Fancy Dinners and Farewells

Hi everyone!

So this will be one of our last blog posts - it's crazy all this is quickly coming to an end.

Jesse has officially finished his teaching but he still has one more day to show up at school and sit around doing nothing before he's on holiday. He's getting pretty sentimental about leaving. His student Hansul, the one we went to see in the hospital, gave us both some socks. She's in a wheelchair and not back at school yet but she came in to visit him before he left.

He's got a final farewell dinner for all the departing teachers, with his co-workers tomorrow night and is currently practicing a speech in Korean to make at the dinner tomorrow.

I am not finished until March 14th and am working hard right up to the last second. On March 1st, Jesse will be flying home and I'll be moving in with two of my colleagues, Mallory and Karen. I won't have a computer for my last two weeks so, for my parents, I can't Skype or anything in March.

Last weekend, I had to work Saturday because there was a massive standardized English test and our director, Mrs. Lyu, thought this would be a good advertising opportunity so had all the white teachers had to wear giant 'ECC' sashes like beauty queens, standing in front of the testing centre. Truly humiliating. Saturday night, Jesse and I went out for a Valentine's dinner with two other couples, Tom and his Korean girlfriend Song and Dave and his Korean girlfriend Kijoo.
Dave and Kijoo

It was at a really fancy hotel in Seoul and had great wine and cheese and delicious food and it was nice to get all dressed up and have a fancy night. After dinner we went to Nowon, an area of Seoul, just south of Uijeongbu for our friend Analie's going away party.

On Sunday we went into Seoul again because I made an appointment to get Magic Straight - this hair straightening thing that I heard is a miracle for us frizzy-haired lasses. I was skeptical but it seems to have worked perfectly! It is worth flying to Korea for that alone.

On the actual Valentine's Day, Jesse and I went to Durga, our favorite Indian restaurant and then saw 'Tangled' or, 'Rapunzel', as it's called here.

This coming weekend, my co-worker Rhea is getting married in Seoul to a Canadian, actually, so we're all going to her wedding. It should be lots of fun. This is likely Jesse's last weekend in Korea since he'll probably be going to Hong Kong to visit his friends in his final weekend.

Anyway, that's all that's happening here! It's so close to the end and we're both looking forward to coming home and seeing everyone but it's starting to feel strange that we're doing a lot of things for the last time now.

Hope all is well,

Love Ali and Jesse

Lunar New Year

Hi everyone!

Well, it's Sunday, the last day of our 5-day weekend breaks for Lunar New Year. (Well I had a 5 day break and Jesse had 9 days). Since our breaks started at different times and I had made plans to see my friend from College, we ended up doing different things so we'll break it up into Ali's break and Jesse's break.

Ali's break:

So, my holiday didn't start until Wednesday (Jesse was off from last Saturday). On Tuesday, my students had a Lunar New Year party and all wore their hanboks. I had to work in the 'bowing room', where we taught the kids how to do traditional Korean bows. We definitely had the most boring room but teaching the kids how to bow took about five minutes and then we just had a dance party for the next 25. The kids were so cute in their hanboks.
The kids practicing their bows.


As is traditional for Thanksgiving and New Years in Korea, the kids got me gifts of tuna and spam. It still is very bizarre to get a huge gift box full of cans of spam.


Anyway, on Wednesday, I went in to the foreigner hospital to get my shoulder checked because it's been really bothering me for a few months now. But everything was closed because of the holiday so I just headed back home again. Then, in the afternoon, I went into Seoul to meet my friend Jen, who had come to visit from Changwon, I city in the South of Korea. We had booked a fancy hotel for the night so we just had a girls night in Seoul with a nice dinner.
On Thursday, we had planned to have a spa day in Seoul but, again we forgot that it was a holiday, so all the spa stuff was closed so, instead, we had a major shopping spree and bought all kinds of clothes. That night, we got on the KTX (the high-speed train) and headed back down to Changwon together.
There, we met up with all her friends, who I've met a few times before, and had lots of fun catching up with them. Jen has a really great apartment on a street with tons of foreign bars and restaurants. Changwon is a really cool city. Apparently, Changwon was built to be the 'back-up capital' of Korea, if Seoul was ever to be taken over in a war. It's surrounded by really high mountains and the main street running through the city is super wide so that tanks can drive on it and planes can land there. It's much warmer than Seoul and Uijeongbu and we were walking around with no coats on.
On Friday, we had lunch with Jen's friend Anastasia and then just walked around Changwon, getting a tour of the city. We just hung out and met up with different friends and had a relaxing vacation.
Saturday morning, I had to get a 6am bus back to Seoul so I spent most of Saturday in transit. Saturday evening was our friend Dickie's goodbye party in Seoul so we went there with our friends.

