Katy and I bought a two day pass which was definitely necessary to see everything. The entrance to Petra begins at the Siq which is a couple kilometer walk through a narrow, winding canyon. At the end of the Siq, the Treasury (Indiana Jones, anyone?) comes into site through the rocks. The Treasury is stunning, and we spent quite awhile just staring at it. Like the rest of the city, the Treasury is just a façade- inside is merely a cave. It’s really interesting that the Natataeans spent that much time crafting their city of facades. They had a highly impressive network of roads, water systems, and trade routes, and the city reflects how innovative and exciting the city was at one time. The first day, we walked all over the city including hiking up to the Monastery – another incredibly impressive façade high up through the cliffs of the city. The second day, we explored another hiking route and climbed up to the High Place of Sacrifice from where we could see fabulous views of the entire city. It’s impossible to capture Petra in words or pictures- it is that amazing, and I think it might be the best place I’ve been so far in my sixteen months abroad.

The Siq

The Treasury

Eroding facades

Colonnaded Street

Our next stop was Wadi Rum. We had a mixup with our transportation out of Petra, and ended up having to take a bus headed South toward Aquaba. The driver assured us that he would drop us off at the “junction” that was the turning point for the Wadi Rum protected area in which we were headed. As promised, our driver tossed us out at the “junction” which was not a junction in any modern sense of the word—around us was only desolate desert. There weren’t cars zooming past us or many signs of life. After laughing at our misfortune, we crossed the road to where a minivan with two Arab men had stopped and were standing outside the car motioning us to get in. The van looked as if it was about to fall apart at any second, and the two men looked a little dirty and skeptical, but having no better option we grudgingly put our packs in the back and jumped in. After we began heading toward Wadi Rum, we noticed the van didn’t go faster than about 30mph which was a great discovery- that’s definitely slow enough to jump out if need be. We arrived without incident.

Wadi Rum was incredibly beautiful. I’ve never been to a desert before, and this exceeded my expectations. Our Bedouin guide- Obeid picked us up from the Wadi Rum visitors center, and we bounced around in his jeep heading toward his camp. Once there, we grabbed some pita before heading out on a camel trek. I don’t remember the last time I was on a camel/does the zoo count? Camels are kind of smelly, but at the same time they’re quite majestic at the same time. They have really large, human-like eyes with long lashes, and they are very friendly animals. After our camel adventure, we then headed out for our jeep trek through the desert. For four hours we careened around the sand and rock – occasionally stopping to view rock bridges and picturesque desert scenes.

Camel Trek

Under a Rock Bridge in the desert!

After returning to camp, we watched the desert sunset followed by tea around the campfire and a delicious dinner which was in large metal canisters and actually dug up from the sand outside the camp. We fell asleep in our tent early.

After leaving Wadi Rum, we had no idea how to get back to Amman where we hoped to spend our last few days. We thought about hitchhiking, but Obeid recommended that we take a taxi an hour south to Aquaba and then take a bus from there to Amman. We decided we would go to Aquaba in the morning and spend the afternoon on the beach lounging at the Red Sea. After we arrived and book late afternoon bus tickets, we unfortunately noticed that everyone (everyone meaning probably everyone in Aquaba- the place was packed!) at the Red Sea public beach in Aquaba was fully covered. The women were all fully covered women, and some splashed in the waves still fully clothed- headscarf and all. There was no way Katy or I was getting in that water wearing a bikini. No way. We settled for eating approximately three Happy Meals and two McFlurry’s each over a six hour span at a nearby McDonalds.

Back in Amman that evening (after a brief yet terrifying bus fight incident involving and elderly woman who got the best of a terrified teenager), we checked into a hostel that was only a slight step above sleeping on the street. We spent the next day at Jerash exploring the ancient and impressively preserved ruins there.

Our final day in Jordan was spent at a public beach on the Dead Sea alternating between sunbathing, floating, and battling the bajillion flies that bombarded us. We flew back to Istanbul on a red-eye flight, and even though I loved Jordan I was thrilled to be back in Turkey. I will tell you soon about the beginning of our holiday season here!

Merry Christmas!

Turkish Road Trip!

2010-11-12T23:08:00.005+09:00

When I lived in Seoul, I made a point to leave the city occasionally for mini-vacays and some fresh air. My life in Istanbul is no different, and I am trying to get out of the city every now and then. Last weekend was a holiday weekend, and my roommate, Katy, and I were joined in Istanbul by three of our friends from Korea who have relocated to Eastern Europe. I had a blast spending time with Jen, Mark, and Byeong-Hun, and I hope Katy and I get more visitors soon!

Our weekend started at the rental car office where we had rented an adorable little stick shift that was to be our wheels for the weekend. Katy was our driver (no easy feat in Turkish traffic and a stick), and she did a great job getting us around safely. First, we headed to the port on the outskirts of Istanbul on the Sea of Marmara. We drove our little rental with all five of us crammed inside onto a large sea ferry at Yalova heading across the sea to our destination at Ayvalık. After a short and uneventful ferry ride, we had about a four hour drive to the Aegean coast. The scenery was stunning, and it was exciting to be out of Istanbul and into the much less populated Turkish countryside. We finally reached Ayvalık around 9PM then spent the next hour careening through precariously narrow alleys searching for our pansiyon. Our quest ended when we finally ended up stopping and waiting on an adorable old man from the accommodations to come find us. Following a terrifying incident on a steep hill in our stick, we finally settled into our Ayvalık pansiyon for the night.

The next morning we ate a fabulous Turkish Breakfast of tea, coffee, olives, hardboiled egg, various cheeses, jams, and fresh bread provided by the adorable old man from the night before and his wife. We then headed out into the alleys of Ayvalık which seemed much less confusing in the light. Ayvalık is located on the Aegean just a short distance from Lesbos, Greece which can be seen across the turquoise water. The weather was chilly, but we spent several hours shopping and sightseeing in the resort town (which I hope to return to in the summer). Ayvalık was a mess of narrow, cobblestoned alleyways full of stray cats, fresh fish, and tiny stores offering an array of knickknacks. It was impossible not to like it.

The narrow streets of Ayvalık

The Aegean Sea!

After lunch, we piled back into our little rental where we headed down the “scenic route” towards the town of Bergama – the present day city at the ancient acropolis of Pergamum - a site of Hellenistic period ruins.

The beautiful drive from Ayvalık to Bergama

Following a second terrifying incident on a steep hill in our stick (this time involving Mark jumping out to help push the vehicle up the hideous, cobblestone incline), we made it safely up the mountain to the acropolis. The ruins at Pergamum were worth our afternoon.

Pergamum

We had planned to spend the night on the road before heading back to Istanbul on Sunday, but we were having so much fun on our car ride (Turkish music and the questions game), we decided to drive back late that night.

One week later, Katy and I are leaving for Amman tonight where we will spend the next nine days touring the spectaular sites in Jordan!

Have an awesome week and Happy Kurban Bayram

Two Months In...

2010-11-11T16:49:00.004+09:00

Merhaba!
Somehow it is already mid-November and I am almost two months into my new life as a Turkish resident. Obviously, I’ve been miserable at writing and updating my blog and now so much has happened that it would be impractical to efficiently describe my life in one post. Alas, I will make an attempt. I think my friend Rachel wrote it best in her blog (http://anyidiotwithablog.blogspot.com) when she says,

“I've seen so many amazing things in my life, sometimes I worry that I'll never be able to appreciate them all properly. Who thought I would get to do these things in my life?...Even the ordinary day to day of my life as a teacher is made more exciting by the fact that I live abroad. I'm not just grocery shopping, I'm grocery shopping in Czech… I'm going to try to be better about recording it all, so that later when I look back on it I'll have another chance to appriciate just how fantastic it's all been.”

Thanks to Rachel’s inspiration, I will now try to do the same.

My favorite spot in Istanbul

First, Istanbul is beautiful. I know, I know—obviously. But, it’s not just beautiful, it’s like really, really, really beautiful. I’ve lived in Paris and Seoul, I’ve traveled through some of the best places Europe, Asia, and North America offer, and I really don’t think there is a comparable place in the world. There is something spectacularly unique here. Something completely foreign yet familiar about hearing the call to prayer from my open window, about the skyline of minarets at sunset, about the way the Bosphorus changes colors from gray to blue to gem green depending on the weather, about the old men playing backgammon in back alleys, about the smell of a simit cart in the morning, about the stuffed mussels sold on the streets, about the unparalleled, gleaming teal in the ceramic tiles, about the tea served in tulip glasses after every meal, about a special je ne sais quoi in the red of the Turkish flag as it flaps over the streets, about the simple, yet mouthwatering fish sandwiches sold at the iskelesi (port), about the genius shared taxi system that should be in every city in the world (the dolmus – which quite accurately translates to “full”), about the colors of the headscarves some women wear, about the market streets spilling over with colorful fruits and fresh, shiny, fish, about kumpir-the stuffed baked potatoes that I make a point to eat at least once a week, about the food, the people, the smells...

Sunset Skyline

I’ve done some fabulous tourist things such as cruise down the Bosphorus on a boat tour from the mouth of the Sea of Marmara all the way up the straight to Anadolu Kavağı where the Bosphorus opens into the Black Sea.

View on the Bosphorus Cruise Tour

I’ve enjoyed walking around the old city near Aya Sofia and the Blue Mosque where I wandered around the Hippodrome and toured Basilica Cistern.

Inside Basilica Cistern... the ancient cistern reportedly built by Constantine.
It's quite eerie inside.

I’ve eaten seafood on Galata Bridge while watching the fishermen and the sunset, and I’ve eaten admired Galata Tower from near and afar.

Galata Tower!

Fishermen on Galata Bridge

I’ve also done my share of shopping at the Grand Bazaar, the Sunday Market at Ortaköy, and the Monday market in my neighborhood. I’ve been quite lazy about museums, but as soon as the weather turns, I plan on spending my time looking at the amazing collections around the city.

A lazy cat lounging at the Grand Bazaar

I could go on for paragraphs about Istanbul and how much fun I’m having here, but just so you aren’t jealous, I’ll point out a few of the not so great parts about the city as well. To begin with, you can’t go anywhere without breathing in an obscene amount of bus exhaust, pollution, and a pack of someone else’s cigarettes. The air in Istanbul is quite filthy.

Next, Turks do not wear deoderant. Koreans don’t wear deoderant either, but they don’t need it—and let me tell you, the Turkish people need it. From what I can gather, the deoderant aversion may have something to do with protecting the environment. A student of mine responded to an environmental essay question on a test by stating that deoderant was a principle cause of global warming and ended the short, dramatic essay with, “The animals are dying.”

Finally, the traffic is unreal. Not only are there more Renault’s and tiny European cars crammed into narrow streets that could not have accommodated the traffic of the Byzantines much less of today, but the citizens of Istanbul have the typical driving skills of Europeans. (ie Americans follow traffic laws surprisingly well while lanes, laws, lanes, traffic lights, lanes and general and reasonable amounts of caution are completely lost on fellow drivers on the other side of the Atlantic). Add in complete and utter ambivalence about the overuse of the horn, and that’s Istanbul traffic in a nutshell. Exacerbating the problem is the fact that the city is split in half by the Bosphorus and the intercontinental bridge (lovely and large as it is) cannot handle the amount of commuter traffic in the city. Despite these few issues I have with the city, it is a lovely city and I hope to see all of you here soon!

Visitors are always welcome!

Merhaba and Welcome to Istanbul!

2010-09-21T19:15:00.007+09:00

Merhaba!

Apparently, my last blog title was not too accurate. After a short three week stint in good old Madison, Georgia, I have returned to Asia. I arrived in at my apartment on the Anatolian side (Asian part of the city) of Istanbul late Thursday afternoon. I should have arrived Thursday morning, but a three hour flight delay combined with my driver stopping five times for personal reasons, asking for directions no less than eight times, getting lost, and getting a flat tire along the way added a considerable amount of time to an already exhausting day. Alas, I made it!

After deplaning in Istanbul, I spent approximately an hour attempting to manhandle my three suitcases and exit the airport. I ended up getting a luggage cart, but I could not actually lift my one 70 pound behemoth onto the cart so I used one hand to push my overloaded cart and dragged one suitcase behind me. I hate being THAT girl. As a seasoned traveler, you think I would have learned the art of packing light by now, but I really NEEDED everything in those suitcases. So, for the second time in a month, I hauled my life halfway around the world to a new home.

Welcome to Turkey!

The Bosphorus. I live on the side you see here-- the Anatolian side!

When I exited the terminal, I was greeted by a driver from my company. He immediately said "I speak no English," and I told him I speak only a little Turkish. I was quite proud of myself though when he asked me in Turkish if I was hungry. I was able to respond in Turkish to let him know I just ate on the airplane - "No, I to eat meat, assorted fruit, milk, water, coffee." He laughed and later recommended I take a cruise on the Bosphorus during my time in Turkey, and I was again able to respond - "Yes, sea views are very nice" which might be the only complete sentence I currently know how to make. My Beginner's Turkish book is great, but I've learned a lot of dialogues that are irrelevant to what I need to be able to say right now. Take me to a fish restaurant or a campground though and I'm going to be an allstar.

Friday, I spent most of the day cleaning the new apartment. The owners have an obscene amount of stuff still here-- all the drawers and cupboards are full of really ugly decor. My roommate, Katy, and I have just been stuffing it in cupboards and trying to put most of it out of sight (Things like the hot pink disco ball dangling in my room and the jungle curtains that grace my windows). Sunday was completed with a serious expedition to IKEA in order to get the final touches for the new place.

Our apartment is really spacious and nice, but the views are the best part. From my bedroom window, I can see the sea of Marmara, the city, mountains, and a nice park. There is a similar view from our living room and balcony. Istanbul is stunningly beautiful, and I've been appreciating it every day as I listen to the Call to Prayer 5 times daily, look out my window at the Sea of Marmara, and watch the daily transactions of the people of Istanbul.

View from our balcony!

View from our balcony! Sea of Marmara and Princes Islands

Katy, and I have done lots of exploring. She studied in Istanbul several years ago so our exploring consists of her leading and explaining and me following and chattering most of the way. We went out to dinner with some of her co-workers Friday night to a charming little district named Ortaköy. Tons of people piled into a tiny dimly-lit restaurant for a mezzes style meal. (Mezzes are like appetizers-- tons of little dishes). We dined on delicious beans, hummus, bread, cheese, tomatoes, salad, and a few other unidentifiable, yet tasty, Turkish dishes. About halfway through the meal, several men with Turkish instruments appeared and began singing lively tunes that everyone but us seemed to know. The entire restaurant was singing, laughing, and enjoying their meal. It was probably right at this time that I decided I would be very happy here.

Mosque on the water in Ortakoy

We have also been able to dine in a cozy alleyway on great pasta, explore Taksim Square (the crowded, exciting, city center), and eat at a beautiful seafood restaurant on Galata Bridge overlooking the Bosphorus. On Sunday, we spent some time checking out Hagia Sofia which was, obviously, amazing and impressive. We topped this off by walking through the Blue Mosque which was even more beautiful. Hagia Sofia is stunning, but part of its thrill is its old age and combined Christian and Muslim history. The Blue Mosque's interior is amazingly elaborate, intiricate, and pretty - because it was also free, I plan on returning there more often!

Hagia Sofia

Inside Hagia Sofia they are uncovering a lot of Christian art that was covered up when this Christian church became a Muslim Mosque

Looking at the Blue Mosque from inside Hagia Sofia

The Blue Mosque!

The Mosque gets its name from its stunning blue mosaic work

Each morning, Katy and I have to commute across the Bosphorus to get to work- part of the best and worst part about living in Asia yet working in Europe. We are still working on the fastest commute routes to figure this out, but currently, my route involves taking a ferry from the port near our home to a port on the European side of the city. It's definitely a trek, but any foul mood I have is pretty much lifted as I sail across the Bosphorus- Asia behind me and Europe in front of me, with amazing views of Hagia Sofia, the Blue Mosque, and the sloped hills of Istanbul as far as I can see. I'm working in Taksim which is an exciting part of the city which I will compare to Times Square in New York. It's packed with people, loud, yet exciting. Would I ever want to live there? Absolutely not. However, working in Taksim will hopefully prove to be quite exciting.

View from the ferry as I head home

My blog is changing after today to Where East Meets West, but the address is going to stay the same.

Have a great week and Happy Birthday Sarah!!
-Andie

See Ya later Asia

2010-08-24T09:00:00.004+09:00

I can't believe it's been a year!

I'm sitting in my apartment this morning, overweight and unmanageable suitcases at my feet, and I have no idea if I should be happy or devastated. It's so hard to imagine that a year ago, I did not even know any of the wonderful people that are in my life. I had never been to Asia, taught children, used a squat toilet, had Korean bar-b-que (I was missing out!), or been to a third-world country. I had never used toilet paper as a primary source of napkins on a dinner table, cut my meat up with a fierce pair of scissors, or seen an amusing and nonsensical sign in Konglish. I had never eaten kimchi, kimbab, listened to KPop, or fallen in love with a Korean drama. I had never seen anyone seriously wear a face mask, sampled the yellow dust of spring, chugged poorly tasting instant coffee at social events, or taken soju shots with superiors. I did not understand the joys of the -bang, and now I've spent plenty merry hours singing in a noraebang, naked in a jimjilbang, or intensely competing in a Wiibang. I had never with any sincerety been shopping in a subway station or seen anyone attempting to go hiking or walk a beach in high heels. I did not know much about Korean history, the Korean War, and I most definitately could not read Hangul. I had never tasted any Korean side dishes which are now my favorite part of every meal. I had never seen a Buddhist temple or an IV attached hospital patient wandering the streets. I had never slept on the floor, used the floor as a primary source of heat, or braved frigid temperatures and millions of roman candles fired by drunks in the name of New Years Eve. I had never eaten live octopus, taken ramen as a serious food group, taken my shoes off to go inside, successfully used chopsticks, or been so undisturbed by lack of traffic rules and defiance of stoplights. I had never worn slippers in a professional setting, depended so heavily on convenience stores, eaten on the floor, heard of "fan death," or been so infatuated with a plethora of knock-off goods. I had never been serious about doing a peace sign (the skinny face!) sign in photos or lived on a street with toy vending machines on every corner. I'd never spent free time in a photo booth, put charms on my cellphone, or put emoticons in my text messages. I have seen so much this year, and I like to think I have grown so much from all my experiences.

This year has been, for lack of a better word, amazing. I've been crying off and on for the last several days as my friends have slowly departed to our next destinations. I've walked along the Han river at night, eaten all my favorite foods, and gone to Namsan tower twice to view the city. As is tradition (I realize only with couples, but whatever), I put my own lock on Namsan Tower to show my love for Seoul.

Namsan Tower!

My lock on Namsan Tower

Pabingsu! I ate plenty of this the last couple weeks...

I just looked at my first blog entry from July of last year. I made a list of goals and I like to think I did a fairly decent job (somewhat) fearlessly conquering all of them. To review:

Try anything once. I don't have to like it, but I must try it.
I tried live octopus, kimchi, rice cake, pabingsu, and a myriad of other Korean foods that were unidentifiable. Surprisingly, I liked most of it.

*See the Great Wall of China
Check!

*Go to a Cherry Blossom Festival
I went to Youido in Seoul for Cherry Blossom Festival in the spring. Unfortunately, only one tree was in bloom, BUT I tried.

*Visit Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, Taiwan, China, Japan, and Singapore
I was so fortunate this year to be able to explore, Thailand, Korea, Japan, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, Philippines, and China! I dove in to large plates of Thai food, toured a Vietnamese island via motorbike, jumped in a blue lagoon, biked to hot springs, explored caves, tubed down the river in Laos, brushed past brightly clad monks, took a boat ride through Ha Long Bay, celebrated Tet in Vietnam, took a bamboo train ride through Cambodia, got severe food poisoning, sunned in Boracay, and shopped in Japan. I could not have had a better year!

