International Costume Day

Each of the classes in our school focused on a different country from around the world. I managed to pull Ireland away from another class in exchange for giving that teacher ideas for activities he could do for Norway. So after a not-so-quick PowerPoint about Ireland, I got to make Celtic knots and claddaghs with my kids!


We started with a Power Point that one of the office staff had (thankfully) made for me. The kids were fascinated by the video of Lord of the Dance. Maybe next time we'll do that, if I haven't dislocated my knees again.



After learning all kinds of tid-bits about Ireland, including the meaning of the claddagh, each kid got an A4 paper (which is about the same size as 11x17) with a heart and crown on it, but no hands. They traced their own hands onto the paper, colored it, and then decorated the crown with sparklies.



After the claddagh, we learned how to tie a Celtic knot. Granted, it wasn't completely accurate (as there was a beginning and an end), but they looked cool and some of the kids were actually able to do it completely by themselves.



It was definitely hard, and I'm glad I stuck with one of the simpler ones! I showed the kids a video of how to tie it, and then we went through it step by step, watching the video, me repeating the action about 6 times, and then going around to the kids to help them if they couldn't duplicate the action.




After an hour with me, the kids moved on to the next classroom with my co-teacher, and I stayed in the room and taught the same lesson to another 7-year-old class.


My kids then went to the Netherlands, where they made pinwheels after learning about the windmills, and learned a traditional dance with Miss Naika.




They came back to my class for lunch, after which we watched part of Darby O'Gill and the Little People until it was time to go to their last class, Norway. Here, they learned about Vikings and trolls, with a rather scary Mr. Chris.


They learned the runic alphabet, and made stones with runes on them (totally my idea).


Then they made open-faced sandwiches, I think they were called something like smorgasbord...



After they came back to my class, we had an hour and a half left of the day. I hadn't gotten a break yet, so we watched almost all of the rest of Darby O'Gill until it was time for them to go home.

And since I dropped my new cell phone in the toilet by accident yesterday, I dropped it off at the shop to get it fixed. Then I headed for a coffee at a cafe close to my house so I could look at my Indochina book and get some more ideas for my trip in December.

September Survival

September's been a rather busy month for me, both in school and out of it.

At the beginning of the month I took a level test to see if I could join the free Korean classes offered by city hall. It was a difficult test (it was all written in Korean), and I was impressed that I was able to get any right at all, let alone the 6/30 score that I received. But because I missed some of the earlier questions (they got progressively more difficult as you went), my level was determined to be beginner. Which would have been fine, except that the beginner classes are only offered on Wednesday from 4pm-6pm (I get off work at 5:30 and the classes are a half hour subway ride from my school). So I asked if I could go into the level 1 class, which is offered from 7pm-9pm once a week. They said it would probably be too difficult for me, but put me in for the October class anyway. I've since decided that I (probably) won't go, as I really do need to start from the beginning. It is, after all, a very good place to start. I asked about the discounted language classes offered by my company, but you have to have been working with them for three months before you qualify. So I think I'm just going to wait it out and start classes in early November.

So on September 5th, the Seoul Drum Festival began. I wanted to see part of it, so I checked out the directions on the website, which were slightly confusing. I started by trying to find it at Children's Grand Park, but after wandering around for almost 2 hours, I got a little frustrated. I did get to see a rather large and diverse park that I'd never been to.

At the entrance to the park.

A large fountain of the type that's rather ubiquitous here. It lights up and plays music at night.

It says "Mushroom Village"

The rather depressing zoo located inside the park.

I'm guessing this was part of a "traditional Korean stories" section...

I called James, who checked the website and figured out that it was actually in Seoul Forest, which was several subway stops away. So I hopped back on the subway and headed to Seoul Forest, which is located in the middle of one of the smoggiest and most industrial areas I've been to in Seoul. Someone has since described Seoul Forest as more of a "twig-land" than a forest, as it's only a few years old.

I've been trying to get a picture of the completely dyed dogs, but the ability escapes me. Apparently you can't tell these two apart, so pink and green tails were in order.

I found the 'forest' to be more of a large park, and not even as large and tree covered as Children's Grand Park.

Part of the playground - kids could climb in and around a giant metal person.

After looking around for about 15 minutes, I decided to try the info booth. Through my broken Korean, I deduced that the festival was indeed in Seoul Forest, but I had missed the performance for the day, and the next one wasn't until the following weekend. So I headed to James' place, since we were meeting up with some friends of his for dinner and drinks.

We went pretty far north on the subway to get some Moroccan food, and then headed to a place called Ka Brew which had just opened. It was 5,000won for all you can drink beer at the pub, which had its own microbrewery.

The price was amazing, but the beer was only average (though certainly better than the bottled Korean beer).

The next weekend one of my closer friends Stephanie had her leaving party. She left to go on a short Euro trip before heading back home to DC, after which she's thinking about moving to Prague to study.

So James and I headed back to Uijeongbu, where we had dinner at an Indian restaurant, tried to go bowling but couldn't because the place was shut down, went to a bar that filled up immediately with all 27 of us, left and went to another bar, around 1am headed for a noraebang for three hours, and then headed to Stephanie's place to crash.

Me, Joey and Lauren at the Indian restaurant called Durga.

The biggest leaving party I've been to - 27 people showed up to say goodbye to Steph.

Steph and James getting up to some crazy stuff in the noraebang

I wasn't immune to the noraebang fever, either. It was 4am though...

So after crashing at Stephanie's, James and I headed back into Seoul because we had a picnic planned with Kathryn at 2pm at Children's Grand Park to celebrate her 30th birthday. Surprisingly, we were able to make it back into Seoul, get showered, changed, pick up food for the picnic, and make it out to the park on time with bright smiling faces.

