Lotus Lantern Festival/Buddha's 2554th Birthday

Ok so I know I haven't written in a bit, but I've been sort of busy...I had open class with my Social 3 class and Jerry's parents came. Last weekend there was a Lotus Lantern Festival. I uploaded pictures on picasa of that...it was pretty and there were just a TON of people. The parade on Sunday lasted about 2.5 hours!

This weekend, Ronald and I took the KTX train from Seoul Station to Busan. We spent Friday there in Busan. The first thing we did was find a jimjilbang (like Dragon Hill Spa I talked about earlier...a bath house of sorts) and take a nap. We'd stayed up all night to wait for the train. So we slept and then wandered around a bit and found the beach and then we went to Beomesa Temple. You just take the metro to the stop and when you come out, it directs you to where the buses take you up to the temple. So it was very easy getting to and from there. This was Buddha's 2554th birthday, so the temple was open 24 hours. When we got there, they were putting on a show and all the lanterns were hung. When it got dark, they lit all the lanterns. Very pretty. What was also cool was that there was a natural spring fountain they drank from...I will put up pictures of this, but we also saw this at the Seokguram Temple. But I'm getting ahead of myself...we stayed to watch the show and people kept adding little bookmark looking things to the lanterns -- each lantern had one and I assume it was some type of prayer.

After the show was over, we headed back down and they started some little fireworks. The line to wait for the bus was HUGE. The bus we did get on got stuck going down because a car was parked badly. What ended up happening was that some men came and they lifted the car and moved it a little bit towards the curb so the bus could squeeze by. After this we went to bed.

On Saturday we went to Gyeonju to see the Seokguram grotto. Something that was apparently very cool that Ronald had seen advertised. It was raining pretty hard, but we took a bus from Busan (pretty nice for 4,000!!!) and then had to take a local bus to another part of the city. I had to go to the bathroom so we got off the bus too early and used public restrooms at a museum. Then we waited about 30 min for the next bus to come and that one took us to the stopping point for the bus that takes people up to the grotto. After taking that bus, the driver told us that the next bus was at 6:20. At this point it was about 5 pm. So Ronald went back to ask about the last bus and that was synonymous with next for the driver. Anyways, we went to see the grotto and it turned out to be just one Buddha. Apparently pretty historical, with a lot of religious significance. But that was it. So we headed back to where the bus was coming -- but it was already 6:24. So basically we missed the last bus. So we started walking down the mountain in the pouring rain. What would have taken literally 2 hours to walk was cut down to about 20 minutes because a nice Korean family stopped to ask if we wanted a ride -- yes. So after this we hopped on a bus to Daegu. When we got there it wasn't raining too badly, and we took a cab to what we thought was a jimjilbang. It wasn't. So we paid a whole lot of money and the taxi driver just took us to some other one.

So we spent the night there and on Sunday we walked around a bit and went to eat at The Holy Grill, a mexican food restaurant. It was really good. Owned by Canadians. After that, it was time to head back to Busan. So we took the bus back, walked around in Busan some more, and spent our last night at a pretty nice jimjilbang. Monday morning we caught a taxi and took the train back to Seoul.

Today one of my students, Sehoon, tied himself to his chair today with his backpack strings. That knot was pretty hard to get out and he couldn't move...pretty funny.

Otherwise work is pretty monotonous. Same thing every day except for today and tomorrow...speaking and writing tests!

Speaking and writing test days are so nice. You take an hour of class to do them. Apparently they took almost the whole class period a few months ago, but they changed the exam. Now, there are four prompts: 2 speaking, 2 writing. We give them an hour, but it doesn't take that long. They hardly know the vocabulary anyways, so they can't really answer the questions.

Teacher's day is on Saturday. What a bummer...why couldn't it be on a Tuesday or Thursday? Those days are so long.

