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!

I will learn to speak your language

So the scavenger hunt was fun, though a little out of my comfort zone. I hadn't realized that it was with a group called Seoul Sisters (Seoul is the capital of South Korea), which is a lesbian group that gets together about once a month or so. We were assigned to teams, so I wasn't with the two people that I came with, and we had to go to 6 different bars around Hyundai and take pictures of certain things in each bar, get someone's number, and ask about something at each bar (for example: a picture of you and a member of the bar staff in a reflection in a mirrored mural, and ask who painted the mural). At each bar we were supposed to buy a drink each to get a stamp on our paper, so we could get the clue for the next bar we were supposed to go to. I ended up ordering cokes, and about halfway through, realized I didn't have to order anything- as long as one of the other girls on my team ordered something they would give us the stamp. So I was 'forced' to wander around Hyundai, which is full of interesting places (there's an 80's bar there that I want to go in next time), and spend about 2 hours with three other people that I'd never met. It was fun for the most part, but asking strange Korean women for their phone number when I had no intention of ever using it was a little awkward.

What I also hadn't realized when we went out is that the metro stops running around 12am or so. Hyundai is about an hour and a half on the metro from Uijeongbu, and about 30 minutes by cab (though 20 times more expensive). So once we were done with the scavenger hunt, we had to stay out until the metro started again - at 5:30am. If I'd known that, I probably would have stayed in bed longer yesterday morning. So we stayed at the first bar until about 4am, where I hung out with some of the other teams and met some other people. But Cherita and I were hungry and tired, so around 4:30 we went to a 24hour KFC and grabbed something to eat, and then Cherita paid for the 30,000 won to get home (about $30). At first the cab driver wanted to charge us 30,000 plus the meter. He said it was because we were leaving Seoul, but we both knew it was the "foreigner tax". But Cherita can speak basic Korean, and managed to tell the guy that she's never paid more than 35,000 to get home, and it was either 30,000 or the meter, not both. Our total at 5:30 am when we left the cab was just under 30,000. 

And then I had my first Korean lesson this morning around 10:30. I had put an ad on Craig's list for a language exchange (I teach you english, you teach me korean, no money involved), and got a reply back from someone. Turns out they were Cherita's teacher that she has lessons with every Sunday morning. So I went to her house this morning where Yong-tae Kim (he's 28 and just got married) worked with me on the basic consanants and vowels, and worked with Cherita on dialogue. So now I'm going to make some flash cards to practice, and maybe soon I'll be able to at least pronounce all the signs I see. 

Once a month

The school takes field trips with the morning classes about once a month. We also go out to dinner, just the teachers and Julie once a month. Today it was both. 

We took a field trip to a light museum, about half an hour from the school. I kept trying to find out details about how the field trips work, but was never really able to get that much information. So aside from not knowing that the kids have partners and walk two by two, I wasn't able to understand the person leading the trip through the museum since she only spoke Korean. This means I couldn't tell when she was asking a question, or when she wanted the kids to be quiet and still, or when she wanted them to move around and touch things. Not only this, but the Korean teachers didn't really seem interested in keeping the kids under control. So the trip started out ok, but about half-way through, the museum had turned into a 3-dimentional walk-through, where the kids were in hospital rooms, classrooms, kitchens and the like, where they were talking about mood lighting, light therapy, etc. So imagine 40 kids in a house, with couches, remotes, bedrooms, kitchens and dining rooms with the table set with fake food, and then a person in a corner trying to talk to everyone.

(This was the first time most of them had seen a real chalk board. And I'm pretty sure most of them don't really know what it is.)

(My lemon class in the little light village that I wouldn't let them run through.)

It took everything in me not to bring everything to a screetching halt and make all the kids sit on their hands and look at the speaker. The only reason I didn't was because I didn't want to interrupt the speaker since I had no idea what she was saying, and I've only been there for two weeks. I did make it absolutely clear to my 6 kids when we got to a place where I could pull them aside that they were to stay with their partners, they were not to run around and their behavior up until now had not been acceptable. And when the other kids were running through the displays when they were supposed to be waiting, mine were sitting quietly on the floor where I could see them. 

