Korean Wedding and Christmas

I've been busy again... I'm sorry I've gotten so inconsistent. Nothing between my last post and Christmas was too exciting. I mostly did A LOT of planning for work and rested up for my after Christmas adventures. I did go to my co-teacher, Se-Jeong's, wedding on the 20th of December though. MUCH different than any wedding I've ever been to. I went with some of the other teachers from the school and they basically took my hand and guided me around the chaos. The wedding took place in a huge wedding hall in Seoul; a 6 story tall building where 10 wedding can all happen at once. We made our way through the ridiculous crowds to find Se-Jeong. She was sitting in this small room perched on a bench wearing her amazing wedding gown and all made up. She looked really beautiful. We took a picture with her and then went upstairs to the buffet floor. We got a ticket and then all the food we wanted. Everyone from all the weddings eats in this huge restaurant, so it was really busy in there. Because the room where the ceremony happens is rather small and there was a lot of family there, we watched the wedding on a TV screen while we ate. It was like watching a movie while eating lunch. I think that part was the strangest to me, haha. So, we watched the wedding while we ate and then went down stairs to take some pictures with her after the ceremony. The ceremony itself lasted all of 20 minutes and I was in and out of the wedding hall in about an hour. Sorry I don't have pictures :(
I had work up through xmas eve, so there was no good in planning to go anywhere for Christmas itself, but I had the next best thing. Rebekah's aunt and uncle are in the military and live in Seoul on the base. They invited Mallory and I (or rather we asked if Rebekah would ask them if we could come, hehe!) for Christmas. So, after work on the 24th we went to their house in Seoul and stayed until the 26th. (I left on a road trip the 26th, which will be the next post with lots of pics!) We went caroling and looked at xmas lights and even got to open presents in the morning because her aunt bought us all scarves (notice the pictures below). They cooked us a big breakfast and it was the closest thing to a homey Christmas I could have asked for. One, because it is like a little American oasis on the base with Taco Bells, English signs and even American plug outlets in the house, but also because we were with a family.

On Christmas day me, Rebekah, and Mallory went to Building 63 in Seoul. It has a great view of Seoul from the top floor. We took some goofy pictures while waiting for our turn.

These last two pictures were from a flea market type thing my friend Lucy invited me to the week weekend before Christmas. That's her in the first picture; Lucy is her English name, I'm not sure what her Korean name is??? Rebekah G. came too and that second picture is us posing with Korean Santa.

10 K

Yesterday I ran a 10K in Seoul with 4 other of my friends. It was so COLD!! It was well below freezing and super windy. I couldn't believe that our race was the day a big cold front came through. I was really nervous it would make it hard to breathe, but I managed and did pretty well for me. My goal was not to walk any and try for under and hour. I achieved both with 4 minutes to spare so I was pretty proud. I wore my metal all last night while I was out with friends. Another cool thing was that not only did we get medals, but they also gave us running suits (the one I'm wearing) and a head band to keep your ears warm. I've run in quite a few different races and usually get just a t-shirt or if I'm lucky a dri-fit running shirt and sometimes a medal. The race was only about $35 and I got all that stuff. We talked about that we might make a little running club and sign up for these runs more often.

Random Pictures

This is just a series of random pictures that I thought were worth putting up.
This picture is from that hiking trip to the South I blogged about before. Some of my friends ate some of the raw sea creatures they have in that region. It was some of the weirdest things. Anyways, I watched as they ate the crazy things, and one of my friends caught me grimacing as I looked on. I thought it was kinda funny.


This is a cake Rebekah J and I got for my friend Mallory's birthday. We called him bear face. It was delicious. I would have baked one, but I don't have an oven :(


This is a picture of my friends Mallory, Leah, and I out to dinner.


A group shot of about 3/4ths of the Ultimate Frisbee league.


Last weekend I went and saw Jens Lekman play in Seoul. I didn't know much about him before going, but I was really impressed and have been listening to his music for the past week.
I went to a couple other shows just last night. One of them was a group called the EV Boyz. They are these 3 guys who are American but live and work here in Korea. They make songs about living here and it's really funny. I put the link to their original and most popular song. I first saw this video during orientation and I didn't understand a lot of it, but after being here for 3.5 months now, it all makes so much more sense. It is really funny and it's all so true. Check it out, hopefully you can understand some of the jokes!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QjBfy_HVoSM

Island hopping

A couple of weekends ago, my friends Rebekah and Candice and I decided to go to an island off Incheon called Jawol-do. We didn't have many expectations, but just thought it would be fun to see something different. We got there to find that it seemed more or less deserted. We started walking down the road when an old man in a truck stopped to try to talk to us. He couldn't understand us and we couldn't understand him, but he motioned for us to get into the back of his truck and he would take us to the "town". So we jumped in and went for a fun ride to the other side of the island (it's not a big island!). When we stopped we realized he worked for a motel and he thought we wanted somewhere to stay. We managed to tell him we weren't interested and walked back up a hill to the main part of the island. We wandered about most of the day and really wanted to ride bikes. We found another motel run by some young people and even though we told them we weren't interested in staying the night, they let us use their bikes. We rode around the island until it started raining on us and we got wet and cold. We went back to the motel with a couple of hours to spare before the ferry left to go back to Incheon, and the people let us use one of the rooms. We had a little picnic with all the snacks we had brought and took a little nap on the floor. The people drove us back to the ferry terminal and we headed home. The day was full of randomness, but really fun beacuse we had no plan and just got into a lot of funny situations. I enjoyed the little adventure.