Tickets to Busan have been purchased for the weekend of the 21st. Tomorrow I have to see if I can buy the return via internet...I hope so! If they're all out, I'm screwed. Reena and Mark will be staying here...sorta funny...we're trading cities for the weekend basically. They live in Masan though, which is about an hour away from Busan. We'll be staying in Busan and I think will have a full day to see the grotto, a huge castle/temple thing hanging off a mountain. I sure hope the weather's good.

Today the AC has officially been turned on. It's hot and sticky. Yikes...what am I gonna do when summer is finally here!? I think I'll melt away.

Children's Day

Apparently you cannot upload videos to youtube if you are in Korea. Weird.

Today was Children's Day which meant that there was no school and no academies. Today, we visited the Costco on the eastern side of the city at the Sangbong metro station (line 7). The membership costs 35,000 won a year...pretty nice! So we bought tortillas, chicken, shampoo, cups, cranberry juice, hot sauce, and DR PEPPER! So exciting. Pete was in the apartment the whole day basically because he's job searching and doesn't have a computer so I said he could come over and use one of ours for free. So when we got back we took his photo and he uploaded it to wherever he'd been applying to. Then I made fajitas/burritos, though it's very sad to not have guacamole or cheese.

It was too smoggy/foggy/cloudy to go to the glass cafe on the Dongjak bridge, so maybe Saturday instead...

This past week

Thursday I had the day off because it was a school holiday. It was really nice not to have to go to work on that long day! So Wednesday night Ronald and I met up with Pete to check out Hunter bar and MTB bar.

On Thursday Ronald and I decided we would go to a spa and swim in a pool or hang out in a jacuzzi if available. First we went to the Happy Day spa, but it turned out that they had renovated the whole top floor where the pool was to a wedding ceremony center. So we left there and walked back to the metro. I bought a pair of cheap hiking shoes from the side of the road, and we were off to the next spa! I knew that Dragon Hill Spa had a common area pool because I had been there with Charis, so we headed there to the Yongsan metro stop. We hung out in the pool for a while then decided to get massages and with that came a free hour in their jacuzzi. Or so we thought. We ended up fighting the guy at the end because he had told us the wrong price, which was way more money. So we made a deal and paid a little bit more than we had wanted to.

We were going to go to Cafe Cloud on the Donjak bridge to watch the sunset, but after fighting with the guy at DHS, we missed it. So we went back home.

Friday we went out to Hongik University/Hongdae and went to a hookah bar there that Pete knew of. After that we went to another bar around there but decided to leave after that because there were a ton of foreigners there and most of the places there were clubs. Back in Cheonho we went to California bar that had black lights and after one drink decided to go back home and watch a movie. It was about 5 am at this time, so we watched part of a movie and then went to bed around 7 am.

Saturday we had planned to go to Itaewon to see if we could get Ronald a phone (he needs one with emailing capabilities) so we rolled out around 3 pm. Once we got there it turned out there was only one phone place (this had been a recommendation from a language exchange friend of his) and prepaid phones don't have internet. So we walked around for a bit before heading over to Gangnam. We were going to meet Sheena and her husband there at the metro around 8 pm, so we decided to just go there and hang out for a bit. First we went to a Paris Baguette to have a snack and sit for a while and then we went to the Book and Spa cafe again. There we had hot chocolate and then did the Dr. Fish.

After that, it was time to meet Sheena, so we met up with them and went to a bar nearby. We hung out there for about 2 hours and then they decided they should go because they needed to catch the metro back home. So we did the same thing and ended up catching the very last train of the night at 11:30 (lucky!). We were hungry since we hadn't eaten dinner, so we went to a restaurant across the street and had pizza. Then we went home. We watched another movie and fell asleep.