Anyway, my holiday was not very exciting - just relaxing and fun. Jesse packed a lot more sightseeing and culture into his so I'll let him tell you about it now.

Bye all! Happy lunar new year!

Ali



Jesse's Break:

So I had 9 days off starting with the Saturday but didn't leave until the Tuesday morning. My plan was to go to Gyeongju and Andong, both are very traditional cities with lots of tourist sites, and maybe meet some friends (co-workers of Ali) somewhere down there as they were starting their vacation the next day.

After a 5:30 wake up, and a 4 hour bus ride, I arrived in Gyeongju at noon and, with my trusty Korea travel book in my hands, started to make my way towards Tumuli park. One unique thing about Gyeongju is that it's the former capital of the Shilla kingdom that once ruled over Korea and all of their Kings and Queens were buried in these tombs that look like hills now. One of them was even open for the public to go into and see all the gold and treasures that have been discovered in the tomb.




Afterward, I spent some time walking about and seeing other tourist sights in the area such as another park, a pond, and the Gyeongju National Museum. The sights were really beautiful, especially the pond, but this being Winter the water was frozen and there was no flowers. I'm sure it's a hundred times more beautiful in the summer.





I checked into my guesthouse at around 4 o'clock. I had booked it ahead of time based on the description in my travel book. It's traditional style housing with a courtyard and individual rooms overlooking the courtyard. It's even got those paper sliding doors that we usually associate with Japan. It was actually a great place to stay as there was free internet and a kitchen I could use.



Wednesday morning I woke up early and got on a 40 minute bus ride towards the ocean to see Bulguksa temple, which is supposed to be Korea's most beautiful temple. Korea has a hard time in the tourism business compared to it's tourist heavy neighbours Japan and China and there's good reason for that since Japan seems to have done a better job of preserving and protecting their ancient sites and China is just so big that they have more things for tourists to see, plus the great wall. However, this temple was definitely the best that I've seen in Korea and was comparable to some of Japan's. All of the various buildings had incredible statues inside of Gold Buddhas and other things, but I couldn't get any pictures as each building had a Monk inside doing their thing. I could walk around inside though so not a total loss. I was there pretty early so it was very quiet with little tourists around which made it much more enjoyable. Another reason might be because it's a holiday where people go to their hometowns to see their families.



My next stop was Seokguram Grotto, a grotto way up in the mountains. I didn't know what a grotto was (and I still don't) but it was a UNESCO World Heritage site so it seemed like it would be worth the trip. The bus drove up the mountains for a good half hour before we arrived. I wasn't sure if I'd been that high in the mountains before. There were a few more temple buildings and some cool statues but the real highlight was the view of the city below.

My next stop was even further East all the way to the East Sea to check out the "Underwater Tomb of King Munmu." No, that's not the next title of an Indiana Jones movie, but a tomb where King Munmu was put to rest. However, the real thing was not as cool as the name as it turns out it's some rocks out in the sea, where his ashes were spread so that he could come back as a Sea Dragon. In the middle rocks, there's supposed to some sort of tomb, but of course, no one can see it.


I got on a wrong bus and was stuck in some seaside village for awhile waiting for another bus, but this turned out to be a blessing in disguise; I was at the bus terminal getting my ticket to Andong, and just as I was reaching for my wallet, my phone rang. It was my friends telling me that they were heading to Daegu (Korea's 4th largest city) and only an hour bus ride away. So I quickly bought a ticket and was on my way. It's not exactly a tourist city. It resembles most urban Korean cities. One unique thing it does have though is themed streets where all of the businesses sell the same thing. For example, there's herbal medicine street, washing machine street, motorcycle street, hardware street plus some more. So anyone out there who ever wanted to go shopping for washing machines but didn't like the hassle of driving around to all of the different stores, this city is for you. And for anyone else who wants to buy a wide range of goods in their shopping excursions all in one place, well... maybe you're better off in your current city. Anyway, the 4 of us got a motel and went out for the night to different restaurants and bars. One of the guys is dating a girl from Daegu and so she met up with us and showed us around since she was in the area visiting Grandparents.


Thursday morning, the 4 of us took a 2 hour bus ride to Andong, a city that has 2 big cultural draws in the surrounding area: a traditional folk village and a Confucian academy. We were up to see either of them but we arrived at 4 o'clock and there was only one bus left to the folk village so we booked a sleeping area there and arrived just before 7. The folk village is very rural and the people living there get Government subsidies for staying there. There's no regular stores around and people grow some vegetables and raise chickens that they live off of. A lot of the houses had straw roofs. We did some night time exploring and then settled into our traditional room for the night, sleeping on a heated floor.