The first picture is me in the back on the truck. Then riding bikes and playing on the exercise machines with Rebekah. One interesting thing about Korea is that in every park or public area they have these exercise machines. I use them as a playground; They're all over the place. Then there's a picture of Candice and I and Rebekah and I while wondering around he island.

This is a picture of me during that English festival I told you about where I was the host of the Quiz Show. This week we have the school English festivals. One for 3rd grade, one for 4th grade, one for 5th grade, and one fro 6th grade. I will be doing this 4 more times this week! Though on a smaller scale since it is just for my school, there will still be a tons of people and I will be doing not on the Quiz show, but also hosting and doing a speech contest for all 4 of them! yikes!

Short stories

So, remember how I said I've been playing ultimate frisbee on a league or the past couple of months. Well, the season ended last weekend and my team came in second!! which is good because we started off terribly. Not only that, but I got the Rookie of the Year award! I won a candy necklace and a new disc (frisbee). It makes a pretty rad souvenir. I totally didn't expect to win it, so I was pretty excited.


It is officially Fall and, in fact, I think it is almost over; it feels more like winter. The leaves are really beautiful. Here are a couple photos from a park I went to in Seoul and some trees just outside my building. I also took a picture of the outside of my apartment building. All the apartments are high rises. Mine is actually rather small. Most apartments are in communities so there are tons all grouped together.

I told you me and my co-teachers had been hard at work decorating the classrooms. I took some photos to prove it. Also, I help teach an English club every other week for 2 hours. We have pen pals so we posted copies of some of the kids' letters. I thought they were pretty good!

I occasionally get little presents and gifts from the students. Usually they are stickers or maybe a piece of candy, but sometimes it is cooler. There 2 student who entered an English speech contest and I helped them prepare and practice. Neither of the students won, but I got to go watch and they did a really good job I. Anyways, one of the student's mothers came the next day and brought me a cake, a package of strawberries and a bag of persimmons. Don't worry, I shared! The following week there was an English festival for the region. My school had a group of 4 kids that did a Little Red Riding hood skit. Me and my co-teacher helped them practice for weeks. They also did soooo good at the performance. At the festival I was also one of the hosts for the closing "Quiz Show". Basically I made a power point with all kinds of random, kid friendly questions about stuff in English and then I had to go on stage in front of hundreds of people (luckily the majority were children) and read the questions and call students from the audience to come and answer. I was really nervous. I have some friends who took pictures of me and my students, but I don't have them at the moment; I'll get them and post them soon. Anyways, the little girl in the skit gave me a rose after the festival. It was really sweet.

Last 4 random pictures: 1.Last weekend I went to an International Film Festival in Seoul. We watched some short films. They were really impressive and then after the shows the directors, all from different countries, came and talked about their films. It was so cool and I would have watched more, but I had frisbee. 2. It's a picture of me, my friend Casey, and Rebekah. It's from a night we went out and played Wii for a few hours at a bar. I kicked their butts at tennis, but wasn't so good at bowling. 3. A big past time in Korea is karaoke, or as they call in Nora Bong. Anyways, this picture is from a night we went to a nora bong. You rent out the room and you have free range of the songs you want to sing. They also have tambourines you can play. That was my specialty of the night. 4. The last picture is of the Hammering Man. There is EXACTLY the same statue in Basel and as soon as I saw all I could think of was Switzerland, so I had to take a picture of it.

Hiking down south & Halloween

Halloween was on a Friday, so I dressed up for school. I was a penguin. I dressed up as a penguin before when I was doing my student teaching and the kids liked it then, so I figured these kids would like it too. I was, of course, the only person dressed up at school since most people don't even know what Halloween is here. The kids really liked it though and they took pictures of me all day long with their cell phones.

I didn't do much Saturday night because me and a group of friends were heading on a hiking trip the next morning at 7am. We did have a little adventure because we stayed in a hostel in Seoul that night. If we had stayed in Incheon we wouldn't of made it for the bus at 7am in Seoul. It was fun and reminded me of my traveling days in Europe and all the hostels I stayed in there. My friend Casey and I slept in a room the size of a closet with just enough room for a bunk bed.
Saturday we headed way south, like a 4.5 hour bus ride then a ferry ride to Saryando. It was a super beautiful island and we hiked for most of the day before having a big seafood dinner. (I ate side dishes!)

I put a picture of our hotel room too. Here, there are aren't beds; we slept on the floor atop some big blankets. It was actually surprisingly comfortable! Then on Sunday we went to another nearby island called Yeonwado. The weather was great all weekend and there were some amazing ocean views at both places. It took more like 6.5 hours on the bus to get back to Seoul because of Sunday traffic plus about an hour from there to my house, so that was a little rough. But, it was super fun and I know that it is going to be way too cold soon to be outside as much soon.



The long ride home made me restless!