*Ride an elephant
Alas, I did not actually ride an elephant, but I have seen a lot of them!

*Make new and lifelong friends
Check, check, check, check, check-- I cannot imagine this year without my friends.

*Do not wallow
Okay, so maybe I wallowed some.

*Buy something really unnecessary from an interesting marketplace
From clothes, to paintings, to every food imaginable on a stick, I've got it.

*Constantly explore South Korea- do not sit inside. (Refer back to do not wallow)
I have fallen in love with not only Seoul, but the entire country. I saw Busan, Jeju Island, Sokcho and Seoraksan National Park, and Dokjeok Island, Incheon, and Gyeongju

*Learn to roll with things
I'm working on it.

*To take in as many new experiences that can possibly fit into one year
Check

*Stay in touch with all my friends and family
Obviously.

*Learn about Korean culture and appreciate it
Check

*Learn to be a teacher. A patient, dedicated teacher
I like to think I succeeded.

I'm on my way back to Atlanta tonight, and will be home for three weeks before starting my next adventure as an English teacher in Istanbul, Turkey. I will keep you updated!

XO
*^-^*

China Vacation

2010-08-10T14:43:00.006+09:00

I'm finally home from China!

Last Sunday, I flew to Shanghai with my friend Sarah for a week-long Chinese excursion. After traveling all year, both of us are pretty confident about getting around a foreign country. That being said, I have no idea how most people travel through China on their own. China was amazing, but shockingly difficult to navigate.

After landing in Shanghai, we decided to take a bus from the airport to our hostel. I have a feeling no foreigners ever take the buses. After struggling to figure out which bus to get on, we had no idea how to buy a ticket, and once we boarded the old, squeaky duct-taped-up bus, we were the only tourists. No one on the bus spoke English, and we were confused the entire ride into the city.

We spent our first day in Shanghai battling sweltering heat while eating delicious food, touring People's Park, The Bund, Nanjing Road, the World Financial Center Observatory, and eating dinner with a friend of mine from Wake who now lives in Shanghai. Shanghai was really bizarre. One third of the city looked exactly like Vietnam. It was slightly run-down in a charming way, there were motor-bikes zipping around, and fruit stands on the street. The other third, by the Bund, looked like Europe with towering European style buildings facing the river. The final third looked straight out of the Jetson's. It's futuristic, shiny, and even the employees at the World Financial Center wore uniforms that were quite comparable to those in the last Star Wars movie. I enjoyed the day in Shanghai, but I would never want to spend more than two days there. We were not impressed.

And this is the Shanghai skyline... the Jetson's part if you will

Nanjing Road

The Bund... The European part

Shopper's Paradise

Our second day in Shanghai, we spent half our day trying to procure train tickets to Beijing. After failing for hours due to getting lost and unfriendly Chinese train depot workers who refused to sell us tickets, success was ours with the help from the nice concierge from the Radisson at People's Park who took pity on our sweaty appearance and desperate countenances.

The second half of our day went downhill rapidly as we attempted to get a bus to the small town of Zhou Zhouang. Zhou Zhouang, "The Venice of the East," is a small canal city a few hours outside of Shanghai. Because it is supposed to be very touristy, we decided to go late in the afternoon, stay the night in a hostel we booked in advance, get up early to tour, and head out by lunch the following day in an attempt to beat the day tours. This was probably the best idea we had all week. Anyway, we exited the subway near the bus station only to be greeted by pouring rain. Combined with the heat and what seemed like thousands of pushy Chinese tourists, it was unbelievably steamy. Sarah and I both had our bags with us, and we did not yet have an umbrella. After pushing our way through the rain and crowds, we finally reached the outdoor bus counter. Although the woman spoke no English, we finally got tickets headed to Zhou Zhouang. The "bus" was actually an oversized van. For the second time in two days, I'm pretty sure we were the first foreign tourists to attempt this trek. The bus looked like it was about to fall apart, it was hot and crowded, and Sarah and I sat exhausted and soaked with rain in the back.

Zhou Zhouang was absolutely worth our trip. The city was stunningly beautiful with bright canals, red lanterns, and tons of little shops selling all sorts of touristy goods. I bought a fan which I'm pretty sure was the best dollar I've ever spent. The funny thing about Zhou Zhuang was that we never saw another Western tourist the entire time. When I heard the town was touristy, I had assumed with foreigners, but I think they meant only Chinese. We spent the first evening enjoying a great Chinese dinner by the canal and the next morning just walking through the narrow canal lined streets. By the time it started to get hot and crowded, we were on our way back to the bus station to head back to Shanghai.

That evening, we headed to the Shanghai train station (again in the rain) and sat in a huge, leaking room which was packed with tons of Chinese. While we waited, beggars walked the aisles, and a small child came over and laid on my lap. Despite being cute, he was soaking wet, and I had to get him off of me. Fortunately, the hotel encouraged us to not take the cheapest train class (I'm pretty sure we would have died of misery) and we were in a sleeper car. The room we were in was tiny with 2 sets of bunks in it. Sarah and I took one bed, and two Chinese men entered and took the other bunk bed. Being the planners that we are, we brought some Oreo's and a bottle of wine with us on the train. The men on the other bunk looked pretty scared of us, and I am pretty sure they weren't too excited to be with the only two foreigners on the train. Especially wine guzzling, oreo-inhaling foreigners. The train was clean, and the bunk was soft though, and all of us in the room fell asleep fairly early. Unfortunately, I was woken up in the middle of the night by the man on the lower bunk across from me snoring loudly. He was sprawled on his back wearing only tighty-whities, and I wasn't sure if it was appropriate to wake up a stranger especially when a language barrier blocked me from nicely explaining why I woke him up anyway. After about half an hour I decided I had to do something, but I didn't want to touch my snoring roommate. I eventually took the lid of the metal trashcan and dropped it loudly like a cymbal onto the trashcan which was right next to his head. I then immediately dropped back down and pretended to be asleep. Problem solved.

The train depot in Shanghai was insane

Upon reaching Beijing, we spent the day trekking around the city in the rain. We had a delicious lunch for less than a few dollars and walked around Tiananmen Square, a shopping street, and hit up Wangfujing Food Street where we munched on candied fruit, dumplings, noodles, and skewers of different Chinese foods.

Tiananmen Square

Snake on skewers at the Wangfujing Market

The following morning, we were up early and headed a about three hours outside of Beijing to see the Great Wall of China. Our hostel runs a tour on a remote section of the wall. The wall has turned to rubble in places, and in other spots it is completely overgrown with brush and terrifying large insects. The only people we saw all day were the twenty other backpackers on our hike. The views from the wall were spectacular, and even though the uphill parts were steep and intense and the downhill parts were scary (think sliding down loose gravel), the day was amazing.

The rest of our time in Beijing was spent touring the Forbidden City (which I would like to note is not Forbidden any more- hence the thousands of sun-umbrella weilding Chinese tourists who will bumrush you without second thought in order to beat you through the palace complex), The Temple of Heaven, The Summer Palace, and the Silk Market. The Silk Market was a large four story complex full of knock-off goods. I can't even articulate how much stuff is crammed into the building. The entire building is in complete chaos with people haggling, people shoving, and vendors yelling at passing shoppers ("Hey lady! Lady! Silk Tie-- you want? Lady! You want?"). Under the drone of flourescent lighting, the entire thing is enough to make anyone go crazy. My favorite part of the afternoon was watching an altercation between an Indian tourist and a Chinese vendor. The Indian woman kept shouting at the Chineses woman, "They say you crazy!! I am not crazy! If I am crazy it because YOU make me crazy! You make me crazy!" Sarah and I only stayed for a little while. I am not a threatening haggler, and I don't really want a knock-off handbag anyway.

Hi there, Mao.

Temple of Heaven

Overall, China was great, but it was not what either of us expected. It seems to be way behind Korea in organization, cleanliness, and tourism. Throughout the week, a common theme of our travels was that everyone wanted to take pictures of us. Families would send their children up to us and say "Photo," before beginning to snap away. Often, they might ask us to use our own cameras as if we wanted pictures with them. Other families seeing this would then send members of their family up from children to grandparents. One photo was never enough - we had to stand while every member of the family took individual shots with us. We would literally just have to back away.

This is the first picture we were asked to take, and at this point it was still amusing. As my friend Sarah says, the conversation with the man went something like this:

Chinese man: Ahh! Hello! Take picture?
Sarah & Andie: Errr, okay, sure.
Chinese Man: Okayokay. Take picture.
Sarah & Andie: Ummmm, yes. (we wait for him to take a camera out of his murse)
Chinese Man: (Motions for us to use the camera wrapped around Sarah's wrist.)
Sarah: Oh! You want to take a picture with us using my camera?
Chinese Man: Yes, yes.
Sarah: But it's my camera.
Chinese Man: Okayokay.

Another common theme in China is that everything is surprisingly dirty. The first day we were in Shanghai eating our delicious lunch, a COCKROACH crawled down the wall and across our table. I thought it might have just been our restaurant, but I'm pretty sure everywhere we went had a roach issue. Beijing, moreso than Shanghai, was really filthy. I had just stupidly assumed China would be like Korea or Japan, but I was shocked to see so much trash in the city.

The bathroom habits of the Chinese was also quite interesting. Children in Beijing will just go wherever they are standing. I saw numerous squatting children all over the city. Even more interesting was the non-potty trained babies who do not wear diapers. The kids (who happen to actually have bottoms on) have bottoms with slits cut around their crotch. How this actuallly is successful I'm not sure. Anyway, the babies apparently squat too. In the public restrooms, there were often only squat toilets. I've come a long way in my ability to use a squat toilet (the first time I saw one in Thailand, I actually SAT on it because I had no idea what it was. GROSS.), but these were horrible. Not only did they look like they had never been cleaned, none of them even had doors. One row of squat toilets would face another row of squat toilets so that you actually just had to face someone across from you. I just wanted to shout at people, "Stop staring at me because now I can't go!," but my ability to speak Chinese is unfortunately limited to Hello and a poorly pronounced Thank You.

All in all, China was fascinating, and I am so glad I decided to go before I left Asia. The country has so much history and has a lot to offer tourists (even if it is all difficult to get to without a tour). Most importantly, China made me really appreciate Korea and how amazing the Korean people are. I definitely picked the right country to live in for the past year!

I have two weeks left in Seoul, and I am going to be spending all my time with friends - eating Korean food, shopping, and seeing all the sights one last time before we go home.

Conquering the 찜질방!

2010-07-24T16:10:00.003+09:00

As some of you may recall, I recently talked about noraebangs (karaoke rooms), and my recent trip to a Wiibang (Wii game room). Today, I conquered a new bang and an eleven month fear by experiencing the jimjilbang (public bath house). My friends go to jimjilbangs frequently. Not only can you bathe, sit in a sauna, get body scrubs, and relax, you can also sleep in them (which makes them popular places to "stay" for cheap travels). Jimjilbangs are everywhere, and they are a significant presence in Korean culture.

I have avoided the jimjilbang for eleven months. There is something about public nakedness that really weirds me out, and I somehow managed to evade trips with my friends the entire time I've been in Seoul. I have considered going, but then I can never decide if I want to go alone or with a friend. Is it weird to ask someone to go sit naked in the bath with you? Or is it worse to awkwardly try to navigate the system of attending the jimjilbang alone? The first time you do anything in a foreign country (grocery shop, set up bills, go to the bank, etc), it is always slightly uncomfortable. It takes a lot of observing to figure out the system, and I like to watch what everyone else is doing to make sure I'm doing everything correctly. Is it okay to observe naked people? If I'm already awkwardly unsure of the process, how much worse will it be if I have no clothes on? Yesterday, however, I made a to-do list of things I want to do my last month in Korea. I decided to add jimjilbang to the list -- for the experience, of course. I've done a lot of worse things (eating live octopus, attending horrifically boring cultural events, etc.) "for the experience," so going to a sauna should be easy I thought.

The symbol for Jimjilbang

Today, we had plans to go to a park by the river, but because of inclement weather (aka the weather every day/the rainy season is a dumb weather pattern) our plans fell through. I looked at my to-do list, and decided it was now or never. My friend Arianna agreed to accomany me to a jimjilbang in our neighborhood (like all the other 'bangs,' there are jimjilbangs everywhere). After putting our shoes in a locker, we moved into a main room where we were given a big locker key and two small towels. In a corner of the main room are lockers, and it is here you strip down to your birthday suit. From here on out, it is only as awkward as you make it. None of the Korean women seem remotely concerned about walking around stark naked so I tried to be nonchalant about it too (even if I did try to angle my handtowel to appropriately cover me as I walked into the bath room). Just like the locker room at the gym, the only person uncomfortable with the situation is me, so I had to remind myself that it was no big deal.

Once in the bath room, there are 5 large pools of different colors and varying temperatures. First, you take a shower from a shower head on the wall to make sure you are all clean. Following my shower, Arianna and I headed for the pools. After soaking in each tub (3 hot, one freezing, and one peppermint), surrounded by lots of naked old women who I felt like judged me every move I made, I decided to get a body scrub. Most women sit on little stools all around the room in front of little faucets, buckets of water, mirrors, and scrubbers. After you are finished soaking, sauna sitting, and relaxing, you scrub your body clean. A friend of mine has been raving about the body scrubs though, and I decided to try one. I, what I can only imagine looked like a scurry, up to the ajummas (old women) in the corner who are clad in black lacy bras and underwear standing by three long flat tables. I indicated I wanted a body scrub, and then one sat me down on the table and instructed me to lay down.

The body scrub begins by the ajumma dumping a bucket of water over you. Following this, the woman puts on mits that are really coarse. For about thirty minutes, this lady rolled me, scrubbed me, and rubbed my skin raw. Although it kind of hurt, it was also really refreshing. I could actually see skin coming off my body. Part of me wanted to giggle the entire time since I was naked, she was in her underwear, and I was literally sliding all over this funny little table in a public bathhouse, but I was trying so hard not to stand out that I luckily didn't let a single giggle escape. Following the mits, she then rubbed me down with a carton of milk, a tub of yogurt, and about half a bottle of baby oil. Needless to say, my skin is softer than it has ever been. It was definitely a good use of twelve dollars.

After my scrub, I showered again by the wall then dried off then went back out to the main room (this time not so shyly), got dressed, and headed back home. They have places in the main room to dry your hair, do your makeup, or even do your nails. I'm not sure why I waited so long to go to a bathhouse. It was really relaxing, and after a few minutes, being naked isn't really that weird. I'm going to definitely go again before I leave Seoul.

Have a great weekend everyone, and go to a public bathhouse if you get the chance!
-Andie

Don't Do That!

2010-07-18T11:47:00.002+09:00

My 4th graders love this song!

Last Day of School

2010-07-17T23:11:00.001+09:00

School is out for the semester!

Just like my students, part of me is thrilled with that last sentence. Another part of me, however, is slightly in shock about how fast this year went by in Korea. I taught my last class on Friday morning, sang my last song, played my last poorly made powerpoint game, and said goodbye to my students. Since Tuesday, I've been having to say good-bye to my kids, and I am super-sad to not being seeing them any more. I have gotten a lot of nice notes from them (some folded into adorable origami), and on Wednesday, they covered my board with notes that say "Good-bye Andie Teacher!" I'm surprisingly attached to some of them, and they make me want to stay and teach them for another year. While obviously some days the kids drive me nuts, most days they make me feel really great, and I've really enjoyed getting to know them for the past ten months. They never fail to make me feel like a rockstar even when I'm having a bad day. For example, yesterday as they lined up to all say good-bye to me, 3/4 of them wanted my "signature" on their book. I told them I wasn't a celebrity, but they insisted on it anyway.

5-3. My favorite class. They are well-behaved and enthusiastic!

4th graders!

Some of my great 5th grade girls

4th graders!

My board on Wednesday :(

I'm really going to miss how much they make me laugh, too. A couple weeks ago, I held up a picture of a snowman and asked, "Who is this?" and the very serious response I got back was, "Lady Gaga." Yesterday, I had a picture of Tom Cruise on a powerpoint and two 4th graders got in a serious debate over whether it was Harry Potter or Nicholas Cage. Every day at least one of them does something to brighten my entire day. I wrote my email address on the board for all my classes and I instructed them to email me if they ever wanted to practice their English or come to USA. I promised to write them back. I've already gotten several adorable emails that brightened my weekend. Many students asked for my "handphone number," but I got away easy on that one since I could tell them in all honesty that I do not have a phone number at home any more.

4th graders!

My crazy 4th grade class: 4-1

Friday afternoon, I finished cleaning out my desk. I organized all my lesson plans for the next teacher who will begin in August. I packed up all my sentimental items, and I finished the year. I start working summer camp on Monday at a nearby elementary school. Camp is really easy, but also really boring as I'll repeat the same 3 lesson plans for 2 weeks. Ew. Following my two weeks of camp, I'm going on vacation with my friend Sarah (keep your fingers crossed for our Chinese visas to actually go through!), followed by one more week of summer camp at my school (so I will get to see some of my hoodlums again). I've worked really hard on my camp plans-- I'm having a science English camp where the kids will play games about animals, the 5 senses, recycling, insects, and the body. I think it will be really fun.

4th graders!

Another difficult part of Friday was saying goodbye to my coworkers. Gil-Dong Elementary has been so supportive and welcoming to me this year. My fellow subject teachers in my office brought in a cake yesterday afternoon, and I even had a candle I got to blow out on top. They also gave me a beautiful jewelry box made in a Korean style, and my coteacher, Grace, gave me printed pictures of the fourth grade classes. Despite the fact that some of them don't even speak much English, they have been the most helpful, supportive, and wonderful people to me. It is difficult to even articulate how kind everyone has been this year. I think they are more acutely aware than I even am that I am very far from home and still pretty young. They really helped make this a positive experience, and I'm going to sincerely miss all of them!

My 4th grade coteacher- Grace!

My 5th grade coteacher Hwajin!

Have a great weekend!
Love,
Andie

Buddhist Templestay and 4th of July!

2010-07-06T21:00:00.004+09:00

Happy Belated Birthday America! I wish I could have been there to celebrate with you - alas, I spent the holiday weekend in Seoul in a unique fashion.

Friday night, I went to a delicious duck restaurant with my friends. It was Korean barbeque style, and it was both amazing and affordable. I'm really going to miss this when I leave. Following dinner, we headed to a noraebang to karaoke our hearts out for several hours. Noraebangs are everywhere in the city (literally on every block), and they consist of private rooms with screens, microphones, and tambourines (the tambourine really makes the experience). Participants use a special remote to put their song of choice on the tv, and voila - your song comes on complete with English subtitles. I hadn't been noraebanging in awhile, and I forgot how fun it is. This particular noraebang (because this is Korea, and like I've said before, nothing makes any sense here) comes complete with full body animal costumes -- because if noraebang itself isn't fun enough, you can noraebang while dressed as a giraffe, cow, cat, or my personal favorite: the flying squirrel. This one also had free ice cream in the lobby so it was definitely a win-win for us. The only problem I have with noraebangs is the videos on the screen are always really sad. No matter how vile or inappropriate your rap song or how intense you get your Beyonce on, the songs are always played to a.) A Vietnam War scene b.) A domestic violence scene c.) A gang shootout d.) starving children.