In the morning (Friday) we did some daylight exploring around the village and saw some pretty cool sights. It's a bit weird seeing nice cars parked in front of straw houses, though.





The guys had to get back to Daegu for 4:00 because they had already booked their tickets back, afraid everything would be sold out. I booked a bus ticket back for 5 o'clock from Andong, so we parted ways. I had some time to kill so I went to check out Andong's other big site, the Confucian academy. It was another half hour bus ride and was pretty impressive. But I had already seen so many temples that I'm sure some of it's beauty was lost on me. Thankfully the 4 of us went to the folk village and not here because while the academy was nice, you were done with it an hour.


Overall, it was a great 3 city-tour vacation and made me realize that there are more tourism sights in South Korea than what I had originally thought. Monday I'm back at school, and another month, I'll be home.

The Fourth Dimension

Hey everyone,

We have been the worst with updating the blog. I feel like our life here is really boring now because we have been trying to save money and we do pretty much the same stuff we've written about for the last 11 months. We're almost finished now - it's so crazy to think we'll be home in about a month!

One cool new thing we did was went to see a movie in 4-D. I think Korea is the only country in the world that offers it and it was pretty cool. Basically, it's a 3D movie but also your seats move around, you get wind and water sprayed in your face, and there are smells released throughout the movie. It was very weird and interesting but I don't think I'd want to see every movie that way - it made me a little motion sick after awhile. We saw Megamind and it was lots of fun.

Not much is new here. Korea's having a record cold winter and we've been freezing. Jesse has just finished his winter camp and has got lots of vacation coming up in the next month. My kindergarten kids are graduating at the end of February so we've begun the incessant rehearsals for their big graduation ceremony.

My contract isn't finished until March 15th, apparently so I will be home about 2 weeks after Jesse will, which is a bummer for me.

Hmm... what else is new?? We finished our Korean lessons with a ridiculously hard test which we all bombed, except Jesse of course, the star pupil.


Class of 2011

Next week has a 5 day weekend for Lunar New Year or Sollal. It's going to be great to have a break. I'll be spending it with my friend Jen from the South of Korea, going to her town and meeting her friends and having spa time and girl time. Jesse will probably tour an area of Korea that's more historical with lots of temples and stuff with some of our guy friends. We'll let you know how that was next week.

Anyway, sorry to be so boring. It's kind of a dull time of year, I think. Hope all is well back home. We'll be there so soon!!

Love,
Ali and Jesse

Beijing!

Hi everyone!

So we just got back from China and had a great trip. This might be a long blog, so let's just dive in.

We started holidays last Thursday and woke up with Ali's computer refusing to turn on so we decided to make a trip to the Mac store in Myong Dong, Seoul. We found out her hard drive is destroyed along with half the keyboard so, instead of replacing it, Ali will probably just need to get a new computer when she gets home. Consequently, we're now sharing a computer so it might be harder to find us on Skype as often.

Friday was New Year's Eve so we just spent the day running errands and getting ready for China and then, in the evening, we got a hotel near Jonggak, Seoul - where all the New Years festivities happen. We had dinner and met our friends at a bar and then braved the freezing temperatures to see the big countdown and concert near Jonggak station (a comparable event to what goes on in Nathan Phillips Square in Toronto). Right after midnight, we headed back to the hotel since we needed to be up at 5 for our flight.

We woke up early and flew to China, meeting our guide Baijing at the airport. He took us right to the Forbidden City. The Forbidden City is about 1 square kilometer big and was built by emperors in Ancient China for their private living quarters. It was pretty amazing and it backs on to Tian'anmen Square. It was surreal being in such a famous place where so many important historical events happened. Mao's giant portrait looked over us as we explored the massive city square.




After that we were taken to a Chinese silk factory where we learned about the silk making process and were pressured to buy things, but said no, having no money. Then we got lunch at a Chinese restaurant (obviously). We forgot how amazing and flavourful food can be!

After lunch we went to the Temple of Heaven, a massive temple on a hill, surrounded by a beautiful park. It was insanely beautiful and great to walk around the grounds.



That evening we went shopping in some crazy story that our guide compared to Walmart but that had almost no similarities to it. It was like a warehouse/maze jammed with tons of people. After that, we went to see an acrobatics show. It was very similar to the one we saw in Jeju-island but with less skilled performers and the theatre was freezing so it wasn't the most enjoyable part.

