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

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

Irish Pubs & Ice Hockey

Hey everyone, it's been awhile since a proper update, so we'll give one this time with all of the latest shenanigans that we're involved in.

As you've probably heard, North Korea fired artillery shells at a South Korean island that's only 12 km away from North Korea's coast. As it stands now, U.S.A. has just started going through some drills and war games with South Korea, which had been planned well ahead of the attack. North Korea is saying that if these drills go one inch into their waters than they will attack. Since U.S. has a lot of firepower here for these drills, South Korea is not too worried. South Korea really doesn't want a war. When they were originally attacked, they waited for 13 mins before firing one third of what North Korea fired at them and the government is coming under pressure that they should've responded much heavier to North Korea. So that fact might help ease your mind.

Anyway, on to less missile-heavy matters, last weekend I went into Seoul early on Friday because I was going to see a show with other public teachers called "Miso" (Korean for beautiful smile) and my co-teacher told me to go in early and see this traditional palace where they do a ceremony of changing the guards. So I went in early, took some pictures, and did some sightseeing all by myself, a first time thing for me here.




The show was really good and there was no language problem since it was pretty much non-verbal. At the beginning the screen laid out the whole story in multiple languages so you could understand what would be coming. The performers were dressed in the traditional Korean attire and did a lot of dancing and acrobatic moves.


The next night was Ali's co-worker's boyfriend's birthday so we went into Seoul again (well again for me) and went to this Irish pub. The birthday boy's friend owned the pub and had just opened it so we had a private room with lots of free food. We met some new people including a really nice couple, Ryan and Katie, who had been in Korea for a few months and didn't know that many people based on being the only teachers at their school. We hit it off and made plans to do some stuff in the future. Normally, we just kind of like pub food, but being somewhere where you don't eat it much just makes the times you do eat it so much better.

Sunday, we went to a double feature at the movies. "Let Me In" and "The Social Network" both really good. It was a good weekend as we did some stuff we hadn't done before, which had been becoming rare lately.

This weekend had a few more new things for us to experience. First though, we did an American Thanksgiving dinner with our American friends at VIPS, our go-to buffet restaurant in Uijeongbu. They don't have turkey, but there's lots of other Western food which is probably the best you can do down here for a Thanksgiving imitation.

Saturday was a day we'd been looking forward to for awhile: the hockey game. Now no one would think they have hockey in Korea and well... they kind of don't. There's an Asia Hockey League between Japan, South Korea and China comprised of 7 teams. South Korea has 2 of those 7 and neither of them are in Seoul, so hockey is still under the radar in this country. We went to Anyang which is South of Seoul and a 90 min ride on the subway for us. The arena is small and only seats roughly 1200 fans and 20% of those are probably foreigners. We went with 2 of our friends from Ali's work plus Ryan and Katie, the couple we met the week before. It was actually a pretty fun game with Anyang Halla (don't know what Halla is supposed to mean) losing to the Japanese team, Oji Eagles, 3-2 in overtime. Of course the skill level wasn't up to the same standard as the NHL but it wasn't bad. It was a pretty competitive game throughout. Both teams have a few Foreign players as well so you can still boo someone knowing that they probably understood you.


Work is still the same. I have 13 weeks left and 3 of those are vacation weeks, so that should be fun. Christmas is just around the corner so we bought a Christmas tree. Nothing too big. The weather is around -4 as a low and +8 as a high so pretty close to back home.

The not-so-big tree.

Well that's all for now. Bye!

Inception and Impending Holidays!

Hi everyone!

This week nothing very exciting happened. We're both trying to save some money for Japan so we didn't have much planned. Friday night we went to Shabu Shabu (a Japanese food that is many courses - really delicious) because two of our friends, Mallory and Jacquie, had their parents visiting because it's their summer break. It was neat to see some foreign adults for a change and everyone came out to meet them.
Saturday night Ali and I went to see Inception, which we both thought was pretty good. After that we discovered this place called German Haus downtown, which is a huge restaurant and microbrewery - totally different from every other place we've been in Korea. We had some of the beer and nachos and watched some live(ish) music - more like kareoke than live music, really.
I have been really busy working on my summer camp with the students so I worked most of the weekend and Ali went rollerblading and ran errands.
Nothing else is new and exciting. Next week is a 2-day week for me and a 3-day week for Ali and then we're heading to Japan!!! We've planned most of our trip and are getting really excited. We'll write a long blog post when we get back so I'll keep it short today.

Jesse

Spicy Samosas and Surplus Shoes

Hi Everyone!

How’s it going? Not much is going on here. Jesse has been really busy this week planning his summer English camps. Elementary school ends mid-July but many of the kids still come to school as usual and attend ‘camp’, which is basically just school. My kindergarten kids only get a week off in the summer and all my elementary students will still keep attending school. They don’t get much of a holiday.