After my late night noraebang experience, I got up Saturday and headed to Myogaksa Temple in northern Seoul. My friend Rachel and I signed up for a temple stay a few weeks ago. I'm not exactly sure what motivated me to do this, because reading the itinerary I knew I probably wouldn't enjoy the experience, and I was right. Now that I'm comfortably back in my apartment, I can look back on the experience and be glad I did it while being even more glad in my decision to never become a Buddhist monk.

Inside the temple grounds

After putting on our temple stay attire (gray prison uniforms with elastic around the ankles and a baby Buddha stamped on the breast pocket), we were greeted by an enthusiastic nun who taught us about Buddhism and how the tradition has impacted Korea. I know absolutely nothing about either topic so it was quite interesting. The nun was bald, wearing traditional monk garb, and had good English and a big smile. As we sat on cushions in a large room with 3 other templestay participants, the nun would periodically stop talking and shriek, "SURPIRSE HAIR!" and a student monk would scurry out with both hands extended. The nun would pick up the one strand of hair and give it to the student monk who then left the room to deposit it in what I only can imagine is a big receptacle for surprise stray hairs found on the temple floor. While the nun told stories, she also would periodically end them with, "and now he's my facebook friend," which I found simultaneously cute and bizarre. Korea really is where old meets new.

Saturday evening, we rang a bell, went to a chanting ceremony, learned to meditate, and did 108 prostrations. My legs are still sore from all the getting down and getting back up, and I now thank God that I am not Buddhist and don't have to do this regularly. Following a vegetarian dinner (in silence), we went to sleep (on the floor) early so we could get up before dawn to ring the bell again, meditate for an hour, and take a walk on the mountain. After breakfast and a tea ceremony we were free to go home. While I do recommend the experience and I am very glad I did this, I will never do a templestay again. Been there. Done that.

The rest of my Sunday (and there was a lot of it left since I got up so early!) I spent shopping and getting ready for our Seoul 4th of July picnic. My friends and I had a potluck party in Seoul Forest complete with fried chicken, deviled eggs, potato salad, apple pie, cookies, chips, beer, and soju lemonade. We even found sparklers (sold at the stationary store's sock aisle. Obviously.), and we had a great evening celebrating America.

Seoul Forest for 4th of July

This week and next week are my final weeks of regular school at Gil-Dong. I am really excited to finish! I have only been teaching 4th and 5th grade since March, and while I love my 4th graders, my 5th graders are about to drive me absolutely crazy. I have one class that always leaves with someone crying because they pick fights with each other, I have kids yelling in class, throwing things, and just in general not listening to a word that comes out of my foreign speaking mouth. It takes all my energy just to keep their attention. It is also unreal how much unnecessary noise an 11 year old can make. They are constantly tapping on things, banging on things, rocking their chairs, humming, or (and this one really gets me) dropping things. I had no idea kids were this clumsy, but every few minutes something is clattering to the floor. My nerves are completely shot, and I need this year to be finished. Below are a few pictures my 5th graders drew of their friends.

"She has so-so face."
What a great friend.

"He is short. He is not smart. He has not money. He don't have umbrella. He has gun."
The unfortunate friend...

The rest of my week not at work will be spent going to baseball and spending time in a Wiibang (like noraebang except to play Wii) with my friends. Hope everyone had a fun and safe holiday!
Love,
Andie

*Because I have received several negative notes about this post, I feel it is important to note that I mean no disrespect to Buddhism by writing about my temple stay experience. Just because I didn't have fun (and the program isn't meant to be fun- it's meant to be enlightening and educational), I learned a lot about Buddhist culture through the patience and kindness of those who ran the program, Like I said above, I am glad that I had the experience, and I do recommend the Myogaksa program for anyone interested in learning more about Buddhism.

Vaughn Family Visit

2010-06-30T14:16:00.004+09:00

Happy Humpday!

I've been meaning to update everyone on the Vaughn Family's big Korean adventure, but I have been too busy the last couple weeks! My parents left about ten days ago, and although it was nice to get back to my routine, I looked forward to their visit for months and it was hard to see them go. As Mom and Dad can probably tell you, I am a great tour guide so if you want to see Seoul you've got 8 more weeks to get over here for your free city tour. It was exciting to have them here after I have already had a chance to thoroughly get to know Seoul. I was able to set up a great itinerary for them, as well as choose to revisit some of my favorite places in Seoul (on someone else's dime!) I kept them busy (as Dad says, "I would have been popular in the French Foreign Legion - March or Die."), but hopefully they left feeling like they hadn't missed out on anything the city has to offer.

Photo pole at Gangnam Station!

Changdeokgung Gardens

Stream in downtown Seoul

Gyeongbokgung Gardens

Gyeongbokgung!

While they were here, I took them to a palace and a couple shopping areas while introducing them to my favorite Korean dishes. Unfortunately, the food was the least favorite part of their adventure. After only two days, my Dad told me three times how great his Dunkin' Donuts breakfast sandwich was the first day and how lucky I was to have a Dunkin' Donuts. I tried not to take the hint, and kept hoping to find something that they liked. Alas, I still fed them all sorts of Korean cuisine- from bibimbab to bulgogi to octopus to rice cake in hopes of finding something they enjoyed. No luck.

The first weekend they were here, we left early Saturday for Sokcho- the gateway town to Seoraksan National Park. I spent a weekend here in April, and the trip was amazing so I was hoping to recreate it with P&D. Unfortunately, the weather did not cooperate, and it was cloudy and hazy for most of the hike. I think they enjoyed it though, and even through the clouds some of the views were stunning.

Naksan Temple at Sokcho

Seoraksan - the summit at Ulsanbawi

Sokcho

Another highlight of their trip - for me - was bringing my parents to school. The kids got really excited to see them and surrounded them before class. They would point at them and say "MOM??" "Dad??" and when I nodded yes they would loudly exclaim, "Wooooowwwww!" as if they were aliens from outer space. The kids asked them how old they were repeatedly as they circled my parents. It was fun to watch.

During the week, we also took in several temples and palaces, all the main shopping districts (including the subways), and got to attend the World Cup game against Argentina. We decked ourselves out in Red and cheered at City Hall Plaza for the Korean team (which lost that night). My parents couldn't take the crowd so they left early, but I had a great time there with my friends. Korea finally got knocked out of the Cup by Uruguay on Saturday night. The mood in Seoul had been so festive, and everything from advertisements, to songs, to my students were yelling, "Fighting!," singing songs, and wearing red from head to toe.

The past two weeks I have also been very busy getting my summer camp plans together. I will teach three weeks of camp between the end of July and the end of my contract in late August. I'm making a "science English camp" for my kids, and I have a lot of work to do! I've also been to a Korean play, watched an obscene amount of Korean dramas with English subtitles online, and been planning my next steps after I finish my Korea contract.

This is my favorite Korean Drama- it's amazing.

I am thrilled about the warm weather and my final six weeks in Korea. I am not ready to leave at all! There are still lots of people to see, shopping to do, Korean food to try, and places to explore before August 24th!

Love,
Andie

Boracay Vacation

2010-06-09T23:45:00.006+09:00

Hi!

I've just returned from a fabulous long weekend in the Philappines! I not only had an amazing time, but I also just completed my first solo vacation. Go me. I headed to Incheon Friday after school to catch my flight to Manila. I flew Cebu Pacific which was really questionable. Not only was I quite certain the plane was going to fall apart any second, but I've never been so cramped up on a plane. And I'm not even a big person. I luckily landed safely in Manila about 12:30 Friday night and had a 5 hour layover in the airport. I had planned to sleep on the floor somewhere while clutching my purse, but because Manila is maybe the sketchiest place I've ever been, I instead made friends with the graveyard shift airport staff who let me charge my ipod and sit behind a counter with them. At 5:30, I then boarded an even more questionable Cebu Pacific Puddle Jumper for a short flight to Caticlan. After our plane smacked and skidded across the shortest runway at the smallest airport I've ever seen, I followed my fellow passengers to the Caticlan jetty port where I then boarded a "ferry" for the island of Boracay.

Airport in Caticlan

The extent of the runway at the Caticlan Airport

The ferry from Caticlan to Boracay!

Once on the island, I hired a tricycle to take me to my hostel. The tricycle is akin to the tuktuk - a mode of transportation I have grown accustomed to over the past year. The tricycle, however, really takes the prize for being the most ridiculous. It is essentially a motorbike with a cart attached to the side of it with a couple benches in it for passengers to sit. My tricycle that morning was filled with me and six Filipino men. The side of the tricycle said, "Elegant, Durable, Safe," and I remember thinking that it was absolutely none of those things as we careened across the island. It was only 7AM, and it was already swelteringly hot.

I checked into my hostel - a charming little resort a couple minutes from the beach. I ate breakfast with the owner then went to my dorm room to put my stuff down. The room didn't have airconditioning (SOOO hot in there), but besides that it was really comfortable. I put on my bathing suit and headed for the beach. After being briefly chased by three goats, I finally made it. The trip was absolutely worth it - I was in paradise. The water was crystal clear, there were only a few puffy white clouds in the sky, the sand was fine and white, and there were plenty of palms swaying in the breeze.

I laid on the beach all day Saturday while alternating between putting my umbrella up or down for sun or shade. I was quite content just sunbathing, staring at the ocean, catching the breeze, and taking pictures of the beach. I had Jane Austen and Chelsea Handler on my Kindle to keep my company and I alternated between fresh fruit shakes and margaritas as I enjoyed my vacation.

Saturday night, I went back to the hostel to enjoy a fresh seafood dinner and hopefully make myself some friends for my long weekend. The dinner was delicious, and I met about 8 other travelers who I then spent the next three days with on the island. I was the only American of the group - the others consisted of Australians, Canadians, Germans, Mexicans, a couple girls from London, and a French Girl. Several of the group had just finished teaching contracts in Korea and were heading back home. It was nice to meet new people, and every night I went out with the group to experience the vibrant Boracay nightlife.

A bar on the beach on Boracay

Sunday, I laid on the beach all day until afternoon when the French girl, Alex, and I headed to a mountain on the island to see the views. We were escorted by a passle of Filipino children that had begun hanging out with some girls in our group. They were really amazing kids - smart and sweet, and although they walked the beach selling jewelry all day, they naturally made time to escape and spend time with us. Six of us set out from the beach in a tricycle, but, unfortunately, the tricycle could not make it up the mountain and at one point started rolling backwards down the steep hill. I was just about to bail from the cart to escape my untimely Tricycle Philippines Death, when the driver got ahold of his motorbike and ordered us to jump out and walk. The mountain had stunning views, monkeys, and a nice breeze so it was definitely worth the trek.

Sunday night, our group watched more fireshows (mostly done by Khalid - one of our Filipino children) and stayed out most of the night just enjoying the live music on the beach, drinks, fireshows, and crowds of travelers. Boracay is amazing. Monday, I continued my lazy vacation by laying on the beach again all day followed by a night out with new friends.

This is Halida - she wrote all our names in the sand the last night I was there. I think I am supposed to be "Indy."

I returned to Seoul late Tuesday night, and now I am getting ready for tomorrow when the Vaughn's arrive to see Korea!
Have a great weekend!
-Andie

What tension?

2010-06-04T00:36:00.003+09:00

The weeks are flying by, and I realized the other day that I only have a short 10 weeks left in the ROK. In order to take advantage of the time I have left, I've been staying quite busy. I wrote in my last entry about the Lotus Lantern Festival, but Buddha's 2554th birthday celebration lasted at least another week. I took myself to Bongeunsa Temple in Seoul to check out the lanterns decorating the temple grounds for the occasion. The pictures do not do the scene justice-- it was really extraordinary.

I've been having a great couple weeks, and I have been very busy enjoying the (finally!) nice weather, working out, going out with friends, and doing a lot of shopping. I feel like it is expected that I say things have been tense here, but Seoul is completely not fazed by the myriad of threats being thrown around by North Korea. Because of the atmosphere here, I forget - probably more than my parents- that I am still in a country technically at war. I did remember (unfortunately maybe too late) early last week when I pulled out my lesson plan and pulled up the class game for my 5th grade students. I had planned to play vocabulary battleship, but after I explained it, I felt really culturally insensitive so I changed the game to "Sunken Treasure" and called them all pirates. Poor planning.

A view of Namsan Tower while shopping downtown last week!

A view of Seoul from a friend's rooftop party

Jamsil Stadium for a baseball game!

I have been enjoying teaching recently, but last Friday was an absolutel nightmare. I have one child - Yu-Bin - who has some problems (don't even get me started on Korea not separating disabled students or students on various levels- I teach them all at the same time). I'm not exactly sure what is the deal with Yu-Bin, but anyway, this kid is always trying to escape from class. On Fridays we literally have to bolt the doors from the top while Yu-Bin RUNS and THROWS himself at the door for FORTY minutes. (There isn't like a place to send him like in America-- like I can't just be like go to the principal or detention- they dont really do that. It's up to you to control their behavior). It's absolutely ridiculous.

So Friday morning, we're playing a multiple choice game (stand in the corner you think is the right answer) and the category for the question was "Famous People" with a picture of Johnny Depp fully clad in Jack Sparrow attire. I had SEVEN students get out on this question- not because they thought it was Brad Pitt or Nicholas Cage, but because they legitmately thought it was BARACK OBAMA. My students think all black people are Obama, but when I said, "Barack Obama is African American" my coteacher goes-- oh, they don't know foreign policy. OK?

As I'm reeling from this, I look up to see a DOG run by in the HALLWAY. This country seriously blows my mind sometimes. Luckily no students see it- yet. I turn around only to see the 4th grade girl in the wheelchair being run around the room FULL SPEED doing doughnuts by this little obese boy. Everyone is screaming. Then, unfortunately, dog is spotted and 75% of my students run out of the room including Yu-Bin which was really unfortunate since this kid requires capturing. I watch helplessly as this dog runs up and down the hall, OUTSIDE, with 30 4th graders after it. One girl as she ran by panting goes- Teachahhh-- Dog-- Fastuh!! I can't even articulate the level of chaos that was happening.

Below is a picture of me with some of my coworkers at a dinner last week. They are always so nice and supportive of me - I am so lucky to work with such wonderful people!

I leave for the Philappines tomorrow for a 4 day solo trip to Boracay. I will be sure to put up pictures and update you as soon as I get back!

Love,
Andie

Lotus Lantern Festival and Teacher's Day

2010-05-17T22:15:00.005+09:00

Happy Monday!

Spring has finally made a permanent appearance in Seoul, and I spent the weekend enjoying the sunshine and warm weather. This Friday is Buddha's Birthday - a national holiday. I don't know why I was so surprised to find out that Buddha had a birthday, but he does. And it's a big deal. For the past several weeks lanterns have started showing up all over the country as preparations got underway for festivals and celebrations. Friday, apparently, is Buddha's actual birthday, but Seoul celebrated yesterday with the Lotus Lantern Festival in the main downtown plaza of the city.

My friends and I arrived to the festivities fairly early Sunday afternoon. I painted a Buddha magnet, made a lovely pink paper mache lotus flower, took pictures of traditional Korean dress and food, listened to live music, and enjoyed the afternoon. The streets surrounding Seoul's Jongyesa Temple were packed with booths and people. In fact, this was the biggest festival I have seen in Seoul besides New Year's Eve.

Jongyesa Temple was beautifully decorated with thousands of colorful lanterns. You couldn't even see the sky through the tightly packed lanterns dangling over almost all of the temple grounds. It was amazing.

The day culminated, however, with a bright parade through the main streets of Seoul. The parade began at dusk with traditional drums marching through the streets followed by almost two hours of floats, tradtional clothing, thousands of bright, colorful lanterns, and citizens of all ages taking to the streets.

Over the weekend, Korea also celebrated Teacher's Day. I, luckily, do not work on Saturdays, but my coteachers and the students all come to school. When I arrived at work this morning, I had two bouquets of flowers on my desk. I also had a wonderful array of colorful cards with carefully written English messages in them. Despite the fact that they made me question my ability to successfully teach English, they brightened my entire day, and I'm going to go hang them all up on a wall in my apartment as soon as I get home. It's days like this that make me very happy to be in Korea teaching. Here is a sampling:

"Hello Teacher
Nice to meet you. What do you like? I like pizza and carrot. I love you teacher. Have a nice day teacher. Good bye."

"What a nice day. Teacher congratulation. Because today is teacher's day. Teacher very very pretty cute and kind. Very very thanks teacher. Bye Bye."

"Hello AndyTeacher! I'm still learning from you. I wrote this letter because of course today is teacher's day in Korea. I'm so thankful to you. Maybe you don't know me well...but I'm so thankful to you! Really! I want you to teach us very well. But youre still teaching us well!"

Have a wonderful week!
Andie

Busan and Jeju Trip!

2010-05-10T20:44:00.005+09:00

I have been so fortunate to have so much time off! I just got back to Seoul after a five day weekend of exploring some of Korea's best beaches. I got up way too early Wednesday morning (Children's Day!), and took KTX (the Korean rail system) three hours south to the second largest city in Korea- Busan. After finally finding a subway, I headed to a far end of the city where I met up with my friend Liza. We decided to begin our day by exploring Beomeosa Temple. The temple, unfortunately, looked just like every other temple in Korea. The grounds were nice, however, and we enjoyed walking through the woods and surrounding area. Since Buddha's Birthday is quickly approaching, many places have lanterns up in celebration, and the temple was colorfully decorated with strings of bright lanterns.

Hungry, we left the temple and went straight to Haeundae Beach - a popular tourist destination in Busan. Because it was Cinco de Mayo, we decided on Mexican food. Unfortunately, a distressed waiter greeted us at the door of the Mexican restaurant and told us we could not eat there because "they ate it all! It's all gone!!" I don't know who ate the entire restaurant out of business, but we had to take our Mexican food cravings elsewhere. After a nice lunch at a nearby restaurant, Liza and I wandered out onto the warm sand. The beach was surprisingly crowded, and we spent a couple hours just lounging before heading to see another temple.

This time, we were headed for Haedong Yonggung Temple which is an amazing temple complex built on the cliffs overlooking the sea. It was refreshingly unique, and both of us were impressed with the temple grounds. Here, too, there were colorful lanterns being put up to celebrate Buddha's Birthday.

After a margarita at the Mexican restaurant, that had miraculously recovered from its appalling lack of anything only hours before, Liza and I headed to the town of Ulsan where she lives. The next morning, Liza went to work, and I boarded a bus back to Busan. I had planned to spend the day by myself on the beach just reading. Unfortunately, the weather had turned cold, cloudy, horribly windy, and drizzly. After spending the morning with my book at a coffee shop, I decided to tour the Busan Aquarium. As aquariums go, it was alright, and it was certainly better than spending all day in a coffee shop, but it was not all that impressive . . . UNTIL, I rounded a bend after the jelly fish exhibit and saw two tigers in a glass pen. For good measure, next to the tigers, two lion cubs occupied another pen. I want to say I was very surprised at the lions and tigers in the aquarium, but something about this just seemed so typical of Korea I couldn't muster up any surprise.

The tiger at the aqaurium is so typical.

Thursday evening, I headed to the airport and flew about 50 minutes off the coast to Jeju Island to meet my friend Sarah who came down from Seoul. Jeju is supposed to be the tropical gem of Korea- the Hawaii of the country. Upon leaving the airport, however, we quickly realized, that it was freezing. I've never been to Hawaii, but I like to think it never gets this cold. Sarah and I were dropped off about an hour south of the airport by a large bus that sounded like it was about to fall apart. We couldn't find our hostel and after struggling around the legitimate Korean countryside in the blasting wind pulling Sarah's rollerboard suitcase behind us like some freakish episode of The Simple Life, we were quite frustrated with the island.

Just because there are palm trees, doesn't mean this is the tropics.