Sunday we went to Yongsan to buy tickets to see Ironman 2 in 4D, but it turned out Ironman 1 was in 4D or Avatar. So we bought tickets to see Avatar in another theater at 3:15. We were going to meet Charis in her neighborhood to go to a spa for a scrubdown, but she woke up pretty sick, so we had about 4 hours to kill. We bought a cable for the TV and looked around for microwaves, but they were all too expensive. Still the cheapest one we've seen was in E-Mart for 59,000 won. We decided to just go to the metro stop where the movie theater was to look around and hang out for a while. It turned out there was a huge Lotte shopping mall so we looked around for shoes for Ronald and then went to try to find the movie theater. The movie theater was in the Times Square mall. It was enormous. Very pretty architecture too. At the bottom of the mall was E-Mart, so we went there to verify the microwave price and we ended up looking at a little wooden floor table. So after the movie we went back and bought that and a couple of floor cushions to have a place to sit and chill on the floor and eat dinner, etc.

The movie was sorta strange. Your chair moved, and sometimes they would blow out flower smells or a thing would hit your feet. It was pretty hot in there, so we were always glad when a windy part was coming.

We went home after that and made mashed potatoes and omelettes for dinner and went to bed. I think I'm getting sick again, so I'm taking lots of vitamin C and I took some sudafed and advil. We shall see...

I get Wednesday off, so we will be going to Cafe Cloud!

Ok I think my enteritis is almost gone...yay! Yesterday I only had one student in my last class because they are all taking exams in their high schools...yuck.

Tomorrow I don't have to work! Yay! I think Ronald and I are gonna try to check out a hot springs spa...it's like 6,000 won and you can stay there for 15 hours without repaying...nice.

Ok off to work. Yesterday it was raining but the day before was beautiful. I hope it gets some consistency soon...

Boo.

I have enteritis. Stupid bacteria. Stupid food.

I finally went to the doctor yesterday after having bad/sharp stomach pains for around 4 days. What happened was I felt so terrible and Sora asked me what was wrong and I just broke down sobbing as if a family member had died. So she took me across the sidewalk to a shopping center that has an internal medicine clinic on the 4th floor and the doctor diagnosed me with enteritis, gave me a shot in the behind, and sent me on my way. Basically I can't eat anything but rice and steamed veggies. So I'm eating this pretty gross porridge thing they have here...it's basically watery rice and they add finely chopped veggies. Super bland. Just now I added some ketchup to give it some flavor...much better.

*sigh.

Cherry Blossoms

I didn't understand why everyone was making such a big deal out of the cherry blossoms blooming until I realized yesterday or today that they bloom and then the pink/white falls off and you're left with a normal green tree.

So hopefully this weekend I can catch sight of some cherry blossoms!

A dude came today and put up the curtains! They're orange, almost burnt orange, and they clash terrifically with the orange comforter. Nice.

Today and yesterday we gave our classes a speaking and writing test. Super boring and super awful. They can't speak OR write. *Sigh.

Last night Ronald and I tried two new restaurants and they were both busts. Bummer. Tonight we went and had Sangyupsa, Korean barbeque, and it was extremely expensive. Good, but way too pricey. Then we found a spa! Much like the Dragon Hill Spa I went to with Charis a while back, but less fancy. This costs 7,000 to get in, and I have no idea what all they have because we didn't pay. Downstairs where we found the spa there was also a place for bowling! In bowling alleys here, you can't drink. Strange. You can drink on the street, in the metro, in a taxi, but not in a bowling alley? Whatever...

Ok I'm tired so I'm going to bed now. Chao!

HomePlus

The discovery Ronald and I made about HomePlus: it has a good variety of things and a wider selection, but is much more expensive than E-Mart. We took two days to write down the prices of the different items we were eyeing and E-Mart definitely won. Except for the fact that HomePlus gave me a pepper grinder! For that I must never forsake it...

An exciting thing: I bought an internet subscription for a year (am I a grownup yet?) and now have my own cable and we are in the process of searching for a router.

Another exciting thing: Winter is leaving! It's getting warmer, though Seoul still has desert-like qualities of intense temperature drops at night. It also has the oh-so-endearing quality of perpetual gusty winds.