Anyway, this week it was one of my friend’s birthdays so we all went to an Indian restaurant downtown, which I didn’t know about but which is awesome! So excited that we found another great place to go to. After that some of the girls and I went to see Eclipse – the new Twilight movie. It was lots of fun but poor Jesse was stuck home working.

This weekend Jesse and I tried to save some money because we’ve settled on our itinerary for Japan and it will probably be pretty expensive. On Friday night we went to that Indian place again because Jesse missed it and I was craving the samosas again and then we just walked around downtown and headed home.

Saturday we got up and decided to go ice skating again since Jesse had gone with the other public school teachers last time and I had missed it. It was lots of fun despite the skates being horribly dull. For some reason all the little Korean girls on the ice seemed to literally latch on to me and I spent a good part of the time just dragging a chain of a million screeching girls around the ice and answering the only questions they could ask in English like, ‘What is your favorite season?’ and ‘What is your hobby?’ It was pretty cute.

After that, we consulted our Korean travel guidebook and looked at the list of ’25 things to do while you’re in Korea’. One of the things we hadn’t done yet was go to Dondaemun Market, a huge market right on our subway line. We decided to check it out and ended up having a lot of fun. Dongdaemun is a huge area of the city that used to be the East Gate of the city of Seoul. Dongdaemun actually means ‘East Gate’ and the beautiful ancient gate is still there.

Here is what the East Gate looks like.

Now there are sprawling stalls selling everything you could want in every direction as well as several malls so you can wander indoors and out for hours. It’s open 24 hours a day and has all kinds of crazy foods and products. We each bought some cheap shoes and clothes and strolled by the river. It was a fun day and now we can check that off our list of things we want to do while we’re here.


These are some of the shoe vendors at Dongdaemun Market.


Here are some of the food counters.

Sunday Jesse had tons of work to do so he did that and I cleaned up and ran errands – nothing exciting.

Next weekend we will be going to MudFest – a massive festival in the South where you basically play in all different kinds of mud all weekend. I don’t totally understand what it’s all about but it’s supposed to be amazing.
Anyway, we miss you and we’ll update you next weekend!

Love,
Ali and Jesse

Hot Tubs and Land Mines

Hello everyone. As of today, we've been in Korea for 2 months exactly! Time's gone by fast.

It's been two weeks since our last update because last weekend we really didn’t do anything exciting since Ali had a bad flu. However, it was kind of nice to have a quiet weekend with no travel on overly crowded subway cars.

In work related news, Ali's school just got two new teachers. Hopefully that will lighten her work schedule for May.

Both Ali and I had open classes this week. An open class is when the parents come in and sit in the back of the class to watch the lesson. It's a bit crazy for Ali's school because she has to spend a couple of weeks rehearsing with the kids what the lesson will be like. It's almost like they are rehearsing a script so when the parents come in it looks like the teacher runs great classes and all the kids are learning. My open classes are a bit stressful too but there's not as much prepearation and practicing as Ali's school.

I went out Wednesday night with a bunch of teachers from her school for a ‘guys’ night’ and we went out for galbi (which is what we do all the time) but then we went to a jimjilbong, which was quite a unique experience. A jimjilbong is basically a public bathhouse with hot tubs, cold pools, saunas, areas to relax, and even rooms you can stay overnight. It is separated by gender and everyone walks around nude. Some of the hot tubs were hotter than any hot tub I've ever been in but the Koreans love it. It was a bit weird but an interesting cultural experience none-the-less.

We also went to see Ironman 2 this week (not bad but definitely not a must-see) because it was a rare event that a movie comes out here weeks before it does in America. It only did so that it’s opening wouldn’t conflict with the World Cup but they know Americans don’t care about soccer so they aren’t so worried.

Today was pretty exiting. We got up early and met a tour group going to the DMZ (de-militarized zone). A quick history about the DMZ for those who don’t know: The DMZ is the border between North and South Korea and holds the distinction of being the most heavily fortified and guarded border in the world. It was created just after the Korean war. However, it's not just a line separating the countries, but rather a buffer zone to make sure the countries aren't too close together. It is mostly an untouched piece of land (full of landmines, of course) 4km wide that spans the width of the country. It is very heavily armed and guarded on both sides and there are places where armed men from both countries just stand and stare at each other all day trying to intimidate each other. Because no one is allowed in the DMZ, it’s become a pretty unique wildlife reserve as well with animals able to thrive without human influence. Since the ‘70s, 4 tunnels have been discovered that run under the DMZ and into South Korea from the North. The tunnels are big enough so tens of thousands of men with heavy artillery can get through in an hour for a surprise attack on South Korea. The last tunnel was discovered in ’95 and many suspect there are other tunnels still to be discovered.