Luckily, Friday morning was clear, warm, and sunny, and Sarah and I found our way to Jungmun Beach for the day where we eventually met up with my friend Rachel who came in from Japan. Jungmun Beach was beautiful, don't get me wrong, but Korea is a peninsula with many fantastic beaches, and I was not that impressed with what Jungmun had to offer. Sure, it was the beach, but it wasn't white sand or clear water - both attributes I think of when I hear "tropical island." Both Friday and Saturday, the three of us split our time between laying on Jungmun Beach, eating, and visiting the famous waterfalls of Jeju. I was slightly annoyed with the waterfall situation. Over the past nine months, I have seen my share of waterfalls. The waterfalls of Jeju were nice, but somewhere between buying the ticket to see it, being jostled by the hundreds of Koreans wearing top of the line gear (waterfalls are outdoors, after all, so top of the line gear is in order -- refer to Sokcho and Seoraksan entry below for more information), and fighting my way through the crowd to take a picture that will inevitably not turn out like all the Korean photos because I'm not toting a gigantic camera and a tripod to knock people out of the way with, I became irritable. Korea just has too many people and not enough aesthetically pleasing sights. (Sorry Korea- I love you, I really do, but we both know it's true).

I flew back to Seoul Sunday afternoon, and I was eager to get back to the city. I realized on this trip just how much I really do think of Seoul as "home," and I am eager for my parents to come next month so I can show off my city. Today, it was back to teaching, and despite the fact I got scratched breaking up an intense fight between two fifth grade boys (who somedays I wish were small enough for me to dropkick), it was a good day. I'm excited to be at school this week.

Have a great week,
-Andie

Sports Day!

2010-05-05T22:48:00.001+09:00

Tuesday was sports day at Gil-Dong Elementary School. The American equivalent of field day, sports day in Korea is a highlight of the year. Alas, I never saw anything resembling a sport taking place, but the day was entertaining nonetheless. From my second floor window, I had a great view of the action!

Seoraksan National Park!

2010-04-28T13:52:00.005+09:00

After my exciting weekend in Gyeongju 2 weeks ago, I was eager to get out of the city again last weekend. I really love Seoul, but coming straight out of Madison, Georgia and then the "bustling" Winston-Salem, North Carolina community, city life is sometimes difficult for me. To put Seoul in perspective, Seoul is the 5th largest city in the world. The metropolitan area has approximately 23 million people while the country has a population of slightly under 50 million people. That's right- half the country lives here in the city. The country is also surprisingly small- it is only about the size of Indiana (a state who has a population of the Seoul metropolitan area). Getting out of the city is vital to my happiness.

Saturday afternoon, I met up with 4 friends to head up to Sokcho, a city in the top corner of Gangwon-do Province a few hours from Seoul. I wish we had planned more time for actually seeing the city of Sokcho because it was an amazing little place. The city was incredibly clean, had little traffic, has a Rodeo Street with tons of cute shops (Korea loves to label all their shopping streets Rodeo- there are at least 2 that I know if in Seoul alone), has beautiful beaches (still too cold for that though), and is famous for its seafood.

After we got off the bus, we immediately checked into our hostel (one of the best I've ever stayed at-- very clean and colorful with the most helpful and friendly owner), then hopped on a bus hoping to get to Naksan Temple -a pristine Shilla dynasty complex- by sunset. We just missed sunset, but the views from the Temple were still spectacular. Naksan is on a mountain on the coast and the view from the top is amazing-- the mountains are behind the complex, the lights of Sokcho are in the distance, and on the other side is the Sea of Japan. The temple is definitely my favorite so far in Korea. The entire area was absolutely (and surprisingly) stunning, and I found myself saying, "I can't believe I am in Korea right now." (the temples and palaces in Seoul are great, but I think you lose something when you build a city around the area. Nothing says beautiful and historical like a Dunkin' Donuts around the corner, overhanging smog, the noise of traffic, and concrete buildings in the background). The best part of the temple grounds was the 53 foot tall statue known as the Gwanseum-Bosal. The statue is at the center of a large plaza at the top of the mountain. In front of the structure is hundreds of candles, to the right is the Sea, and behind it is the mountains. It was amazing.

We explored Naksan for several hours before heading back into Sokcho. We had a delicious all you can eat Korean barbeque dinner complete with chicken, beef, seafood, kimchi, and ice cream. I like to think it tasted better outside the city.

Sunday morning we were up with the sun to catch the bus out to Seoraksan National Park. Seoraksan is part of the Taebaek Mountains, and the mountain is the 3rd highest peak in Korea. The big hike was closed, but there were still several hiking options for us. We entered the park, stopping to take pictures of the Big Buddha, the mountains, the river, and the stacked rocks (I think this is a Buddhist form of prayer or a wish for good luck. I'm unclear on the exact details, but these stones are stacked in piles all over the park. There is something quite beautiful about them, and even clumsy foreign tourists like myself gingerly step around them because- call me superstitious-, but I don't want to knock any over for fear of destroying someone's hopes and dreams.)

The Big Buddha in the Park

We decided to head up to Ulsanbawi. This is a huge rock formation in the park that offers a fairly challenging hike. Because Korea is so densely packed and because the park at Seoraksan is a treasured place among Koreans, the hike was crowded. We joked on the way up that in America, most hikes are done by young people and sometimes you never see another hiker. In Korea, it is the opposite. Not only is getting lost in the wilderness not a feasible option (rest stops with food every kilometer and steps and railings guiding the way), but the hike is done by mostly pushy old people decked out in impressive gear. Koreans love to get dressed up, and exploring the great outdoors is another opportunity to dress to impress. Older couples in full hiking gear (pants, Under Armour, gloves, hats, walking poles, special glasses, the works) chatter up the trails. (I would like to note that the gear is not limited to actual hiking. I see people wearing the exact same thing when I jog in Olympic Park in the city. It's highly unnecessary and hilarious.)

Despite the throngs of people, the hike was amazing. The unique rock formation at Ulsanbawi was worth the bazillion stairs (that's right, stairs) we had to climb over the rock cliffs to make it to the top. After or descent, we headed up in a cable car (terrifying) to another peak - Gwongeumseong Fortress (not a real fortress. A folklore mountain "fortress.") At the top was a rock peak that required scooting up a steep rock - unfortunately, I only made it halfway up before I got very scared and scooted myself right back down to the bottom. I might have missed the best views, but I got to see enough from the bottom of the rock formation on the mountain. It was a clear day, and the mountains were stunning.

The stairs heading up to the summit at Ulsanbawi

Gwongeumseong Fortress-- halfway up that rock is where I got scared :)

Exhausted, we headed back to Sokcho after our cable car adventure. After a delicious seafood dinner, we headed back to Seoul. Unfortunately, the weather hasn't been nice since our return and it has been 45 degrees and raining for the last 3 days. In a defiant move that I'm sure my mother would call, "cutting off my nose to spite my face," I have refused to wear a coat all week because I've been "trying to show the weather." Right now, the weather is winning, but hopefully soon, "I'll show it." This weekend, I will run a 10k with a few friends, and next week I will leave for a 5 day trip south- Busan followed by Jeju Island!

Have a great week!

-Andie

Funny School

2010-04-22T20:06:00.002+09:00

My students truly brighten my days. Even on days when I have to drag myself out of bed and to work, by the time I enter the school grounds and am greeted by dozens of students who seem genuinely thrilled to see me, I am instantly in a better mood. I love to say "Good morning!" and hear little voices reply "good morning Andie Teacher!" Their excitement to interact with me makes me excited to be at work, and school is really fun. (Or, as my students would say, "funny school." No matter how many times I correct them, things that are fun are always described as funny - it's an easy mistake to make for not a native speaker, but it drives me nuts!) Anyway, school is funny.

Last week, for example, I got to name one of my students. Most of my classes come to class wearing English nametags with an assortment of names including, but not limited to: Windy, Sunny, East King, Transformer, Coco Joy, and Rot. This morning, one of my favorite students, a 4th grader named Sarah, told me she did not like the name Sarah anymore (possibly because her best friend recently changed from Sarah to Chelsea?) Anyway, Sarah asked me to "chang-ee" her name, but stipulated that it must begin with an 'R." Off the top of my head, I threw out the name "Riley." She did not like this suggestion so then decided that her new name would be "Rainbow." After convincing her that I would not call her Rainbow, we then decided to brainstorm some more. I will now dub her Rachel.

There are so many things the students do on a daily basis that is hilarious, and I ususally forget to jot it down. Recently, however, I've been trying to keep track of the things they do and say. One of my favorite events recently was in the 4th grade when I asked the students do draw and label a picture about their favorite type of weather. One student drew the earth splitting in two . Upon further investigation, I realized his favorite type of weather was, "earthquake." Not really a weather pattern, but okay. Another student drew skeletans on the ground with smoke coming off of them. Other skeletans were walking around smoldering with the words "OH MY GOD!!!!!!" coming out of their mouth. At the top of the page in crooked writing it said, "I like lightning." Where do they get this stuff?

Today, I amused myself by teaching my 4th graders to say "What's up?" Unfortunately, most of them struggled with the pronounciation and I had 100 4th graders all saying, "Watchup???" for the rest of the day. They were adorable if nothing else.

There are also several phrases my students say all the time. First, they LOVE to tell me that another student is "crazy." This seems to be fairly insulting, and they have a great time dragging their headlocked friends to me and saying, "Teacher! He/She uh crazy!!" The friend will then instantly sign no (make an X with your arms. Apparently this means -and unfortunately for me, forevermore No.) Some of them seem quite concerned that I literally think they are crazy.

They also love to tell me that their friends can't speak English. Unfortunately, this does not come out of their mouths like, "My friend cannot speak English. Can you help us?" Instead, if I ask a question to a student who cannot answer, the friends all start yelling, "Teacher! English No! English no." (again make X with your arms). If I respond, "try," I usually get a more exasperated, "He/She English No!!" which roughly corresponds to "silly teacher! stop trying!" It's simultaneously cute and annoying.

Another phrase I get a lot is, "Olleh!!" If students get an answer correct, if they get a good grade, if anything wonderful happens to them, they immediately throw their hands in the air and yell "Olleh!" During a recent "If you're happy and you know it" song (which means clean up your mess and sit down) one class even shouted "If you're happy and you know it shout "OLLLEEEHHHH" instead of hooray. Another overused word is "Shiny." If anything is pretty, they love to declare it Shiny. People are shiny, objects are shiny, and I find, "Shiny" and "Shinee" written on pencil cases and desks all around the room.

Most recently, my (mostly male) students have started to only Zombie Walk. Everywhere they go they have their arms straight out in front of them and look straight ahead. Before class starts I usually have a room full of little zombies and as soon as class is over they return to zombie state.

My favorite part of my day, however, is reading my students T-Shirts, pencil cases, and English notebook covers. While the kids work on an assignment, I love to walk around pretending to monitor them while secretly giggling over the absurditites they carry around. I don't understand why every single case and notebook has a phrase that either makes absolutely no sense, is severely incorrect, or is some deep statement about love that makes no sense for a 4th grader to be carrying around all day. When I have time, I try and write down some of my favorites. These are by no means the best ones, but here is a good selection of ones I've observed lately:

-Alphebetically Speaking, You're OK!
-I am in everlasting love with you.
-It's a noun when you see love as a literature.
-Apple Tree Bear: Silly games. But he's a warm-hearted young Turk.
-English class is coming next. Are you ready to enjoy? It's fun time! Get it on!
-Love Whisper: Only you don't know that I love you.
-In your career, you will met many people. All are sillignant and deserve your allention and care oven if all you can do is smile and say HELLO.
-Newton's Law: Sometimes Love needs a little help. Have a blast., Always stay with the "In" crowd., I'm the genuine artical. . . not a pirate copy.
-Remember Memory: It is written indelibly on my heart designed by my focus
-Pucca: Funny Love. It was s cold day. "Here matches. Buy matches please." Pucca was selling matches.
-Joy, Hope, Love: Traveling will be a good outlet for you to expand your romantic interests.
-Our relationship is so great that I have no regrets.

As my students would say, I am "Pinishee!! (finished) now, but I'll try to remember to tell more about the day to day interactions with my students. Have a great week!

-Andie

Weekend in Gyeongju

2010-04-19T20:38:00.004+09:00

Early Saturday morning I headed out to join ten friends for a weekend trip down to Gyeongju, Korea. The city is about four hours South of Seoul, and it is one of the first times I've actually left Seoul for a tour of the "country." Korea is not the most aesthetically pleasing nation, but there are some places that I do need to see before I leave in only four short months. Gyeongju is famous for several Korean landmarks including Bulguksa Temple, cherry blossoms,the Cheomseongdae Observatory, and several royal tombs including the tomb of Queen Seondeok. We planned our trip, however, around Gyeongju's 13th annual traditional Korean alcohol and rice cake festival. Our Korean friend Sanggoon (aka Leo) is from Gyeongju, and he graciously offered to take us down to the festival and show us his hometown. Not only did he rent us a large van, but his family offered to cook us a traditional Korean meal upon our arrival to the city. (Koreans really are the most welcoming people - their hospitality never ceases to amaze me).

Leo's mom cooked us a traditional meal including rice, kimchi (all different assortments!), bulgogi, chicken, kimchi pancakes, all the side dishes (including roots and seaweed), fruits, vegetables, and sauces. It was amazing!

Leo and his parents! They made me miss having parents around -- after we ate lunch, they loaded up our van with sodas and cookies and sent us on our way.

After our amazing lunch, we headed to the festival grounds to sample some rice cake and traditional Korean drinks. We started with the liquor booth area. After purchasing a 1,000 won ($1) sampling glass necklace, we could go to any booth and have a small sample of their alcohol. We got to try everything from traditional ginseng drinks to mushroom wine. Following our drink samples, we spent the rest of the afternoon eating rice cake (one of my favorite foods!). After some delicious rice cake samples and watching rice cake being made (lots of rice being beat to a pulp. Literally), we headed back to our van and to our hotel for the evening. We stayed at a traditional Korean accommodation called a minbak. We had reserved two rooms that both opened into a large garden and courtyard area. When you walk (or climb in our case), into the room, it is just an empty room. Folded in a corner or in an armoire are mats and blankets and pillows. The minbak rooms have heated floors (like my apartment the heat comes from the ondol.) Sleeping on the floor isn't fantastic, but it isn't as bad as you might imagine either.

A sign on the wall at the festival. So typical.

Sunday morning we woke up early and headed to Bulguksa Temple. The temple is a UNESCO World Heritage sight, and the temple as well as the surrounding area is really beautiful. The grounds leading up to the temple were packed with cherry blossoms and vegetation combined with vendors under colorful umbrellas selling visitors everything from postcards to tasty larvae snacks (gross, I know.)

The grounds leading up to Bulguksa Temple

Bulguksa Temple, Gyeongju

The grounds at Bulguksa Temple, Gyeongju

Inside Bulguksa Temple

After we saw the temple, we headed to another area of Gyeongju that was bursting with colorful flowers. There was a huge rapeseed flower field and plenty of cherry blossoms. The entire area was amazingly beautiful. We explored for awhile, took way too many pictures, then headed to lunch (at a famous Korean tofu restaurant) and the tomb of Queen Seondeok before our trip home to Seoul.

Streets of Gyeongju outside the rapeseed field

I definitely hope to travel more outside of Seoul in the following months. I have a few more weekend trips planned, and I am excited to see more of the Korean peninsula. Seoul is so big I never get tired of exploring it, but I know Korea has so much more to offer. Have a good week!

-Andie

Black Day

2010-04-14T21:49:00.005+09:00

Happy Black Day!

Black day, the Korean holiday celebrating the opposite of Valentine's Day, is here. April 14th is the official day for single people to wallow in singledom, wear dark colors, eat black food, and do other equally emo things involving self pity.

Happy Black Day

Typical Black Day food

Koreans love to celebrate love. On February 14th (Valentines Day), Korean women are expected to get something for their mate. On March 14th (White Day), however, the men return the favor and bestow gifts upon their favorite women (think large and embarassing gift baskets on the subway). I can't forget to talk about Pepero Day (November 11th)- the most blatantly commercial of the holidays. On Pepero Day (Pepero is a Lotte candy made of cookie sticks dipped in chocolate), couples celebrate by giving each other Pepero and buying obscene amounts of the sticks (11/11, get it?). The holiday was created by Lotte several years ago to promote sales, but because Koreans love love that much, they buy into it. Literally.

White Day. . .

And this is Pepero Day . . .

Pepero!

The Korean culture is obsessed with dating. Sometimes I feel like I live in a Disney movie where happiness solely revolves around meeting your perfect match. This is exacerbated by the fact that it is absolutely acceptable in Korean culture to ask questions deemed inappropriate by Westerners. For example, one of the first questions I get asked by my coworkers is, "Andie, Boyfriend?" We got a new principal in March and when we met for the first time, it literally went like this, "Hi I'm Andie." "Ah, Hello. Andie, Boyfriend?" "No haha no boyfriend." "Oh.Very Beautiful." That's all the man has ever said to me. Moreover, from listening to some of my coworkers and Korean friends, I've realized Korean women feel limited without boyfriends. On holidays if you don't have a boyfriend it's a big deal-- as in, most women won't do things alone. Some of my coworkers are single and if you ask them what they are doing for a weekend or holiday, they will sigh sadly and say, "I have no boyfriend. I will stay home." Relationships, apparently, are the gateway to fun.

While I am on the topic of the Korean dating scene, I have to tell you about the 100 day party that occurs in many Korean relationships. After dating 100 days in Korea, couples sometimes celebrate with a party or by exchanging rings. Many jewelers even carry 100 day rings for couples. That's right - after a mere 3 months of dating you exchange rings. Because Koreans love love that much.

Two more of my favorite Korean relationship phenomenons are purses and underwear. I personally feel that the best part of having a boyfriend in Korea would be never having to lug my purse anywhere again. When you have a boyfriend, he carries your purse like it is his own. Everywhere. Romantic, right? The underwear thing is my other favorite part of Korean relationships. All lingerie stores (and trust me they are EVERYWHERE-- from the subway stations to every other street corner) have matching his and hers lingerie in the windows. As if having your boyfriend carry your purse wasn't emasculating enough, forcing him into underwear matching your lingerie should do the trick. Any pattern is available for the matching his and hers. It's all part of the Koreans loving love.

Happy Black Day to all my single friends!
-Andie

Icheon and Easter!

2010-04-06T19:43:00.003+09:00

It's finally spring! I just looked out the window and realized the trees lining my school are beginning to get small yellow buds on them. It is, after all, after Easter and a week into April, but I'm still wearing my coat and leggings every day to school, so I haven't really considered it spring yet. Today, however, is almost 60 degrees! I don't think it has been 60 degrees since October, and I am SO ready for nice weather.

I had a wonderful Easter weekend in Korea. On Saturday I went with 4 friends to the small town of Icheon about an hour bus ride out of the city (embarrassingly enough, one of my first times being outside of Seoul). The town is famous for its ceramics and pottery. We had a nice lunch in the downtown Icheon area before heading out to the ceramics village. In typical Korean fashion, most of this was a bizarre combination of modern art sporadically placed around graffitied kilns and large kimchee pots. After some exploring, we took a taxi to another part of Icheon where we were able to make our own pottery. I've never used a pottery wheel before, but it is surprisingly difficult. With the help of an exceedingly friendly Korean man, all of us were able to successfully create a piece of pottery that afternoon.