Then we went to dinner at a Peking Duck buffet. Beijing is famous for the duck and Jesse had some but said it was only okay. I wasn't feeling great, mostly because I was so tired so I didn't eat much and we just went back to the hotel after that.

The next morning, we woke up early and headed to the Great Wall. We passed the Olympic buildings from the Beijing Olympics, passing the Birds' Nest and the Water Cube.
On the way, we went to a jade store. China is famous for it's jade and it's really important in Chinese history. They showed us all the different kinds of jade and how they produce it and we bought ourselves some jade chopsticks for a souvenir.

Finally, we got to the Great Wall. It was just as incredible as we imagined it would be. We went to the most popular tourist spot of the wall, called Badaling, but it wasn't very crowded because it was winter and a holiday. It was really cold up on the wall but, once we started climbing, we warmed up quickly. We climbed past about six beacon towers, taking tons of pictures. It was absolutely amazing.



Then we headed to the Ming Tombs. There are 13 emperors tombs near the Great Wall but only two are opened and they were both under construction so we contented ourselves by looking at a small museum with artifacts from the tombs. It was a little boring but still okay.

After that, we got lunch at another Chinese restaurant. Whoever says American Chinese food is nothing like real Chinese food is wrong. It's pretty much the same, although we never saw spring rolls or chicken balls.

After lunch, we went back to the city and to a tea house. They showed us a traditional tea ceremony but it wasn't in English. After about 10 minutes, we realized they were speaking Russian to us so we told them we were English and everyone was quite embarrassed. We got an English speaking tea lady and heard the whole talk again. It was actually great - we tasted about 7 kinds of tea, all of which were amazing. Both of us loved thing one tea called ginseng oolong and so we bought some as well as some cool mugs to take home.

After that, we were left to our own devices for the evening so we walked to a nearby mall and looked around and got Pizza Hut for dinner, not wanting the challenge of reading a Chinese menu.

The next day we woke up early again and headed to the Summer Palace. It is a massive man-made lake and tons of buildings and gardens that the emperor built for his summer getaway. It was stunningly beautiful in the winter so I can only imagine how incredible it is in summertime. We spent a few hours walking around and exploring the different amazing sights the palace had to offer.




Then we went to a Chinese Pearl store and saw how they collect the pearls, the different types of pearls and we even saw pearls that came from the very lake the Summer Palace was built on. Very cool.

After that we headed into old Beijing to see the Hutongs. A hutong is basically a narrow lane from ancient Beijing that families have lived in for generations. We got a rickshaw tour of the hutongs and got to meet a family who lived there. Their son was in America teaching kung fu and his dad showed us some cool kung fu moves.



After that, we got lunch again, at a Chinese place near our hotel. We had the rest of the afternoon off, as well as the next day to ourselves.

Having seen all the most popular tourist sights in Beijing already, we went to the one we next most wanted to see. It was the Capital Museum, housing tons of important Chinese art and artifacts. It also had a really cool photography exhibit of modern Beijing, which we both really liked.


We met our guide again the next afternoon and went to the airport to head home.

Now we're both back to school but we had a great time in Beijing. Absolutely amazing.

Talk to you soon!
Ali and Jesse

A ROKing Christmas

Hey Everyone!! I apologize in advance because our light was leaking and dripped on my keyboard so my Enter key and question mark don't work so this may be a jumble of unorganized text. First off, MERRY CHRISTMAS all!! Thanks to everyone who sent us gifts and cards and who Skyped us on Christmas morning... you made our Christmas really special. We had a great Christmas. I had been dreading Christmas for months, worried it would make me so homesick to be away from home but all our friends here were in the same boat and we made it really fun, actually. At my school this week, we had a Christmas party with all the kids and Santa came. It was so cute and they were very excited. Christmas here isn't as big a deal as back home. For adults, it's mainly a couples holiday, not a family day so couples may go on dates but everyone else just sort of carries on as usual. Kids get gifts but Santa isn't as big a deal and they aren't nearly as excited as they are back in Canada. We did a secret Santa with my staff and, as I mentioned previously, I got our school's director. I ended up getting him a bottle of whiskey, after much worrying and debating, but he ended up making a reservation for the staff at the most expensive restaurant in Uijeongbu, not paying for anything, and then not even showing up to the dinner, leaving his gift (anti-aging cream) to one of the Korean teachers to pass along. So, he wasn't there for the gift exchange and never mentioned getting a gift or thanking me so... I guess it was fine in the end... On Christmas eve, all our friends got together at our friends', Mallory and Karen's apartment for a Christmas eve party. We all brought different dishes from back home and there was a great meal of roasted chicken, corn, broccoli, carrots, peas, gravy, egg nog, mulled wine, tons of desserts, mashed potatoes, and much more. Everyone was dressed in festive clothes and they had their apartment decorated like crazy and carols blasting. Some of our pals at the party.
Jesse in his most festive gear.