Melissa, James, me, Fan, and Gary

Our amazing picnic, which lasted for about 9 hours!

Me, Fan, and Gary

There was a wild rabbit who kept hopping about and got rather close. The Koreans seemed to enjoy clapping and shouting at it to try and scare it.

We continued the picnic at Kathryn and Gary's house once it got dark at the park.

After a late night version of the picnic, we headed out to Itaewon for drinking and dancing. I had my first experience with the two hills in Itaewon - Hooker Hill and Homo Hill, both completely apropos names. The two hills are right next to each other, and while looking for the later to go dancing, we went down the former. I'm not naive, but I've never seen a place like this before. I won't go into details, of which there aren't many anyways, but suffice it to say that hill left a definite impression on me. We made it to the dancing street, where we (being James, Gary, Kathryn, Michelle and myself) danced for several hours before I decided to call it a night and head home around 3 or 4 am.


Stephanie had shown up to Kathryn's picnic for a few hours and left her sunglasses there, and I had left a necklace at her house over the weekend, so we decided to meet up for dinner. She wanted to go to Insadong one last time, as there's a vegetarian restaurant there she really enjoyed. Insadong is only about 15 minutes by subway from my house, so I headed there early to do a little bit of sightseeing and shopping (it's a big tourist area).

The face of a sculpture on Insadong street

Our vegetarian meal - yummy!

The railroad tea shop on Insadong street that I wanted to take my parents to. Everything has been taken from old railroad cars.

Steph had been wanting to go to a batting cage for a year. So when we heard the sound of metal bats ringing out, we just had to stop.

On Friday the 18th, my kids had a photo shoot for their yearbook. And yes, it was a photo shoot. We went to Dosan Park, and were there for about 2.5 hours, taking class, individual, and candid shots.

Sapphire class - me, Miss Alison and the kids. I was told my picture would be from the waist up, so since it was Friday I wore jeans. Oh well.

Playing the "cooperation game" so the photographer could get small group shots

The boys examining, and then later killing, the bugs on the ground.

The girls played telephony - an apparent favorite of the photographer.

This could have been a good shot. I think Anika made it a great one.

The next day, I met up with Kathryn, Gary and James for a French photography exhibit, and then an open-air jazz concert at the Seoul Arts Center.

An add for the photography exhibit.

Me, Kathryn and Gary at the Jazz concert

Gary and James

The jazz quartet, and the scenery behind them.

After the Jazz festival, the four of us headed to Habangcheon to a friend of James' house named Jess. Jess had recently moved to a new apartment and gotten her Masters, so she was celebrating by throwing a house party. The four of us waited for almost an hour for two girls I had met online who live in Apgujeong and had just arrived in Korea less than three weeks ago. The six of us went to Jess' house, where we stayed until around 3am, at which time things were beginning to slow down and I decided it was time to call it a night. I went to Uijeongbu the next morning for a doctor's check up, and met up with a former Korean co-worker of mine from EWAS for coffee, and then had dinner with another co-worker before heading back home to Seoul.

I'm also a member of the national council for ATEK. We've recently elected our first president, and we held our first meeting on Skype on Wednesday. It's a fledgling organization, and as hogwan representative for the country, I'm finding it a bit hard to know my role and what I can do to help. I'm doing what I can, though, and I hope over the next year the roles become a bit more defined and I'm able to help a little bit more.

This weekend I plan on going to the Seoul Mass Freeze, and then I'm throwing a housewarming party on Saturday on my rooftop. We'll see how that goes - I'm historically rather bad at throwing parties, but this will be byob so I don't go broke. The rooftop should keep the neighbors from getting annoyed, and I live close to a downtown area, so if people get bored we can always migrate.

And next Monday is International Costume day at school (I'm doing Ireland!), Thursday is a half day, and we have Friday off for Chuseok - the Korean Thanksgiving. I'll probably be going to the islands near Incheon for Chuseok with Gary, Kathryn, James, and Kobus (a friend of James').

Busy, busy!

What has the internet done for you?

I'm walking down the street, heading from my apartment to a friend's house to spend an evening together. We plan on eating dinner out on the town, maybe grabbing a beer at a bar with decent music, and then back to their place for a movie and a possible episode of Blackadder. It's already dark, but I feel perfectly safe walking down the street by myself, my earphones securely pressed into my ears so they don't fall out. I reach a main intersection, and see a cop talking to a guy on a delivery moped, the kind I see all the time doing 40mph or more on sidewalks congested with pedestrians. The moped guy looks unhappy and resigned, and the cop has a little hand-held touch screen device that I'm sure is about to issue the moped guy a ticket. And I think to myself "saw a moped guy getting a ticket, and wondering why we never saw it in Uijeongbu".

image from scootersandthings.blogspot.com

This quote, then, would have been my status update online when I arrived back home, had I remembered to write it. I am constantly thinking of myself in the third person now, thanks to sites like twitter and facebook, and it wasn't until recently that I even realized it had happened.

I used to take "mental pictures" of things that I saw that were of interest to me. I often lose these pictures in my head, partly because I have a bad memory, and partly because they just weren't that important. Now I take mental notes of things that I'm thinking or doing, and think of them in the third person. Things I think other people may want to know about me. Things I think are insightful. Things I just think of.

Often these 'thoughts' never make it to my status updates. I either come across something more interesting, I forget what I thought I would remember, or I finally sit down to the computer and realize it really wasn't that interesting after all. Either way, though, the way I mentally process the world around me has changed. I am more aware now of what I think (though the why is not always readily apparent), and I've become a bit less self-conscious in the process.

How about you?