My finished product from the ceramics village

A kiln at Icheon Ceramics Village

To celebrate Easter, I met with 3 friends on Sunday morning for brunch then headed to a 2PM English church service at a large Presbyterian Church in downtown Seoul. I've noticed that most Korean churchgo-ers are very intense and tend to really push going to church and talking about Jesus down your throat to the point of uncomfortableness. I had not yet attended a service in Seoul, but I was hoping to find one that was fairly traditional (no speaking in tongues, excessive contemporary praise bands, and no reason at all to have to go to the front of the church and kneel, confess, sing, etc. We luckily picked a good service. Somang Presbyterian church had beautiful, traditional music, an American pastor, and no one did anything too intense. Besides the fact that the choir called Jesus, "Jeshus," and there was an incredibly awkward "Welcome Song" for visitors at the end, I was very pleased with my first visit to a Korean church.

This week should be a nice work week. The students are always better behaved when the weather is pleasant. There are times I get really bored at work or irritated with my classes, but my students always make me smile. Most of the time when they do something bad, they are so cute it is hard to get mad at them. This is a huge change from teaching 6th grade last year because unfortunately for 6th graders, it's a really awkward age and, frankly, they aren't cute. I had one student last week who every time I looked up was balancing a pencil between his upper lip and nose or holding his book between his bottom lip and his chin. It was all I could do not to laugh at him every time I looked up. Most of the students are really well behaved this year, and I am enjoying being in the classroom much more than last semester. 4th and 5th grade are both pleasures to teach.

The only problems I am having this year so far involve one 4th grade student and some special needs children. The 4th grade student is particularly frustrating. Two weeks ago, he would not sit in class - as in, at one point he got up and ran out of the classroom and my co-teacher had to chase him down. Because he then refused to stay in the classroom, we had to lock the classroom doors and conduct class while this student would run and literally throw himself at the door. He alternated doing this and running and jumping in order to try and reach the high lock on the door. He eventually succeeded in the latter and escaped again. (Korean schools don't have the same discipline avenues that American schools have- it isn't like detention or going to see the vice-principal is an option). Last Friday, instead of being trying to escape, the student absolutely refused to leave the classroom when class was over. My co-teacher and I turned off the lights and the heat and locked one of the doors, and he would not get up. He is a rather large student so we couldn't pick him up. It took almost fifteen minutes to physically get the student to move. It was absurd.

My other problem is the special needs students that come to class. Not only do I usually feel like I am hardly qualified to be a teacher, but I am certainly not qualified to be a special needs teacher. Disabilities are recognized differently in Korea, so all students come to class regardless of their ability to keep up with the lesson. I have one girl in the fifth grade who is a special needs student. She is probably the most extreme example that I teach. She is always exceedingly friendly (unless you wake her up when she is sleeping on her desk), she loves to give hugs, and she is perfectly capable of learning English, but she is unable to learn the same way the other students do. The students around her help her, but she needs almost constant monitoring or she does things she blatantly should not. I've learned to just smile at her a lot and smile when I tell her to do something, but it is hard to teach and try and help her at the same time. This girl, at least, has outward signs of being a different type of learner. I know there are other students in my class who are autistic or even have learning disabilities such as dyslexia or ADD, but this is not recognized. I have so many students per week that it is difficult to modify my lessons or give one on one help to these students, and it is frustrating to see that they are perfectly capable of learning English but they really need more individualized attention.

Overall, teaching is a really positive experience though, and I am having a blast every day. Have a great week!

-Andie

Reflection

2010-03-18T21:40:00.009+09:00

It's Thursday afternoon, and I'm sitting in my office at school enjoying watching my elementary school's baseball team practice from my third floor window. (I recently moved offices to sit with the rest of the subject teachers. It is a nicer office and the women in here speak English, so although I have a half desk and am crammed into a corner space in the tiny room, I am enjoying my new space. I have a feeling the vice principals were worried about my lonliness downstairs...) I am enjoying my afternoon, and since I recently told my school I would not resign my contract in August, I have been reflecting on my life here in Seoul.

Such an amazing city!

There are days, such as today, when I am perfectly happy. I wake up at 8am, I come to school, sing songs about "Nice to meet you," play charades, give a survey, and watch students draw pictures about their favorite types of weather. I hang out in the afternoons until 4:40, workout, and then enjoy Seoul. It's a really cushy life. Yesterday after work, I attended an exciting basketball game at Sports Complex station where the '88 Olympic games were held. I saw the KCC Egis' beat up on the Samsung Thunder (I have no idea what an egis is.) Today, I will get an approximately $5 manicure from the women down the street while other days I indulge in $7 haircuts. In about an hour, the women in my office will tell me "together time," and I will stand in a semi-circle of nine women while we drink tea or coffee and eat a snack (like rice cakes or fruit). This weekend, I will watch March Madness with a friend over brunch, celebrate St. Patrick's Day with a parade, and attend a 6month anniversary party for my recruiting class of teachers. I love my life in Seoul, I love my students (particularly the one today who asked me for a thesaurus while drawing her picture about the weather), my job, the fact that there is a fresh market within a 3 minute walk of my apartment, the new cupcake store that opened up down the street with a friendly Korean lady who gives me free cookies when I buy a cheese tart, my great friends, the fact that I can buy food at a restaurant and be rewarded with multiple free service beverages, the generosity of the faculty at Gil-Dong Elementary school, the cheap shopping, the nightlife, and living in one of the largest and fastest advancing cities in the world. It is a wonderful life, and I am incredibly lucky.

Go KCC!!

It's not the Demon Deacons, but it was still quite exciting...

Rice Cake! Although many of my friends equate this to eating Elmer's Glue, I really enjoy my afternoon rice cake breaks with my co-workers. This is an example of what it usually looks like. This one has red bean in the middle (my favorite!)

However, there are things I thing about that I know I will not miss when I leave later this summer. For example, it snowed yesterday. If I never see another flake of snow or feel the biting cold of a wind akin to something off of Siberia that will be fine with me. I am eagerly awaiting spring (and the cherry blossoms!); however, I am quite nervous about the Yellow Dust phenomena that is about to befall me and the city. Apparently, yellow dust from Mongolia begins to blow in the springtime. As it goes over China, it picks up pollutants from the factories. This means by the time the dust reaches Korea, it is a polluted and disgusting dust that burns your eyes and harms your respiratory system. Great. My coteachers have told me that some Koreans like to go to Mongolia and plant trees in order to thwart the dust, but I am skeptical.

Apparently, this is what I have to look forward to this spring...

Other things I will not miss include how it is socially acceptable for men and women to cough up loogies anywhere at any time. (And I mean at ANY time). It's particularly pleasant to hear while you are eating or right after lunch (yummm). The fact that it is also socially acceptable to not ever cover your mouth when you cough or sneeze equally grosses me out.

One thing I miss very much from home is my gym. As much as I enjoy going to my small neighborhood gym, it never ceases to amaze me how many people are there and not actually working out. Although it's entertaining, recently this has started to annoy me. While I toil on an elliptical or treadmill, I like to observe the members who strap themselves onto a board named the "inverse motorized machine" and flip upside down for an extended period of time. Sometimes, they attempt to read the paper while hanging around strapped upside down. My other favorite machine to observe (an there are several of them) is a machine that has a strap that goes around a member's legs or waist and moves up and down rapidly as so to jiggle your body. Members also read the paper while jiggling their muscles. Following their intense workout of hanging out upside down and jiggling, most members head to the sauna (which luckily has a window for more of my observation and entertainment) where I have seen members actually bring in takeout and enjoy dinner while sitting around in the sauna. Following this spectacular workout, members can enjoy a hot cup of coffee from the machine (and sit chatting on the weight benches) or either head to the showers. (Although I wear my own workout clothes, the gym has eliminated the issue of getting ready to go to the gym by having shelves of gym issued clothing so everyone works out wearing the same thing. After you shower, you put on what you came to the gym in and leave your issued clothing there to be washed.) Because I wear my own clothes to the gym and prefer not to shower communally, I head home after my workout. I try and make my locker time brief because no matter how hard I try, the cultural issue of walking around naked weirds me out. Women come out of the shower naked as the day they were born and don't bother getting dressed while they dry their hair or put their make-up on. They all talk to each other while standing around stark naked. I always have to remind myself that I am the only one uncomfortable with the situation.

An example of the hang out upside down to workout method...

The Jiggle Machine!

My last issue involves school lunch. I am toying with the idea of bringing my lunch, but I am seriously afraid of offending my school. I am incredibly tired, however, of rice. Many days this is all I eat for lunch because the rest of the food is so unappetizing. Every single day there is rice, kimchi (fermented cabbage in red pepper paste. The cabbage kind is okay, but the raddishh kind is absolutely horrific), and soup. The soup ranges from hot soup with potatoes and beef (alright) to cold soup with fish and fish bones in it (not alright). Usually, however, it involves fish and tofu chunks and seaweed in some sort of combination. The other dishes vary; however, it usually includes something involving mushrooms, seaweed, tofu, or french fries that have sugar on them and are cold. Some days we get meat which is nice, but the type of sauce it is in varies. Today wasn't so bad- we had fish filets. The fish is small and is about 60% bones. Sometimes on fish filet day I think it might be a joke - like everyone hey look! the foreigner has to pick tiny flecks of fish flesh from between all the bones using only chopsticks! hahaha! I have no idea how everyone around me can literally take every piece of fish from between the bones cleanly and neatly without dismembering the skeletal system of the fish. Today was the first fish filet day I didn't swallow a bone (obviously quite an improvement!!), and my fish bones were scattered around my plate. Here are some examples of what my plate usually looks like:

Luckily, the things I love about Seoul far outweigh my daily grievances. It is hard to believe that I have only 5 short months left here, and I intend to try and enjoy every single day. Happy St. Patrick's Day and have a great week!

-Andie

Vacation in Vietnam and Laos!

2010-03-03T21:13:00.007+09:00

Greetings from Seoul!

It is cold and cloudy, and I am sitting at my desk for the first day of the new school year. It's my first day back to routine after two and a half months of essentially traveling around Asia, visiting home, and not working. Lucky me, I know. After returning from Cambodia, I spent 10 painfully wintry days in Seoul and keeping my desk warm at Gil-Dong Elementary School before heading to Vietnam on February 12th. My friend Sam and I arrived in Hanoi that night, checked into our hostel, and were up and ready to explore the next morning. Hanoi is a lovely city with beautiful architecture, and despite the chill (and lack of warm clothing), we spent the day seeing several markets, shopping, touring the city's old gate, checking out Ho Chi Minh's Mausoleum (Is Uncle Ho real or wax?), and meeting up with friends at our hostel. There was a palpable energy in the air- the Vietnamese were getting ready for Tet, and after a delicious dinner we joined in the festivities. There is a large lake in the middle of Hanoi, and people crowded around counting down to the new year with music, talent shows, baloons, and lanterns and lights strung up in trees and on the streets. At midnight there was a bright fireworks display and thousands of people crowded the streets. Despite the fact that I was freezing and a mere 3 blogposts ago I said I would never, ever stand outside for another new year's eve, celebrating Tet was an experience I will not ever forget.

The next day Sam and I- with multiple old and new friends in tow- headed out of Hanoi for a three day tour of Ha Long Bay. We boarded a large wooden boat where each of the 30 or so backpackers with us were given rooms with bathrooms, a good lunch, and a tour of the floating accomodations -complete with a sundeck and a fun common area surrounded by windows so we could watch the limestone cliffs and green islands float by us. There are about 4,000 islands in Ha Long Bay and the sharp limestone cliffs, emerald water, and lush vegetation is absolutely spectacular. Moreover, all the boats in the bay are regulated to be the same old wooden style - something I will refer to as pirate ship style. Although it was cool and cloudy, the mist around the islands seemed only to dramaticize the scene, and I was constantly expecting Jack Sparrow to come sailing out of the fog. We spent a little time that afternoon kayaking to a lagoon and then on to a small fishing village, but unfortunately, the cool drizzle wasn't that inviting so we stayed inside most of the time. Luckily, this did allow for lots of bonding time with our fellow tourists, and we spent the rest of the day playing cards, drinking cheap beer, and making new friends. The next morning, part of our group headed back to Hanoi while the other half of us boarded a small boat that was to take us to Castaway Island where we were to camp for the next night. Sam and I have a friend from our TESOL course in Thailand who works there for the hostel running the tour, so we were excited to see a familiar face. That afternoon, the boys wakeboarded (Sam and I were going to tube, but who wants to tube in the cold?!) and we just hung out on the island and the boat. Late afternoon, our friend, Anderson, took me, Sam, and Sam's boyfriend back out on the boat and we headed over to Cat Ba Island where we rented 2 motorbikes and toured the island. We stopped to tour the Hospital Cave there - a surprisingly large and secret cave high in a mountain that was used during the war. The cave, although long vacant, was impressively complete with a swimming pool and a screening "room." After heading back to the island, we spent the rest of the evening staying warm, bonding with our group, and drinking more cheap beer. When a nightly swim was suggested, I wasn't going to join in this freezing madness, but I wanted to see the electric blue glow and bioluminescence of the Bay's water at night. When disturbed, sparkling blue specks shine up from the bottom and wash up on the sand. Although it was cold, the blue sparkle was worth it, and Ha Long Bay proved to be stunning both day and night.

The next day, our group headed back to Hanoi, and my friends and I spent the next 24 hours indulging in fantastic (and most importantly cheap!) local street food, touring a temple (although it was quite packed due to the holiday), and stocking up on drinks and snacks for our upcoming 24 hour bus ride to Laos. After one more day of Hanoi, 5 of us boarded an overnight bus headed to Vientiane, Laos. We entertained ourselves with a box of wine and tried to get some sleep even though we were on terrifyingly windy roads going through mountains and what appeared to be dark, foreboding jungle. It wasn't that bad - my biggest issue was with the fact that there aren't reststops in 3rd world countries. If you have to go, you have to get out of the bus in the dark (that is, when the bus decides to rarely stop), crawl over to who knows where and pee next to everyone else who gets off the bus to pee. It's really awkward. In the best of situations, there are "bathrooms" that normally look like something akin to a portapotty. They never have a light and consist of only Turkish toilet (a ceramic bowl on the ground). To add to their unpleasantness, they smell horrible and everything in the small room is usually inexplicably wet.

Our bus arrived at the Laos border about 5am, but we stayed on the bus dozing for a couple more hours waiting for it to open. The border is freezing because it's so high in the mountains, and it was also really windy and drizzly. After waiting in the longest line ever to get our passports stamped, we were motioned another direction outside to get the tourist visa. The next building was at least a quarter of a mile away down a "road" that was mostly slick mud. Large animals kept appearing at us through the mist (cows, water buffalo, roosters, you name it.) When we finally got to the next building, it didn't have electricity so I got a visa by candlelight by two little Laotian men in a cubby. Although I was freezing and exhausted, I was so entertained by this entire spectacle that I could not stop laughing.

We reached Vientiane about 4:30 that afternoon. A group of seven of us decided to go ahead and try to reach our final destination of Vang Vieng so we quickly rented a van and spent the next four hours still in transit. Although our trip was exhausting and excessively long, Vang Vieng made it completely worth it. Vang Vieng has stunning scenery - limestone cliffs and vibrant green vegetation line the Nam Khan river, cows and water buffalo roam the backroads, and the town is full of cheap food stands, guesthouses, exciting riverside nightlife, bungalows, and young backpackers. The highlight of Vang Vieng, and what has put it on the Southeast Asia backpacker's trail, however, is tubing the river. Lining the river are bars (more like bamboo platforms jutting out over the river), ropeswings, mudpits, and ziplines. Our first full day in Vang Vieng, we decided not to tube but just hang out around the madness. We spent the day just hanging out at the bars and watching the boys zipline and ropeswing. The weather was nice, and we had a great time just being outside and meeting new people.

Another highlight of Vang Vieng is the caves and blue lagoon on the outskirts of the city. The following day, our group headed out to the lagoon. The water is shockingly blue and surrounded by lush green plants, mats to sunbathe on, and a ropeswing. We spent awhile just lounging around the water and jumping in and out of the crystal water. High into the mountain behind the lagoon, there is a large cave popular with tourists. We climbed up the rocks behind the lagoon (not an easy feat in flip-flops). There was a little light around the entrance, but I did not have a headlamp and had long abandoned my shoes in favor of being barefoot. Anyway, by the luminous glow of my iTouch, I slowly made my way into the cave. At the part where it gets really dark, however, the girls turned back (we were convinced caving headlampless and barefoot could only lead to injury - and we certainly didn't want to seek medical attention in Laos), and the boys went into the real cave part. Obviously, it took me about twice as long to get down the steep rocks as it did getting up to the cave.

We spent another day on the river in Vang Vieng and another day at the lagoon (the second visit renting a motorbike to get out there - much more exciting than a tuktuk). Our last day in Vang Vieng we also rented a little longtail boat and took an hour trip up the river which was lovely. Water buffalo walked along the river and we passed kayakers (obviously all wishing they had a motor too). The river was very shallow (it's the dry season) so we dragged the bottom in several instances, but luckily we made it up and down the river.

As much fun as I had in Vang Vieng, some of my friends had already headed up to our next destination in Laos- Luang Prabang- by the time I decided to head up that way. I said good-bye to my little bungalow by the river and reluctantly boarded an all-day bus for Luang Prabang. I spent the next eight hours nauseous as our charter bus slowly worked its way through the steep and winding mountainous roads of the Laotian countryside. Just like Vang Vieng, Luang Prabang was completely worth the trek. The town is a well preserved World Heritage site with beautiful French architecture, dramatic wats, and a plethora of orange robed monks walking around under large umbrellas only adds to the city's unique charm. The town is surrounded on both sides by river - on one side the Nam Khan and on the other side the wide Mekong makes its way past the city. The relaxing atmosphere was a nice change from the parties of Vang Vieng.

The first full day in Luang Prabang my friends and I took a tuktuk to the main waterfalls that are about 30 kilometers outside of town. After passing through a bear sanctuary and spying on some black bears, we headed to the bottom of the multi-staged falls. The falls have clear crystal blue pools at the bottom of each stage and all of them are great for swimming. At the highest point is the tallest waterfall which is quite spectacular. We spent the day splashing around the falls and jumping in and out of the ice cold water. The rest of our time in Luang Prabang was spent just relaxing, shopping in the town's fantastic night market, touring the wats, eating (like the delicious riverweed and the not-so-delicious buffalo skin), and I spent an entire day just sitting at a cafe looking at the Mekong while writing postcards.

We left Luang Prabang on a night bus a couple days before our flight to Seoul. We headed to Vientiane (the capital) on another charter bus full of terrifying windy third world roads. After a leisurly breakfast in downtown Vientiane, Sam and I headed to the airport to catch a flight down to Saigon (so much for our plan to do Vietnam top to tail!) Once we reached Ho Chi Minh City, we got a guesthouse and spent the rest of the afternoon at the War Remnants Museum (which is quite moving and well done. I highly recommend this if you are visiting Vietnam). Unfortunately, our vacation came to an end the next morning and we flew out early the 28th to get back to Seoul. Getting home turned into a small fiasco starting with our check-in process in Saigon. China Southern had an issue where they could not check my bag or give Sam and I boarding passes past our layover in Guangzhou, China. Due to more ineptness on their part, my boarding pass to Guangzhou identified me as Ming, Tao. Despite my gigantic backpack and the full sized bottles of liquids it held (including a bottle of snake wine for Dad), I coaxed my way through Vietnamese security without any problems (probably not a good thing.) Unfortunately, upon landing in China, we had to stand in line at immigration (Guangzhou airport is apparently poorly planned and all connecting passengers must be escorted to their gates since it involves passing through immigration and technically entering China without a visa). Immigration took our passports and made us wait in a designated area. Other passengers kept passing us and heading with escorts to their respective gates; however, here I was with lack of onward boarding passes, the fact that Tao Ming and Andrea Vaughn obviously didn't match up between my one boarding pass and passport, a backpack about the size of one of my fourth grade students full of liquids that I had somehow squeezed past previous security, and proving to be a customs nightmare due to the fact I was holding a cobra in a bottle. Anyway, none of this impressed the Chinese, and they held our passports from us for about two hours. Luckily, Korean Air held our flight for us, but I ended up boarding the flight in Guangzhou after literally running to the gate (obviously it was the last one in the terminal) while being paged. As if all the passengers on the waiting plane didn't already hate me, I was "that" passenger with the big bag that didn't fit in the overhead bin, so my backpack had to sit strapped in a seat behind me strapped in like a person. It was so nice to finally get home.