Then, on Christmas morning, we woke up early, excited for opening gifts. Jesse got me tons of DVDs, a Roots hoodie, and a necklace and I also got to open gifts from Alison and my mom, which was great. I got Jesse tons of clothes, some DVDs, a nice watch, and some chocolate. We spent the morning Skyping friends and family, eating shortbread and chocolate and watching a Muppets Christmas Carol. Before we started opening gifts.
All our new presents!
Our cards from home.

Oh! I copied and pasted an 'Enter' so now I can organize this better.... Anyway, these are photos from our Christmas morning.

At about 1:00 we got ready to head into Itaewon for our Christmas dinner. We had made a reservation for 29 at the Wolfhound, an Irish pub that does a huge turkey dinner. Turkey is basically impossible to find in Korea and almost no Koreans have ever tried it. Anyway, we met our friends there around 3 and ate tons of Christmas-y foods and talked and hung out. Around 6:30, we were stuffed and tired so we headed back home and watched Friends (one of my Christmas gifts).

Me in my new hoodie, Jesse in a new shirt having Christmas dinner.

Our friends all chowing down.

It was a great Christmas, all in all, but we missed everyone back home a lot.

Sick travel plans and just plain sick

Hi All,

This weekend, Jesse and I headed into Seoul to Xanadu travel agency and just decided to bite the bullet and book something for our winter vacation. We decided to book a 4-day, 3-night trip to Beijing. It sounds pretty great, actually. We'll fly out New Year's Day so we get to spend New Year's in Seoul with our friends. We'll have our own private English-speaking tour guide and will get to see all the big sights - the Great Wall, Tiananmen Square, The Forbidden City, and tons of other cool stuff. We'll be in Beijing for the whole time. Jesse and I are both really excited for that.
The rest of Saturday we just spent doing our Korean homework and watching movies to try to save some money after blowing so much at the travel agent. That night we went to see the new Narnia movie, which was only so-so.

That night I got a really bad flu and Jesse has been battling a cold for awhile so we both just spent Sunday lying around and feeling sick. So that brings us to our new week.

This week at my school we're not doing anything particularly exciting. Our staff has our Christmas party on Friday night. We did a secret Santa and I, unfortunately, picked my school's owner and director who speaks no English and is one of the top 6 richest men in Korea so the 10 dollar limit will result in a present he's totally thrilled about, I'm sure.

Jesse's busy planning for his winter camp, which is coming up soon. Not much else is new here. We're both getting excited for Christmas and China but that's about it.

Hope all is well back home!
Ali and Jesse

Hospitals and Christmas Countdowns

Hi everyone,

Another week passed and now we're only about 12 weeks from coming home!

There haven't been any significant developments between North and South Korea - it seems to have blown over for now.

School is the same as ever - nothing new to report. The weather here is pretty mild compared to how early December usually is back home so we're enjoying it while it's lasting. We had one light dusting of snow which didn't last long but that's all so far.

This weekend, Jesse and I made a massive subway trek to Gangnam, a city South of Seoul. We went there because one of Jesse's favorite students, Hanseul, was in the hospital and we wanted to visit her. She's 7 years old and needs a walker to get around so, from what we understood, she was getting surgery on her legs to either help her walk better or to prevent further problems. Anyway, the poor little girl is out of school for three months and both her legs were in pink casts when we got there. We brought her some English books because she loves books and speaking English and wants to be an English author one day. It was actually really nice to visit her. She's cute as a button and super smart and we just chatted with her for about 40 minutes about all sorts of stuff. I think she was really happy to have visitors and she loves Jesse, clearly.

After that, we headed into Seoul where our friend, Jen, from South Africa, was having a goodbye party. She's been here for a year and a half and is heading home on Tuesday. It was at an Irish pub called the Wolfhound and it was good to eat delicious food and hang out with everyone for the evening. Jen is awesome and it will be sad to see her go but her replacement was there and she seems really cool.

On Sunday, Jesse did his homework for his AQ course and I did some Christmas shopping - nothing exciting.

We're still doing our Korean lessons but I'm losing patience with myself for not learning it faster. We showed our text books to Hanseul and she said "too easy!" and laughed her guts out.

Anyway, that's about all that happening for us right now. Christmas is right around the corner and everyone is getting into the Christmas spirit. I have my students learning a million Christmas carols and making all sorts of decorations for our classrooms.

I hope all of you are also feeling merry these days,

Talk soon,

Ali and Jesse