After class today, Julie took all of us to dinner. It was absolutely delicious. It was a bit of a walk, but apparently Julie teacher picked it because she knows I don't like spicy food and most of the food was tasty but not spicy. There were about three or four things I couldn't eat, but the rest of it was great. I have no idea how much it cost, but I imagine it was rather expensive, since there were 8 of us, and a lot of food. Afterwards James, Cherita, Gina and I had a beer at a bar down the street from HP and had a rather lively conversation. And then I headed home. All in all a rather interesting day.

They grow their own mushrooms. They're delicious!

My boss, Julie teacher, and the other Korean teachers at the table.

They put beef and about 7 different kinds of mushrooms into this stone pot on the table, and you cook it as you eat. 

And this is what passes for dessert - ice shavings, red beans, fruit, and some sort of powder that you mix up into a slushy type thing. 

What do you mean there's no Tooth Fairy?

Three of my kids had loose teeth today, so I asked them if they were going to leave their teeth for the Tooth Fairy. They just kind of looked at me. So I asked on of the other teachers later if they have the Tooth Fairy here. Turns out that you throw your teeth over the roof for good luck - there's no money involved. How they throw them over the roof when they live in apartment buildings that are 15 stories tall, I have no clue.

I went to the immigration office on Thursday of last week. Lee had gotten my results back from my physical at the hospital (no diseases or any problems to speak of - clean bill of health all around), so we took them to the immigration office to apply for my alien card. I had to give them my passport, that I'll get back in about 2 weeks. In the meantime, they gave me a little white piece of paper that says I'm allowed to be in the country. At least, I think that's what it says. I'm looking into taking a class or doing a language exchange to learn Korean.

Seoul Searching

James and Cherita were going out of town this weekend (they took a guided tour in North Korea), so I thought I would do a little bit of exploring on my own. I took the bus near my place to the subway, and then rode the metro for about an hour until I got to Seoul. I knew that the first English guided tour started at 11:30. I got there about 10:30, so I bought a ticket, and grabbed a bagel and coffee a few blocks away at a Dunkin Donuts (it was the only place with a menu I recognized). On my way back to the palace, I saw this sign:

I didn't go, but I will. How can you not visit a museum with a sign like that??

Then I went to the Changdeokgung, or Changdeok Palace (official site here). It was absolutely beautiful. The tour guide spoke English, but with a very think accent so it was very difficult to understand her. You can't enter the palace unless you take a guided tour Friday through Wednesday, which costs 3,000 won. The self guided tour is available on Thursdays, for 15,000 won. 

This is the entrance gate to the palace, called Donhwamun Gate. It was first built in 1412 and was restored in 1609. It's the oldest remaining palace gate in Korea. Donhwa means to "teach and influence the people". 

Injeongjeon Hall was used for official ceremones and was built in 1405. You can tell it's the most important building because it has the most clay figures pearcher on the edges of its roof of any building in the complex; there are 9 figures total.

This is the gate to the Secret Garden:

It's one of the most beautiful places I've ever been. I'd love to go back on a Thursday and just sit in the garden and enjoy the tranquility.

This is the Buyongji area. It's a pond created on the traditional perception of the universe (that heaven is round and earth is rectangular). the recangular pond refers to the earth, and the round island in the middle symbolizes heaven. 

And this is the Aeryeonji Area. Aeryeon means "loving the lotus" which symbolizes the virtue of a gentleman. There are lotus flowers in the pond, but most of them aren't blooming right now. 

After I left the palace, I wandered down Insadong, which is a giant shopping street. There were some very interesting characters there. I don't know who the top one is, the bottom one is Dalki, similar to Strawberry Shortcake.

After Insadong, I stopped at Yongsan. You know how in department stores there's the little sections for all the different brands of makeup? Imagine the same thing on a scale about 10 times larger, and with electronics instead of health and beauty. And on 7 floors. This was about 1/10th of Yongsan. It took me forever to find somewhere to eat, because it had to have a menu outside with pictures that I could point to when  I ordered, since I can't read hangul yet. I managed to find a place, finally, and got some sort of dumplings that I couldn't finish because there was so much of it. And then I headed home.