Despite our trip home, I had the experience of a lifetime on this vacation, and I cannot wait to go back to Southeast Asia. I've been lucky to see so much of this region of the world, but so much of it is still unexplored territory for me, and I will definitely be back one day.

Have a great week everyone!
Love,
Andie

Cambodia!

2010-02-02T20:19:00.007+09:00

Children bathing in the river on the boat from Siem Ream to Battambang

View from the boat to Battambang from Siem Reap

View from the boat from Phnom Penh - heading up to Siem Reap

Bamboo Island!

Long boat at Serendipity Beach, Sihanoukville

Angkor Thom. This is where Tomb Raider was filmed...

Bayon. My favorite Angkor temple

Angkor Wat at sunrise

Elephant outside Wat Phnom in Phnom Penh

View of the Museum in Phnom Penh from our guesthouse

The bamboo train. Battambang.

It's Tuesday afternoon, and I am back at work for the first time since mid December. It's unsurprisingly freezing outside, and I am wishing I was back in the sunshine of Cambodia. My friend Sam and I flew out on the 22nd of January to Phnom Penh. We spent the following day exploring the hot, dusty city. We ate breakfast outside on the riverfront watching tuktuks go by us. We explored several wats, saw the Royal Palace, went to several markets, and toured Wat Phnom and the surrounding area where I was yelled at for approaching an elephant and then subsequently chased by a small, but terrifying, little monkey. We stopped for a shaded break at a French restaurant and spent a couple hours lounging on the terrace admiring the bustling street and French architecture and liveliness of the city.

I forgot how much I loved Southeast Asia. For one thing, I strangely love the pungent smell- It smells distinctly of an exotic mix of bus exhaust and incense. The streets are always a little dirty, but incredibly vibrant. There are children, sometimes not even clothed children, running around, street vendors selling anything you could ever want on a stick, unidentifiable and exotic fruit in bunches,friendly but emaciated cows wandering around, and the sights and smells kind of combine to make an atmosphere that is unbelievably alive. Not to mention, it is always amusing to observe just how many people can actually fit on one motorbike at the same time. It was good to be back.

As much as I liked the atmosphere of Phnom Penh, we woke up early the following morning and took a 5 hour boat trip to Siem Reap. We rode on top of the boat- sitting on the floor against a low railing so we would have the best views. This was a highlight of the trip - the scenery was beautiful and the breeze felt wonderful. We passed lots of little wooden boats and shanty villages in the brown water. Getting off the boat in Siem Reap, we were greeted by a lot of tuktuk drivers all competing for our attention and yelling offers to take us anywhere we wanted. We had nothing lined up, but decided to take a tuktuk to the Siem Reap Hostel. We checked in there then headed to lunch. Siem Reap was very dusty, but the town was adorable. We toured a market for a bit and bought more stuff that we didn't have room for in our small backpacks, but that is part of the fun.

Monday morning we decided to do a sunrise tour of Angkor Wat. As the largest religious structure in the world and as (supposedly) the best tourist site in Southeast Asia, Angkor Wat is awesome. It was built in the 12th century during the rise of the Angkor Empire which was arguably one of the most impressive and large civilizations of the time (albeit probably unknown to many westerners). Angkor had a fairly advanced civilization - most notably their irrigations systems were quite impressive. Angkor Wat is the largest of the temples, but it is surrounded by other temple ruins in the surrounding area. You could spend days exploring all of the ruins, but our plan was to power through it in one day.

We arrived outside Angkor Wat about 5:30 in the morning. Our tuktuk driver dropped us off, pointed us in the right direction, and we literally stumbled (by the glowing light of my itouch) through the dark on the uneven stones until we reached a pond toward the edge of the temple where a small group of people stood awaiting sunrise. Finally, the sun came up, and everyone stood in awe at the temple reflected on the still water. We explored the temple then met our tuktuk driver and headed to several others throughout the morning. My favorite was Bayon. I unfortunately was pretty sick on Monday (most likely a combination of horrible sun poisoning and food poisoning), so I didn't get to fully enjoy exploring. There were several wats that I just sat outside on a bench while Sam explored. The stairs on most of them are incredibly tall and steep, and I just didn't have it in me to go inside. I did find it very interesting, however, that tourists are allowed to climb all over the temple ruins. There are no stipulations about what you can and cannot touch or where you can step.

I slept the rest of Monday so I didn't get to see much more of Siem Reap, but I felt a bit better by the time we once again got up before dawn to catch the boat headed to Battambang. I read an article about Battambang months ago, and I was the one very insistent about this unnecessary part of our trip. Unfortunately, I also read that the boat trip is sometimes dangerous and "not for the faint of heart." I've jokingly been told by friends that I have "a weak disposition," but I decided that I really wanted to see the supposedly spectacular views from the boat. This boat was much smaller than the first boat. We again climbed on top of the boat and sat on the floor next to very low little wooden railings. The boat headed out on the Tonle Sap (picture a giant lake) and we realized the boat was noticably lilting one direction. The dreadlocked man sitting next to me informed me the same boat trip unfortunately sank 2 weeks ago so he hoped this one would be ok. I took this time to uselessly double ziploc bag all my electronics. The "captain" stuck his head up and motioned for everyone to get on one side of the boat. This helped a little bit, but the little boat struggled all the way until we reached the river. Once on the river, things were a bit smoother, and the view was amazing. We went through all sorts of floating villages and children waved at us as they bathed and played in the river. We passed boats full of fruit and goods, and everything was unbelievably colorful. The boat "captain" unfortunately ran us into the shore about ten times during the trip and a little man with a paddle would have to come push us off the bank, but luckily the boat never sank.

At Sam's insistence, I bought a ridiculously large straw floppy hat to wear on the boat trip to cover my head, and I covered up in a lovely little cardigan. Unfortunately, my get-up didn't really match the pierced, tattooed, backpacker type sitting on top of the boat with us, and Sam finally laughed at me and told me I looked too "Gone With the Wind." I guess I'll never escape my Southern upbringing.

After 8 hours of sun and motion sickness powder packets, I was more than ready to get off the boat when we finally reached Battambang. Battambang wasn't as charming as I thought it would be. It was still distinctly dusty and Cambodian. We took a tuktuk to a "hotel" where we paid only 3 dollars to stay in what I can only assume now was some sort of strange brothel. We dropped off our backpacks and then headed out to ride the bamboo train. The bamboo train is a way that Cambodians transport goods. The country has a poor rail transport so instead of only moving limited amount of goods, the people created the bamboo trains. If a real train is coming, the bamboo train can simply and quickly be removed from the tracks. It makes perfect sense. You can ride on these little transport devices from one stop to the next for a small fee to the bamboo train owner. The train is small and flat with no sides and you just sit on the bamboo facing forward while a motor on the back powers the thing along. I thought it would go no faster than, say, the train that putters around a zoo. Tourism fail. The little train amazingly darts loudly down the tracks at breakneck speed. Sam and I sat crossleg on the bamboo trying not to smile or talk since we were essentially the windshields in this bamboo train situation. I ate an unhealthy amount of mosquitos and probably ingested more through my nose. After almost hitting a cow that wandered out of the brush onto the tracks and a small boy who threw a stick at us, we finally reached the next station. We then insisted to go right back since it was getting dark and the only thing worse than the bamboo train is probably riding the bamboo train in the dark.

Since Battambang wasn't as exciting as we hoped, we woke up before dawn again on Wednesday and got on a bus headed to the beach. After eleven hours of incessant honking and loud Asian music videos blaring from a motorcoach tv, we finally reached Sihanoukville. We got a nice little room right on the beach and then ate dinner at a really nice little restaurant for my 23rd birthday.

The rest of the week was spent lounging on the beach, eating fresh seafood, watching fireshows, and really just enjoying vacation. I even got a manicure and pedicure on the beach (highly, highly unsanitary. I know) from a little Cambodian lady. The last day I finally even gave into one lady's prodding and allowed her to thread my armpits (not something I recommend. Especially not in public.) We did decide to spend one day on Bamboo Island which is about an hour off the coast of Sihanoukville. We got tickets for a longboat headed that direction, but it was just about the scariest thing I've ever been on (not including the bamboo train). The boat was way too crowded and every time someone stood up, the entire thing rocked quickly to one side and everyone would scream. I was crammed next to a fat and shirtless old man wearing a bandana on top of his head and sporting black fingernail polish. He had a strange looking pipe contraption sticking out of his backpack and Sam asked him what it was since it looked so interesting. He pulled it out, put his mouth on one end of it, blew very hard, and demonstrated that something would shoot out of it. He then added that it was "to kill things." End Conversation. Bamboo Island was quiet and beautiful, and we spent the afternoon lounging, swimming, and eating barbequed barracuda. The Cambodian coast is absolutely beautiful.

This entry would not be complete if I did not somehow try to explain to you the horrible poverty of Cambodia. The country spent almost five years at war in the 1970's only to come out of that facing Pol Pot's gruesome communist regime, widespread genocide (I chose not to go see Tuol Sleng or the Killing Fields), and the loss of many physical and ideological cultural aspects of the country. Only fairly recently has Cambodia begun to come back to life, and the battle wounds of their history are still very apparent. On the boat and bus rides I took through the country, all you have to do is mildly observe to realize that a huge percentage of the population lives in tiny, rickety shacks. Some of them don't even have real walls or roofs, but are partly covered with a tarp. As quaint as they look from a distance, it isn't quite as idyllic when you realize people actually live there. The most disturbing thing to me, however, was the street children and the deformed or crippled children and adults that beg for money. I'll begin with the latter. In Phnom Penh in particular, there were a large amount of horrible deformities that I had never seen before- specifically in small children. These deformities were unlike anything I had ever seen before and looked as if they should be on a TLC documentary. Some of the deformities were on adults, but most of the adults were crippled with missing limbs. I imagine this may have something to do with Cambodia's landmine situation, but I am not sure. I debated a lot about whether to give the deformed or crippled beggars money. I do not know what type of system Cambodia has in place for those with disabilities, but as most countries lacking strong infrastructures have really horrible conditions (if anything at all) for the disabled, I imagine Cambodia cannot offer them a lot. As for the street children- they are hearbreakingly young. I saw one boy who could not have been older than five carrying an infant that could not have been more than a week old. These children seem to be everywhere peering up at you with big eyes. Some of them try and sell trinkets or postcards, but most just put their little hands together and stare at you. I made an immediate decision not to give anything to any child on the street since I feel like that just makes me part of the problem and not any sort of solution to get them out of the situation. However, to be responsible and clear my conscience, I made a donation to M'Lop Tapang (http://www.mloptapang.org), a haven for street children in the Sihanoukville area in hopes that my dollar will go further this way than had I given it directly to the children. Check it out.

Despite the poverty, the trip was a blast and I learned a lot about Cambodia. I am now even more excited to leave next week for my big trip into Laos and Vietnam.

-Andie

Final Week of "Flying With English Wings"

2010-01-21T19:37:00.008+09:00

Skyblue Pegasus, Skyblue Pegaus, What do you see? I see a Yellow Snowman looking at me.

I see a Yellow Snowman Looking at Me!

My favorite result of the "commercials" my class made --"Wow! I'm so happy! Happy gum make funny and smile. Oh! It's Yummy"

Last day of district winter English camp

My students at my school's winter English camp!

It's hard to believe that English camp is finally over tomorrow! After 2 weeks of district camp (Fly With English Wings) and 1 week of camp at my school, I am ready to be finished with camp. I thought camp would be really fun, and while it is definitely really easy, no one, including me, wants to be there. District camp ended with a talent show- I am going to try to post videos above. The kids were really cute! At my school's camp this week, things have been pretty uneventful, but most of my lessons have not gone as planned. The first day, we watched a bunch of commercials, and I put the kids in groups so they could make their own commercials. All of the groups made pictures of an advertisement, most of which did not make any sense. Unfortunately, I think this activity was way over their head (see photos above). I also played Twister (no one understood the rules), and did a scavenger hunt (never do this. Ever.) What I hoped would be a really fun week, has mostly frustrated me. I do not have a co-teacher during camp so explaining directions is really difficult.

The best part of camp, however, was today. We read Brown Bear Brown Bear What do you see? and then I explained (in what I thought was very clear and explicit manner) to pick any animal and any color and make your own page and we were going to make a class book. I even wrote the directions on the board:

-Draw any animal

-Color it

-Write "I see a _____________ looking at me." at the bottom.

I told them to be creative and I thought it would work out well. I was excited to make our book. I should have monitored better so I guess this is partly my fault that I ended up with 3 skyblue pegasus', 4 pink rabbits, 2 playboy bunnies, 1 blue unicorn, and 1 yellow snowman.

Our book now reads something like this: "Skyblue Pegasus Skyblue Pegasus What do you see? I see a playboy bunny looking at me."

These kids literally could not tell me what the weather was like today, but when it comes to skyblue pegasus' and playboy theyre really on top of their english.

I leave tomorrow for a 9 day much needed vacation in Cambodia! I will be sure and let you all about that when I return on the 1st of February!

Love,

Andie

Happy New Year from the ROK

2010-01-12T19:49:00.003+09:00

New Years Eve Celebration in Seoul!

Gardens at Gyeongbokgung in the Snow

Gyeongbokgung in the snow

Rachel and I in the MAC Building at the JSA on our DMZ Tour (We're in North Korea. Kind of.)

North Korean Military looking into South Korea at the JSA during our DMZ Tour

Happy 2010!

The holiday season in Korea was merry, and I finished up the school year on December 18th. In full hibernation mode, I didn't do too much celebrating besides seeing the Nutcracker Ballet at the Seoul Arts Center and having a fun gift swap nuraebong (karaoke room) night with my friends. After the freezing weather in Seoul, I was ready for warmer climate, and I flew all the way home to Georgia on December 20th. Despite the jetlag, being home was absolutely wonderful. I got to visit with family and friends, sleep on a mattress that gives, drive my car, watch tv, use a dryer (no more crunchy jeans!), and eat hummus, Mexican food, and other wonderful things. As much fun as I had at home, it made me realize that I am not ready to leave Korea just yet-- I was anxious to get back. I decided to spend New Years in Seoul, and trekked back across the Pacific on December 29th only to be greeted by snow and ice.

New Years Eve in Seoul was a sight to see. I made the unfortunate decision (at the time I thought this was a great idea), to stand outside near City Hall and watch a gigantic bell ring at midnight. Not only is the bell exciting, but everyone brings packs of roman candles into the streets and at midnight, thousands of people start lighting them. It's really fun, yet terrifying at the same time. Luckily, I survived this Korean version of Times Square involving fire. Before I arrived that evening, I thought New Years Eve at City Hall was a cultural "must-see" for my time here. Granted, it was interesting, but I have never, ever been so cold in my entire life and will never, ever feel compelled to stand outside to ring in a new year in the future. Next year, I plan to be in a cocktail dress watching any "must-see" cultural action from the comfort of a television.

I started District Winter English Camp on January 4th. For two weeks, I am working from 9-12 at a nearby elementary school for a camp with the lovely title, "Fly With English Wings." My co-teacher and I teach the same lesson multiple times, and I've been getting kind of bored, but it is fairly easy and even though I'm only working 15 hours a week I am getting overtime pay. Not a bad deal at all. I'm actually kind of excited for Friday when my group will perform a dramatic interpretation of "Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?" On Monday, district camp will end and I will start a one week English Camp at my elementary school. I am kind of nervous about this, but I think my lesson plans are fun, and I'm excited to see how it goes.

The last week, has been miserably cold in Seoul. On the 4th, the city got more snow than it had seen in a century. As much as I would have favored amping up my hibernation mode, my friend Rachel flew in from Tokyo on the 5th for a weeklong visit. We had so much fun, and I am proud to say that I think I now know the city well enough to show everyone around (so all who read this please come visit me for your free tour). We toured Gyeongbokgung Palace (stunningly beautiful in the snow), shopped the traditional shops at Insa-dong, ate tremendous amounts of Korean food, walked around the City Hall area, the Gangnam area, and Bokchon Folk Village. Saturday, we got up early and went on a DMZ tour. We got to go into the Joint Security Area where we awkwardly took pictures of stone-still ROK soldiers staring at the North and more photos of North Korean military with binoculars looking into the South. We were also allowed into the MAC Building where we technically got to stand in North Korea (kind of). This was followed by a hike down into the 3rd tunnel (one of the many tunnels North Korea dug in attempt to get into South Korea), and an observatory deck that looks into North Korea. The day was really informative, and Rachel and I had a really good time.

I will try and be better about updating my adventures! Hope all of you are having a great start to the new year!

-Andie

"Teacher Angry"

2009-12-08T20:01:00.004+09:00

War Museum

Su, SJ, me, Sunyoung at Sunyoung's wedding!

Happy Tuesday!

It is Tuesday evening in Korea, and I am catching up on a lot of chores and listening to Christmas music. I just got home from grocery shopping which is always an adventure. Every time I grocery shop I have a mild anxiety attack. There are at least 4 grocery stores (do not picture American supermarket- picture dirty, crowded stores with lots of unidentifiable food) and the street market within a 5 minute walk of my apartment. All of the grocery stores have a person whose job is to stand in the aisles with a microphone and YELL deals and sales (obviously, in Korean.) As if boxes stacked up in the aisle, throngs of pushy old women, my inability to read a single label (I buy things based on the pictures on the front. As you can imagine this does not always work out so well), and not knowing where to find most of what I need is not stressful enough, there is someone just shouting at you in a foreign language the entire time. It's kind of funny in a "this actually give me anxiety" way.

Today was a nice day in Seoul- it is still freezing, but it has started snowing which is at least pleasant to watch from the window (some of which are open. I will never understand this, but the explanation usually amounts to "the air is not fresh"). School is winding down for the students, and they are definitely behaving like it is too. Today, I became so frustrated with one 6th grade boy, I asked him to leave the class. I sent him back to his homeroom, and although I'm not sure what they did to him, I gathered he got in big trouble. He also had to come apologize to me later. The rest of the students during the day would walk by me and put their fingers on their head to make little horns and say, "Teacher angry!" Yes, that's right kids, hold on to your hats because Ms. Ban IS angry. Not all of it is like this though- most of my classes in the last week have been fun.

I think it would make my life easier if I knew all the kids names. Unfortunately, I do not have the mental capacity to learn 700 Korean names. I know most of my "favorites," and there are some kids with English names that I remember - such as Transformer, Brain (I'm pretty sure he meant to be Brian), and the best friends in the 6th grade who named themselves Tom and Jerry. They always remind me "teacher, we best friends." Not knowing the names is not usually a big deal, but sometimes it is hard to get a kid's attention. For example, today a girl in the back of my class was just chattering away. After a generic, "everyone be quiet," "Look up here please!" and "listen!" I tried, "Team 5! Team 5!" (hoping someone in her group would tap her), and finally a sharp, "In the back! Be Quiet!" and "You in the blue!" I have to remember sometimes that some of these students literally speak NO English. They don't study, they don't go to "academy" (a topic I will get to in a minute), and, frankly, they do not care. None of the phrases I say mean ANYTHING to them. I have to tap desks a lot to get their attention.