Another exciting thing: we're going on an island bike tour this weekend with Adventure Korea. I hope we meet some cool people

Yet another exciting thing: we bought curtains! They're orange, and the lady is going to install them on the 28th, who knows at what time...(now am I a grownup?). Basically I can't sleep past 6 30 am and have decided to finally remedy this situation.

Ok, one more and I swear I'm done: Tom, the bad boy in my basic class (7 years old) told his mom that he only wants to study with me and he wants to do it forever. ajaj...I felt appreciated...

Ok off to pack my bag for the weekend trip! Chao

Oh, and, they love spam here. They give it as gifts to each other.

Still haven't gotten used to looking up for places to go...I'm still looking at the ground level...must work on this.

E-Mart doesn't have pepper grinders.

Yet another week...

Work is the same, so I won't bore you with trivial details.

On the way home from work I stopped at Gubeundari to go to Home Plus. It's a British company I think and has a lot of TESCO stuff there. I think it's better than E-Mart, so I may be stopping there regularly. I bought quite a bit of stuff there that I've been wanting to get and I found chips and hot sauce! Yay! I need to go there again to get a pepper grinder because the pepper I bought at E-Mart didn't have a build in grinder like I thought it would! What am I supposed to do with pepper balls...so I think I'll stop by on my way home tomorrow after work.

Thursday morning I woke up and went to Insadong and walked barefoot and handed out flyers with two other girls and then I went to work. Boy did my feet hurt! And I was only barefoot for like 3 hours! I can't imagine...

Friday after work I stopped off to pick up a book and a bottle of wine that I bought from a guy on Craigslist. That night I went out to a bar with Pete, my co-worker that I go to Korean class with, and we hung out there and I caught the metro home.

Saturday I woke up and went to meet a dude at a metro station to pick up a toaster oven I bought from him for 20,000 won. So now I have a toaster oven...yay! I want to get a microwave, a blender, and a rice cooker, but the rice cookers here are so expensive! I just want what Meg has from Target that's $15 but they don't ship internationally. Sad day. Anyways, then I met Pete and his friend Mike to grab a drink before Korean class. Well, instead of grabbing a drink we went to a market by Jogno 5-ga...it was really neat. It was inside, but there were no doors really. Sort of like a covered market. In the center of it were a bunch of little stands that you could eat at. I want to go back and explore more! There were also a lot of foreign products there and I found out that they have my perfume there! Yay! The bottle of Jack was still too expensive though, so I didn't get it. Basically, Pete and I skipped class and then walked around with Mike. It was pretty crazy around that area because you could buy whatever you wanted, but it would literally be like 3 blocks of stores selling purely stools or lamps. Very random. Then we saw the puppies and kitties part. I had to leave the store because I almost cried...I thought it was sad to see the kitties there. They seemed to be too young to be away from their mothers and there was one in a store we passed that looked like it had literally been driven crazy from being in the cage. Really sad.

Then we went to eat at samgyupsa which is the thing where you cook your own meat on the grill that's in the center of your table. They put a bucket of coals in a hole in the table and then the grill over it. They replace the grill whenever it gets too dirty. We drank something that I can't remember the name of, but it was rice wine. The same stuff I had with Charis and her friend on the night before Easter. After that we went to a bar called Beer Market that had a good variety of beer and we sat at the table with beer in the middle. There's a hole in the middle of the table where they put different beer and ice so you just take out the one you want to drink. After that we went to a bar by Mike's apartment and hung out there. We played darts and some Koreans sang karaoke. A lot of the songs were sung by the Filipino bartender. Apparently a ton of them come to Korea on entertainment visas and sing in bars and stuff. We slept at Mike's on the futon and this morning we went to Smoothie King and then came back home. I immediately took a shower and I cleaned a bit. I need to organize some stuff and correct the kids' essays, so I'm out!