A lot of my students, including the little ones go to what they call "Academy." I knew kids spent a lot of time after school studying with private tutors at these academies, but I did not realize how intense it was until I was practicing "daily routines" with my 6th graders. Many of them wrote on their daily schedules that they are in class until 10-11PM. Some of them don't even go to bed until 1am. I was shocked- they're in the 6th grade. From what I've gathered, "academy" covers many subjects, but I can definitely tell the kids who focus on English and those who do not. Academy supplements the education system here, and I think anyone who can afford it sends their kids to these intense lessons. Although I don't think academy is really healthy for the students, it does not surprise me that Korea is such a technological powerhouse- if you shove education down kids throats like that you're bound to end up with a pretty impressive workforce eventually.

Over the weekend I was fortunate enough to get to attend my advisor's wedding. Korean weddings are very different that American weddings. To begin with, you don't give the couple gifts - you give them money. When you arrive at the wedding, you put your cash in a special envelope with your name on it, and then you turn the envelope in to a man at the door. The wedding was at a wedding hall- apparently, there are a lot of these all over Seoul. There are a lot of weddings going on at one time- all in different rooms. The turnover is fast too- the hall gets you in and out of there in no time. The room we were in looked like a ballroom of a hotel and was full of people. I sat with my coteachers, and we were served lunch. While everyone was eating and talking, the bride walks in and the ceremony takes place while people eat. After a short ceremony, people sporadically get up from their tables to take pictures with the wedding party (No one smiles. I asked why everyone looked so serious and was told "Koreans do not like to show emotions."). I was forced into one picture which I could only gather was "the single girl" photo. It was really uncomfortable because a lot of people were pointing at me - the only foreigner in the room. Anyway, the wedding was fascinating and my advisor, Sunyoung, looked beautiful, and I am definitely glad I attended.

Sunday, I entertained myself for several hours at the War Museum. This museum houses not only tons of stuff from the Korean War, but from all wars in Korea's history. Obviously, this adds up to a lot of stuff since Korea has been occupied by just about everyone over the years. Honestly, those academies must be pretty amazing because after visiting the museum, I was even more impressed with how advanced Korea is for having such a, well, repressive history. They are such impressive people. Pictures of the museum are above.

Have a great week!

Love, Andie

My Fat South African Boyfriend

2009-11-30T19:56:00.002+09:00

Gardens at Changdeokgung

Tour at Changdeokgung

Changdeokgung

Hi all,

It's the week after Thanksgiving, and I am still surprisingly not homesick. Living and working here is still great fun. Last weekend, I spent the weekend shopping in Insadong, a traditional shopping neighborhod. Most of the stuff in in Insadong is handmade and distinctly Korean. Despite the freezing weather, there is so much to see here, and I spent hours going in and out of all the little shops. There is silver, stationary, jewelry, scarves, and knickknacks. I also spent last weekend touring Chongdeok Palace for a few hours. This palace, although smaller than Gyeongbok - the first palace I toured in Seoul - is very similar. Like a lot of things in Korea, its quite simple, but it has exquisite details. That day was also cold and damp, but it was definitely worth the 2 hour walking tour of the grounds.

Thursday was Thanksgiving Day, and in order to celebrate my friends and I went out to try live octopus. A video is below. The octopus isn't technically still alive when you eat it- although it is still moving. The restaurant we went to took a live octopus and chopped it up on a plate then set it on the table. Octopus' are surprisingly strong little fighters- getting the moving tentacles off the plate with chopsticks is difficult because they suction themselves to the plate so tightly. When you chew it up they tentacles also suction to the inside of your mouth. They taste alright, but are very chewy. I'm really glad I tried it; however, I'm not sure I'll eat this again.

Friday night I had a proper Thanksgiving dinner at an American restaurant. A large group of us made reservations and actually got to have turkey, stuffing, and pie. It was amazing. I continued eating my way through Saturday at the Fancy Food Show in Seoul. Although the show, held at a large exhibition hall in a nice area of the city, was mostly coffee, there were some dessert samples and also lots of wine tasting.

Anyway, teaching the last few weeks has been entertaining to say the least. My 3rd and 4th grade class is still a huge challenge, but it is getting better. The kids will not say anything in class though. No matter what I say or do they all just stare at me like they are terrified and have no idea what is going on - I spend the entire 40 minutes mostly talking to myself. I played a game with them on the first day where they had to stand in a circle. After struggling to overcome the blank stares to actually get them in a circle, we played a get to know you game that was about as fun as pulling their teeth. After we finished, I said, "Ok, good job, go sit down now." All 23 little bodies just immediately dropped to the floor and continued to stare at me. I had to go tap a desk and demonstrate that I meant sit in your desk not on the floor.

In my other classes I always have to come up with different games to play. One of my go-to games is Tic-Tac-Toe with words in the boxes. (2 students stand up and one asks a question and one answers it using a vocabulary word in the box then the team gets an X or an O in that box). For some reason, no one, including one of my co-teachers, can wrap their head around tic-tac-toe. Even though they have started calling it "Little Bingo," it still seems to confuse the majority of my classes. Go figure.

My students are amusing, but I don't think any of them can compete with my principal and vice-principals. On Thursday our school's teachers had a volleyball game against the teachers at a neighboring elementary school. The school brought along their English teacher, and I talked to her while we watched the game. My principal, clad in a windsuit, walked up and asked her if she had a boyfriend. He then added, "Andie...she...boyfriend. He...ummm... he South Africa! He verrrry, verrrrry FAT! (make awkward large gestures using windsuit)" He then proceeded to crack up and walk away. I don't even know where he comes up with this stuff. My vice-principal is also hilarious. He doesn't speak any English, but at 4:40 on the dot every day he throws his arm up and points to the door and yells, "GO TO YOUR HOME!" At first it would startle me, but now it just makes me smile.

I miss you all, and I will try to be better about updating my blog!

Love,
Andie

Thanksgiving Dinner in Korea=Live Octopus

2009-11-26T23:32:00.003+09:00

This was my Thanksgiving dinner. I'm not sure I'll eat it again, but it was surprisingly delicious.

<3,>

Happy Thanksgiving From Seoul!

2009-11-26T17:09:00.002+09:00

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! I've spent this week trying to teach the kids here about the holiday. Here is the result:

My class with their I am thankful for leaf projects. Unfortunately, I do not have a close-up of the student who was thankful for "Cake, Food, IceCream, and Money."

This is one of my favorite students. He is thankful for "his job."

The student in blue told the student in gray that "you be thankful that you have air, ok?"

Transformer!

She is thankful for "Funny School." I'm not sure I'm doing a good job haha.

I told the students to label the food in their Thanksgiving books. This student decided to make a dialogue and draw pictures. Love overachievers.

My favorite Thanksgiving book cover. Apparently this is what Thanksgiving looks like in Korea.

Santa Clause?

Everyone loves turkey in a bowtie.

My market!

2009-11-15T11:41:00.002+09:00

Since I moved in a few months ago, I've been meaning to share some photos of the lovely little market I have down the street from my apartment. I walk through it twice a day going and coming from school. Sometimes I like to just go wander through it because there is just so much to look at there. I love it!

Fresh Fish at my market

They sell any vegetable you can imagine. I'm still embarrassingly bad at pronouncing most of it.

The herb and root stall at the market

A view of the market that is right down the street from my apartment and school!

Penpals and Lantern Festival

2009-11-15T11:30:00.006+09:00

Lanterns at the Seoul Lantern Festival!

Zodiac Lanterns at the Seoul Lantern Festival

Colorful 4th Grade Penpal letter!

Hi all,

I hope you are having a good weekend! The weeks are just flying by over here, and I am still having the time of my life. My students never cease to make me smile. I like observing how every single conflict -from a fight to who rolls the dice first in a board game - can all be solved by rock paper scissors. They play this constantly, and are all very competitive about it. It is funny to watch because whoever loses automatically just drops the conflict as if the other person winning rock paper scissors means that the other person was automatically right. It's fascinating.

My students have also all started to wear face masks. Koreans are petrified of getting the "new flu," and they take a lot of precautions. Despite the fact that they all eat family style at restaurants and don't have hand soap in the bathroom, almost everyone in the city walks around wearing a face mask. Some students at school have indeed gotten the flu, but most have been back within a week. My students love to tell me about the powers of Tamiflu and what it does for you if you "eat it." Almost every day this week a student has said something like, "Miss Ban! Miss Ban! So and so had new flu. He ate Tamiflu! Now he (flex muscles, roar, or growl) not have flu. He eat Tamiflu! (Flex muscles again to show strength of Tamiflu)" The masks are easy to make fun of (I actually had a man last week sitting across from me on the subway wearing a full on gas mask.) It's crazy. The masks drive me nuts though in class because I can't tell who is talking when I hear noise and all their little English voices are muffled. Yesterday I saw a child wearing a mask that covered most of his face and his jacket hood was covering his eyes and he walked straight into the wall. I think that's what happens when you cover up too much.

My 4th grade extracurricular class wrote letters yesterday to my friend Christine's class in Atlanta. They were so excited to hear that they would be getting letters back in a few weeks. I was really proud of the letters they wrote- they worked really hard on them and many drew pictures on them with Korean flags or hearts or flowers. For 4th graders who are only learning basic English they did a great job! They were so adorable-- here are a couple samples and there is a picture above:

Dear Cierra and Anthony,
My name is so hun youn
How are you. Nice to meet you Cierra and Anthony
What do you like to do?
I'm learn English.
How do you feel? I'm happy.
What do you like? I'm read a book.
Where are you? I'm South Korea
I am 4th grade
I like food I Birthday is May 5th
What do you birthday?
I hope to talk to you soon
Best, Sohun

#2:

Dear Ziquavious and Bionca
My name is Jae min Kim
How are you I'm happy
Nice to meet you Ziquavous
Do you like listen to music? like listen to music.
Where are you I'm Asia, South Korea, Seoul, GilDong Elementary School 4th grade, English class
I'm Birthday is August 5th
I'm like Food Kim-chi
My dream is Accountant.
I hope to talk to you soon.
Best, Jae min

These letters all just put a big smile on my face! I'm writing more letters to a different friend's class on Monday with some of my older students so I hope that goes well too! School has been going so well sometimes I forget it is even work. The next month will be very busy though. I wrote a proposal to the school a few weeks ago asking for overtime hours in the afternoons (since I only teach 22 hours a week and sit on facebook for the rest of they day). They finally gave me four more classes to teach! I'm really excited, not only for the extra pay, but so I'm not bored out of mind between 1 -4pm every single day. The classes they gave me are extracurricular classes though, and they don't have a topic, so it is up to me to plan lessons regarding anything I want. For next week there will be lessons on penpals, months of the year, and adjectives with MadLibs (for my 6th graders). I hope it goes alright. The worst feeling is when I spend a lot of time planning something that I think will be great only to realize that no one has a clue what is going on and I only get deer in headlights looks from everyone in the class.

Anyway, my week went by quickly with nothing too exciting to report. Lunch at school is still something I am getting used to - the other day I had the unfortunate circumstance of realizing that my "crunchy coleslaw" was staring at me. In the lunch line I got excited to see coleslaw and helped myself to a big spoonful. After one crunchy bite, I realized my food was looking at me. My coleslaw was actually made of tiny little dried fish that still had eyes on it. Gross. Apparently, I need to inspect my food more carefully in the future. Friday night I attended the Seoul Lantern Festival which was amazing! Lanterns from all over the world are there and if you follow the stream through downtown there is a very long stretch of floating lanterns- it was a beautiful scene.

I will continue to keep you all updated on my adventures.

Love,

Andie

Assimilation

2009-11-03T20:00:00.003+09:00

Hi everyone!

Yet another week has passed in Seoul! Last week the weather here was beautiful- chilly, but a nice crisp autumn. Sunday, however, the weather got very chilly followed by yesterday and today only being about 30 degrees. I knew coming over here that Seoul got cold, but I am really not prepared at all for this weather. As in, before yesterday after school I didn't even have a pair of socks. My friend saw me yesterday and started practically throwing winter clothes at me so I wouldn't freeze. I didn't realize winter was such a, well, process. I still haven't bought gloves, and according to my friends, I still don't own a warm enough coat to be living here. My co-teacher asked me today where "is your muff?" Muff?? I replied that I left it at home, and she told me I needed to get one. I later had to google image search this just to figure out to what she was referring. Saturday I will be going shopping in hopes of finding boots, socks, gloves, scarves, and a few thick sweaters. I'm told I should also get some thermals (something else I had to google image search) and a hat. My deep South winters have not prepared me well.

Luckily, yesterday was the first day Gil-Dong Elementary School decided to turn the heat on. The heating system is really bizarre though. The hallways of the school are all linoleum and concrete with rows of windows along one wall. The windows, even in freezing weather, are sometimes left open with the outside doors that are intermittently placed down the hallway. I think the hallway is colder than the outside weather. You have to bundle up to go to the bathroom or walk between classes. The classrooms have one big heat vent that comes down from the middle of the ceiling. It gets pretty warm right underneath it, but the corners of the classrooms and around the doors and windows are still very cold. Today, I wore my coat to teach, and all my kids stayed in their coats throughout their classes. Some even had on earmuffs and gloves. I'm pretty sure it's going to be a long winter for me. Luckily, I did figure out how to work my heat today at home. I have heat under my floor that makes my floor nice and toasty. I'm not sure how much it actually heats up the room, but I'm content right now so I guess it will be ok.

Teaching is still going well. I have been trying to come up with some new games to play since the ones in the book are really stupid. Not only are they really complicated and unhelpful, they all involve cutting out picture cards out of the back of the text book. Inevitably, half these cards end up on the floor or half the class loses their cards and can't play the game. I can't decide how useful this curriculum is to the students. In the 6th grade last week I was teaching the chapter "Will you help me, please?" We have a CD we have to listen to and have the students repeat after it from a dialogue. One of the repeat phrases was, "Honey, will you help me?" This is fine for a native English speaker, but for language learners the Honey in front is really silly. I heard a kid the other day ask another kid, "Honey, will you help me?" I'm also currently teaching a chapter called, "Oh, That's Too Bad!" I'm not sure how I feel about this being the automatic response to every ailment under the sun. Someone has swine flu? A broken leg? A bloody nose? A tumor? Oh that's too bad. I also need to work on their responses to "How are you today?" (A question I ask all the time). Most of the kids automatically say, "I AM SO-SO!!" This is a response, yes, but in any real life situation (aka at a hotel, restaurant, taxi, etc. in an English speaking country) when someone, particularly a stranger, asks how you are, I feel like it is bizarre to just respond "I am SO-SO!!" then walk away. I know I'm supposed to mostly stick to the curriculum, but these kids mostly sound like little automatons, and not only should I teach these kids English, but I have to help them sound less ridiculous doing it too. It's a really fun job.

My school lunches are less fun. I think since it has gotten colder, the food has gotten worse. For example, today for lunch I ate rice, these weird fried potato things slathered in a ketchupy sauce, an tofu/potato soup. Oh, and a scoop of seaweed. Yesterday, I had rice, fishballs (like meatballs made of fish, but way worse than you are imagining), and kimchi. We have soup every day. I usually pass on it because it usually has fish in it, and even the smell of it makes my stomach turn. We also have rice and kimchi every day. I try and eat a little of everything, but it is really hard. At least my efforts are noticed since sometimes my principal will tell me "Andie, you good man. You adjust well to Korean food! Good adjust!" My chopsticks skills are also quite impressive these days. Last week we had spaghetti with hotdog sauce on it (I love "international" lunch days), and I didn't get a drop of anything on me, the table, or anyone seated around me. I like to think eating spaghetti with chopsticks means that I have successfully assimilated into Korea. That's what I'm telling myself anyway.

Have a great week!

Love, Andie

Korean Musical

2009-11-02T21:29:00.003+09:00

This is a short excerpt of the 2 hour musical I went to with my landlords last week. Most of the music was really good, but I had no idea what was going on most of the time. It was very kind of my landlords to invite me to go see this traditional music. Enjoy!

Ms. Ban

2009-10-27T22:35:00.001+09:00

Happy Tuesday and Happy Birthday Mom!

I'm having a good day thanks to a little girl who came up to me after English class today and proudly presented me with two stickers she made for me. They are hot pink with white typed font - one reads "ANDY <3" and the other says, "MS. BAN" Most of the students call me Ms. Bawn because they can't make the V sound for Vaughn (kind of like they cannot make the z sound and I have to repeatedly say "No, you didn't go to the Jew...you went to the Zoo.) , but I had no idea most students actually think this is my name. Anyway, despite the fact that she got both my names incorrect, I thought this was the cutest thing in the world.

On Thursday I had another cute incident when I was finishing class and talking to my coteacher. A little 1st grade girl came in, and she was round as she was tall. To get the full effect she was also wearing white sweat pants and a neon orange tshirt and had her hair in pigtails. She walked up to me and just STARED at me like I was a celebrity and I said "Hello" and she was just staring then goes "HELLO!" and I smiled and go How are you? and she stares for a minute and goes "I LOVE YOU!" while simultaneously making an M with her hands on her head (like you would in YMCA) in order to make a heart while courtseying down and just grinning at me then BOLTED away. She was SO cute I want to bring her home with me and have her do that every hour.

This made me feel much better about myself since I made a 5th grade boy cry on Thursday morning. Sometimes I think I'm probably the worst teacher in the world - these kids really try my patience.

Another thing that has seriously been upsetting me lately is the humiliation of shopping in Korea. A saleslady actually made me cry over the weekend. Anyway, I'm in desperate need of some jeans, boots, and underwear. I went shopping all day Friday, Saturday, and Sunday (in between a rugby game, meeting up with friends, and exploring my neighborhood more). I don't normally think of myself as a big girl, but it's really depressing when I walk into a jeans store and the saleslady says, "oh, we don't make you size," or how in a shoe store I wasn't allowed to try on boots because "my legs big." The worst was at the underwear store where I realized even the XL wouldn't fit me, and the lady told me that I should come back for the 2XL when they get some in stock. I'm thinking that my shopping problem may be cured by the time I come back home due to the fact that I'm apparently way to large to be shopping in Asia. I came home empty handed all three days.

Anyway, last week I also got my first idea of what it is like to live in a country that is technically still at war-- a fact that I normally completely forget. I was just sitting in my classroom waiting on some little 6th grade crazy to finish writing "I will be respectful." fifty times, when all these loud sirens start going off and there are loudspeakers- not just like in the school but coming from outside too with someone shouting in Korean. What. The. Heck. I didn't know if I should like get under something or what... I was like oh no my mom was right I'm about to get nuked by the North.

Alas, no one around me looked the least bit concerned. Apparently they do this for 15 minutes every other month for "practice." You can't go outside and all traffic and movement stops. Why didn't anyone tell me this? (looking back it really isn't a big deal, but I think they still should have mentioned this to me!) When I finally asked what was going on, it was whispered "It's because...you know.... of the North. Andie, we are country in two. You know?" Yes, got it. Ridiculous. I literally thought I was about to get bombed.

Anyway, I hope everyone has a great rest of the week!
Happy Halloween!

-Andie

Fall is here!

2009-10-21T21:28:00.002+09:00

Hi all,

Fall is here in Seoul! I'm currently at school, and I'm freezing. I figured out that there is no central heat in my school or my apartment. My apartment only has floor heat (my floor gets very warm. I don't really understand how to work this function right now. I actually can't turn it off?). My school is like a concrete ice box, and I'm pretty sure I'm going to have to teach all bundled up throughout the winter. It is really bizarre- every day I come in and all the doors and window of the school are wide open. When I go to my classroom, my coteacher always opens the windows too "because the air is not fresh." I think I'm missing something.

The last couple weeks have been fairly uneventful. I've been trying to stay in more often - I waste a lot of money and calories going out to eat, out to coffee, and out to bars. My schedule now consists more of going to school, going to the gym, making dinner, taking a shower, and watching tv, reading, or hanging out with my friend Arianna who lives upstairs.

School has also been fairly uneventful too. I'm still battling the 6th grade- working daily on how to teach kids not to be little punks. It's really exasperating some days because I get so frustrated and want to just yell at them, but none of them have...any...idea....what...I...am....saying...unless....I .....talk....like...this....and...it....is...sooooo...hard....to....talk...like...this....when...a...kid...is...being...absurd...Even....at...this...speed....half...of...what....I...say...is...beyond...their...comprehension...level. Ugh.
I've started making kids stand in the corner, write sentences, or pick up the classroom after class.

There are, of course, the kids that make my day enjoyable. Some of them are absolutely adorable and really nice. There are others who are hilarious. For example, the other day I had words on the board in a large video game controller I made, and when I hit the "button" next to the word, the students had to do whatever the word said. I hit the button "Dancing," and while most kids shyly boogied, I had one kid jump all the way across the classroom singing and dancing to "Superman that Ho." He can't make a full sentence, but he clearly has picked up on at least some American "culture." Most of my kids know completely inappropriate or useless English- I don't know where they get it from, but I catch them giving each other the finger all the time and I had an adorable little 4th grade girl come in with "F*** You" on her binder the other day. I made her erase it and tried to tell her that it was a very bad thing to say, but I'm pretty sure she didn't really grasp what I was saying. Where do they get this stuff?? Most of them can't even tell me what day it is.

My principal, per usual, has also been hilarious this week. Yesterday, he walked over with the vice principal and goes "Andie. every year. we take picture. our school family. you family. you take picture. you choose. today or yesterday."
and I go, "tomorrow?"
and he responds, "today or tomorrow. you choose."
"and i go, "it doesnt matter... today is fine."
and they look me UP and DOWN and say, "tomorrow?"
and I say, "today?"
and they respond, "andie. you choose! today or tomorrow."
and I say, "today."
and they look at me, and my hair and clothes and go "oh ok tomorrow."
Before I left school yesterday he told me to make sure I "look good" tomorrow "for photo." Then he added to "do make-up." I want to say I was offended, but he really means well, and I know he really likes me so I don't think he is being mean. This is my life, haha.

I've started studying Korean in the afternoons. It is not going anywhere fast, and although I can read Korean/Hangul, I have NO idea what 99% of it means. I have no desire to be fluent, I really would just like to be functional. When I speak with Koreans here who only know a little English, they all seem so impressed that I speak English. It's weird- I want to say YOU are the one who is practically bilingual- I only speak my native language and a little French. They need to give themselves more credit.

Anyway, tomorrow I'm going to Seoul Fashion Week to see two designers. I have no idea what to expect. Then Friday I am debating on going on a hiking trip with my school that lasts until about 10pm. I can't imagine this will be fun, but I'm thinking I should probably go anyway. If I don't go, I have the day off and I'm going to put together a Halloween costume with my friend Sam. I'll probably spend the rest of the weekend enjoying more of Seoul- shopping and exploring!

Miss you all!
Andie

For my "mental health"

2009-10-11T20:28:00.002+09:00

Happy Weekend!

First of all, Happy 90th birthday Grandma! I know I'm a day late, but I hope you had a great weekend full of festivities. Please send a picture of your birthday party!

This past week was very low key for me. Monday was part of my 4 day holiday, and the rest of the week just seemed to breeze right by me. I went out for a wonderful Italian dinner on Tuesday with two good friends, spent a lot of time at the gym, and went jogging in Olympic Park with a friend on Thursday. I escaped this week with almost no ridiculous incidents at school; however, Friday afternoon was my first day attending the newly implemented and weekly "school sports day" at Gil-Dong Elementary. All teachers must join one of four clubs - badminton, table tennis, hiking, or yoga. Once a week, your club spends an hour and a half doing the activity. Because I'm embarrassingly bad at badminton and table tennis and I don't want to hike because it's only done by the men in school who speak no English, I joined the yoga club. I did some yoga classes at my gym at school during spring semester, and although I'm not terrible at it, I am of the mindset that it's, for lack of a better term, a load of crap. I usually want to giggle through most of the classes, and I think it's kind of a bad excuse for exercise. Anyway, I digress.

Friday afternoon, I got my yoga clothes on and got ready for the "class." I entered the gymnasium where there was a huge projector with a yoga video on it. The entire thing was in Korean and it only had badly translated English subtitles sometimes. The name of the video was "Diet Yoga." Anyway, we did poses such as "The Awkward Pose," "The Pose that Twists Your Spine," and "The Baby Pose." None of the poses were anything I had ever seen before- most of the time we just contorted our bodies into the most awkward positions possible and had to hold it for minutes at a time. At one point I just started giggling. Luckily, I survived "diet yoga" and made it to the gym Friday afternoon for some real exercise.

The weekend was fun, but it was also kind of hard. Saturday was Homecoming at Wake, and I knew that was going to be harder to miss than anything this year. All week I got emails on the listserve I'm on with all my friends talking about flights into school and I watched as hundreds of facebook statuses changed into something like "Heading to the Dash" or "It's like Christmas!" I'm definitely happy here, but I would have given anything to be in Winston-Salem for the weekend. I almost cried a few times on Saturday, but I went shopping all weekend instead to console myself.

Shopping in Korea is amazing. There are shoe stores and little boutiques everywhere. As in, there are actually alleys that only have shoe vendors selling anything you could ever want on your feet. Fortunately or unfortunately, I have a terrible shopping problem (Dad I'm going to have to start sending you excel spreadsheets of every penny I spend again since I'm not mature enough to budget myself). I've gotten into the bad habit of telling myself that what I buy is "for my mental health." I always think, Oh, I'm far from home! This will make me happy! This is just what I need to stay sane! For example, today I went all the way to Itaewon to an English bookstore and paid an absolutely obscene amount for a stack of English books and magazines. I also broke down and bought two avocados that I found today. So no one goes into shock I won't tell you how much they were, but, obviously, I needed them. For my mental health. I decided I'm going to have to start trying to stay sane in other ways. Shopping here is going to be my downfall.

Anyway, I miss you all. I hope everyone who spent the weekend at Wake had a great trip. I want to hear about it!

Go Deacs,

Andie

Tokyo!

2009-10-05T14:30:00.007+09:00

Imperial Palace grounds with Tokyo Tower in the background

Imperial Palace

Hama-rikyu Gardens!

View of Tokyo from the Mega Web!

The 5 story Pagoda. My favorite!

Senso-ji

Ueno Park
Ueno Park

Hi all,

I just returned home from a great weekend in Tokyo. Before I begin to tell you about my adventures, I want to go ahead and apologize to anyone from my school who may eventually see this post. I know I told you I had a great weekend camping with friends on Deokjeokdo like I did a couple weekends ago. I hate lying to you, and I honestly do feel really bad about it. However, since the principal told me I could not leave the country for fear of getting "the influenza" (despite the fact that I have a multiple entry visa, no stipulations about this in my contract, and most importantly that there were already 2 H1N1 cases at school the day I left), I decided that keeping my mouth shut was the best policy. I do want you to know that I feel terrible about blatantly lying to you. Since I am being honest, however, you should know that I will probably do this every long weekend and holiday for the next year if the same situation occurs. I apologize in advance.

Anyway, Tokyo is an amazing city, and I had a great trip. I arrived a little after lunch on Friday then got on a train to Ueno Station to meet my friend Rachel. For those of you who don't know, Rachel is one of my best friends from Wake and my roommate senior year. She is teaching English about two hours out of the city. I finally met up with her (miraculously) about 3oclock, and we headed to our hotel. Surprisingly, we found it really easily only a short walk away from the station. After checking in to our hotel room (which was really tiny and looked something like the inside of a camper), we went exploring. Unfortunately, it was raining, but we did stumble upon a cool temple in the neighborhood and a graveyard. After this, we headed down to the area of Tokyo with the best restaurants and nightlife. As you can imagine, there was an insane amount of people. I honestly don't think I've ever seen more people in my life- to make it worse, it was still raining and everyone had umbrellas up. We joked that you needed protective eyewear to safely navigate the streets. I got poked and hit with so many umbrellas it is a wonder I am not all bruised in the face. We took our time with our fantastic Japanese dinner then met up with some of Rachel's friends. We didn't stay out too late though since we had so much sightseeing to do the next day.

Saturday morning we were up early and headed (still in the pouring rain) to Ueno Park. The park was my favorite part of the weekend. Around every path there was a cool temple, statue, garden, or fountain. It all had an intensely Japanese feel to it- very simplistic and peaceful. We meandered around for about two hours in the rain before deciding we better move on to other sights. After a short sushi lunch and a quick tour of a large market, we headed over to see a great temple- Senso-ji. The temple is at the back of a long shopping street. The walk was beautiful despite the rain (and less crowded too!) After exploring the temple and the nearby 5 story pagoda, we wandered around the area looking a few more smaller temples and some shopping streets. Done with our plan for the day, we decided to head to a peaceful corner of the city where there were supposedly a lot of temples. Unfortunately, our guidebook failed us and we ended up very confused, but we did find a lovely cemetery that had several important families in it (none of which I remember, but I remember being impressed at the time. Fail, I know). We looked at a few of the tombs and statues, and they were all really simple and beautiful.

Saturday night, we decided to take on the Mega Web- the largest ferris wheel in the world. It took a little talking it up to get Rachel on board with this, but we finally decided to do it. To get to the MegaWeb you have to take the newest subway line which is a monorail that goes around Tokyo Bay. This may have been one of the highlights of my trip haha. I actually recommend that if any of you go to Tokyo you need to just buy a monorail subway pass and ride from one end to the other at night. I'm not even kidding. Anyway, the ferris wheel was really cool- it takes about 16 minutes to go around one time then you have to get off. We went to a late dinner after this- more good Japanese food!

Sunday morning we got up early, put our stuff in lockers at the train station, then headed to catch a boat which would take us down the river to the Imperial Palace. After crossing under 16 bridges of varying shapes and colors, we got off our scenic boat ride and headed for Hama-rikyu Gardens. The gardens are really simplistic- we explored the paths and a temple and looked around at some duck ponds. Starving though, we headed out of the gardens pretty quickly. Tired of Japanese food, we had lunch at "Oktoberfest"- stuffing ourselves with overpriced pretzels and sausages. Later, we explored the palace grounds and gardens then rested in the park on the grounds. I headed for the airport again about 4:30, and successfully made it back to Narita Airport right as my flight was boarding.

Now I am back in Seoul ready to start a new week of teaching. I even did my hair for tomorrow. Last week my principal came over to me and said "Andie come here." He then tells me in all seriousness (as serious as you can be in Konglish) that my hair looks better down. I think it went something like this: "Andie, Uh, Andie, yo hair. Yo hair. It look better, I like better. When it (make lots of gestures around shoulders). What word? Down? Down. Andie. I like better yo hair. Down. Ok? Ok Andie? Down." It was only the second time I'd pulled my hair back for school. Now I'm self-conscious and will probably not do this again. Ohhh Korea.

Miss you all!

Andie

Lemon Tree!

2009-09-30T16:57:00.003+09:00

Today the kids worked on the chapter "What are you doing?" and they were just too cute not to film when we got to the part of the lesson where they sing "Lemon Tree." What a great way to learn about verbs :)

Just another week in Seoul

2009-09-29T16:59:00.004+09:00

Konkuk University area on Saturday night

Hi all,

It's been another great week in Seoul, and I am looking forward to my upcoming long weekend. Last week flew by - I stayed busy every day meeting up with friends after work and enjoying the city. Thursday, FINALLY, was pay-day so I am now a millionaire. Seriously though, after I got paid, I immediately bought a one year gym membership, worked out (FINALLLY!), and then I spent Thursday night celebrating the end of my poverty at a rooftop bar overlooking the city in Gangnam sipping chocolate martinis with my friends. So this was probably excessive, but it was a good celebration for all we have been through together the last month.

To further my happiness, Friday was a school holiday at Gil-Dong Elementary. The calender I got said it was a "Self-Control Day" which no one seemed able to explain to me. I'm pretty sure something was very lost in translation, but I'm not one to complain for a paid day off. I spent the day shopping in my neighborhood for necessary apartment items. I'm now the proud owner of things like spoons, a collander, picture frames, cleaners of every type, and a squeegee mop so I can not hate my bathroom the following hours after I shower. I also got my boxes from Mom and Dad on Friday- finally FedEx delivered them! Friday was pretty much the greatest day ever.... I now also have bedsheets! Thanks Mom!

Friday night I went all the way across Seoul to On the Border for terrible, overpriced Mexican food for my friend's birthday. Saturday, I got up early and met some girlfriends to shop at Myeong-Dong. This area is amazing- its just tons of stores crammed into a few blocks where the streets are all walking streets with tons of vendors for food and junk on them. They actually have one street that is all shoes. It is completely overwhelming, but so much fun. I got a few things, but we left around 3pm because the crowds just got too intense. Saturday night I went to the Seoul drum festival (so cool!) then spent the rest of the night out in the Konkuk University area with friends. It was really fun until five of us waited in line to get into a bar only to be told by the bouncer that we couldn't come inside. When I asked why he said, "because of your skin. You can't come in because you white." I've never been discriminated against, and it really made me angry.

Monday morning I was back at school for another short week. We have Friday and next Monday off for Chuseok (like Korean Thanksgiving). This week I realized I have more kids with crazy English names. Today I had one who had a nametag that said "Hell" and another that said "Black." I still can't call on poor Transformer without cracking up inside. I had the kids brainstorm words that relate to Chuseok for an activity the other day. They had recently learned about utensils and some food items so I thought it would work. Later, I was scanning one kid's sheet of paper and it read, "Game, Song, Money, Grandpa, Grandma, my Babymama" Babymama? Really? You're 10...how did you get that word?

Yesterday, I got in trouble with the principal. I was trying to get off work a little early for an appointment. I have a log I keep when I leave work and I have to get it signed by the principal. Unfortunately, yesterday, I wrote the one line entry in red pen. I'm still not exactly sure of the cultural issues Korea has with red pen and marker, but I think it means something like blood, death or bad luck, and when I took the log to my principal you would have thought I came at him weilding a butcher knife. He FREAKED out on me, and I had to redo my entire log and make a new one. He was like "this is like blood! Andie! No! No! Andie! Red pen! No! Andie, you go get new paper and redo this. This bad. This not good" I probably inappropriately responded, "can I use white out?" And he just took it from me and wouldn't give it back. I think he thought I was trying to kill him or curse him. I was so embarrassed haha.... he didn't speak to me the rest of the day.

Anyway, last night I had a great dinner with a friend at a korean barbeque place that was fantastic. I am going out tonight and tomorrow night too - the food here is just so good! Friday morning I am flying to Tokyo to visit Rachel- one of my roommates from senior year. I am so excited! I will let you all know how the trip goes when I get back next week!

Below is a video of Gil-Dong Elementary School's 3rd Grade Field Day. These kids have been doing this for 2 days now and they line up like this all day. It is hilarious!

Deokjeokdo Camping Trip!

2009-09-21T22:21:00.004+09:00

Our view from the tent in the morning!

Sitting on the beach watching the sunset

Another island we passed on the way to our island

Hi all,

It is a rainy Monday here in Seoul, and fall is definitely here. I have finished teaching for today (I love Mondays- my 4th grader's are really good and so fun to work with!), and I wanted to give you all an update on my weekend in the great outdoors. I stayed in Friday night to get some sleep, and I woke up early on Saturday and headed towards Incheon station (all the way on the west side of Seoul at the verrrry end of one subway line) to meet my friends Jason and Nick for camping. We met up at the station then headed to the Incheon port to catch the ferry for Deokjeokdo Island. A one hour ferry ride and a short bus ride later we were sitting on a beautiful beach looking out into the bay. After some sunbathing on the beach, we swam out to a rustic metal boat out from shore. The water was pretty chilly and once I climbed up on the boat I was freezing. We only stayed on the boat a short time before heading back to the beach. Starving, we headed to find some food. Deokjeokdo, however, is pretty rural. We found one restaurant and had a delicious meal that was incredibly overpriced/they totally saw us coming. Following this, we headed back to the beach to set up camp. The beach was small, but it had basketball nets, volleyball nets, 2 restrooms, and a wide stretch of sand that went back to the woods. We chose a spot at the top of the sand in front of the trees. The sunset was beautiful! The beach, however, rapidly expands when the tide goes out. We had never seen anything quite like it- the water went out for hundreds and hundreds of yards. After it got dark, we walked out in the bay where the water had been over our heads only hours earlier. It was really cool. The metal boat and other fishing boats were just sitting on the sand. We hung out and had some beers on the beach for awhile, but we went to bed pretty early, and all 3 of us crammed in the little tent. One of my friends was nice enough to bring me a sleeping bag, and although the night was kind of chilly, in the sleeping bag all zipped in the tent, we were not cold at all.

We woke up early on Sunday and sat for a little while on the beach before heading to town. Because we spent all of our cash on the outrageously expensive dinner Saturday night and the rural island didn't have any place that took debit cards, the man who owned the restaurant told us he would drive us to the ATM by the port at 9am. After piling in the back of a truck with lots of fisherman, we finally got dropped off at Doekjoekdo's one ATM machine. Finally with money, we found a restaurant and had a good brunch of rice and some sort of weird black sauce. We had about five hours until the ferry left, so we hiked to a little beach we saw and laid out for a few hours. Here, the tide also went out an extreme amount. According to our calculations (aka Jason's footsteps), the tide went out 800 yards. It was nuts, but it was also really cool. The sand was more like mud and it was full of little critters - tons of crabs, snails, fish, etc. We walked out across the flats to the water (which was dirty on this side of the island), then went back and got some sun before catching the ferry back to Incheon.

Although I had a great weekend, I came back kind of pink. It's only my face, and I don't think it is that bad. Anyway, Koreans don't go in the sun -they constantly reapply sunscreen and apply skin whitening creams - tanning is a completely foreign concept to them- they avoid the sun at all cost. All day the students stared at me, laughed and would say "Teacher, Your Face REDDDD." Or they just per usual stare at me as if I am from outer space. The other teachers keep asking me if I was ok. The principal looked at me this morning and sincerely said "Is your health ok? Uh, Andie, what happen your face?" One vice principal goes, "Are you angry today?" You red. You look like fire engine," and the other vice-principal said, "what has happened to you?" I reply, "sunburn," and he goes "NO, it CANNOT BE!" It cannot be! Cannot! Did you have a "cosmetic accident?" No, I say, I am just a little sunburnt. Five minutes later, the school secretary who doesn't speak a word of English tried to give me an icepack for my face. So embarrassing. Late afternoon, the principal walked by, handed me a tomato, laughed, and walked away. I'm pretty sure he was making fun of me. Now I have learned my lesson though, and will not be venturing out in the sun for the next year of my life.

Miss you all!

Happy 21st Sarah!

2009-09-21T07:26:00.002+09:00

These are my 4th grade extracurricular students learning to sing Happy Birthday! Happy Birthday Sarah! Have a great day!

Because nothing says Korea like Obama in a speedo.

2009-09-17T20:33:00.002+09:00

This lovely poster greets me every time I enter the subway, and I think it really says a lot about Korea. I wish I could tell you what it says, what it is for, or why on earth they slapped President Obama's head on this body, but my Korean language skills are still nonexistent. I giggle every time I see this, and I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.