Because the DMZ runs across the entire width of the country, there's different areas to check out, and not all of them can be seen in a day. On our tour of the DMZ, we first went to Cheol Won, which is a more quiet area with less tourist fanfare. During the drive up there, there was wire on both sides of the road with signs indicating the presence of land mines so we knew when we were close. Once there, we went to an observation point where you could see posts from both North and South Korea, as well as a large area of the DMZ. Tensions don't seem too high here as we observed South Korean soliders playing volleyball in the distance.

South Korean guard tower at the DMZ

We then went to the 2nd tunnel, put hard hats on, and went right in. This might have been the best part of the trip, walking through a tunnel dug by the North Koreans for the sole purpose of attacking the South. When the South first discovered them and sent people in to investigate, several lives were lost due to hidden mines and dynamite, but it seems like they cleared all those out now. The tunnel was very low (the hard hats saved us several times) and wet but incredibly cool. You obviously can only walk so far before you’re gated off to prevent you from reaching North Korea.

Inside the tunnel


Us inside the tunnel. Looking good...


Ali with a South Korean soldier


Counting the days since the Korean war ended

From there we saw an old Labor Party building where lots of prisoners were kept and tortured under the North Koreans. (it’s been bombed since then and is now only a ruin).

Labor Party Building

We then went to a place called "White Horse Hill" and we were lucky enough to have a Korean soldier who spoke almost perfect English act as our tour guide and fill us in on the history of the location. It was a large hill that was a pivotal point to control since you had a view of where attacking forces would be coming from. Over a period of ten days, control of the hill went back and forth between the North and South 24 times. All of the craters in the hill created from countless bombings apparently resemble a white horse from above. Our tour guide also showed us a building and stated that after losing the White Horse Hill battle, the North Korean general in charge went there and cried for 3 days. I guess there's still some hard feelings over the conflict...

This is a statue of hands praying supposed to honour Korean soldiers's sacrifces.

After we left the hill, we did an 80 min bus ride to Im Jin Gak, a more touristy area of the DMZ. Little did we know that touristy meant carnivals, souvenir shops, art exhibits, parks, kids flying kites, pinwheels, and cotton candy. It was very weird to see how an area so close to a massive amount of weaponry was a place for wholesome family fun. Not to say it was all like that. It was the location of the ‘Freedom Bridge’ – the only bridge between North and South Korea.

Freedom Bridge

After that we got on the bus and headed home. A notable area we didn't see is the village of Panmunjeom. This is a village actually located inside the DMZ buffer zone. Apparently, it's an area where farmers are permitted to live and must observe a curfew. I think it's under watch by the South as the North have thier own small village in the DMZ. Only certain tours are permitted there (I think only US army ones) and a dress code is observed. Maybe another time.

Not much else is new here. Of course you’ve heard about the South Korean boat that was sunk due to an ‘exterior explosion’ but it’s beginning to look more and more like a North Korean torpedo hit it. There are lots of questions here about whether the South will retaliate to send a message or keep it cool to avoid damaging their economy so it’s really interesting being here for all this. Here is an article with more information if you haven't been following the story: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8648970.stm

Next Wednesday is Children's day, a national holiday. I remember in North America when kids would complain about Mother's Day and Father's day and ask why isn't there a Kid's day. Well, they have that here but no Mom and Dad day, instead opting for the joint "Parents Day." It looks like parents got the short end of the stick here. Anyway, it also happens to be Cinco De Mayo, so we have plans to go to a Mexican restuarant and see a soccer game, which should be very cool, so we’ll keep you posted on that. I get the Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday off but Ali has to teach Thursday and Friday.

We’re both still doing well and having a great time!

Love,
Ali and Jesse

Discovering Uijeongbu

So it's been a few days so I'll catch people up on what we've been up to lately.

Thursday night, Ali and I decided to tackle going out to the movies. We knew Seoul showed a lot of English movies but weren't sure if the small Korean city of Uijeongbu would have a large selection. Thankfully, we discovered Uijeongbu has a 9 screen cinema with about 6 English movies to choose from. Most English movies in Korea aren't dubbed, but rather, show Korean subtitles, which is great for us. We saw Alice in Wonderland. A little observation about the movie theatre is that when you buy your ticket you pick exactly what seat you want to sit at on a little touch pad screen - something I hope North America will adopt.

On Friday, we went to see Ali's apartment. It's a little bigger than mine, but Ali's is for two people. She has a roommate from Florida who seems very nice. A bunch of the Native teachers from Ali's school were going out for dinner and we were invited. There's about ten native teachers at Ali's school plus there were another eight or so we met at the restaurant from another school. It seems that every foreigner in Uijeongbu knows each other. The restaurant was similar to the one I went to with my school: no shoes, sit on cushions on the floor, stove rings on the tables, and large dishes of food that keep coming out. I enjoy the local cuisine, but I was worried about Ali since she has much higher food standards than me. The first dish was a spicy soup with vegetables that Ali enjoyed. The second course was Shabu Shabu (sp?). They bring out a huge plate of uncooked meat, where you're meant to to pick up a slice and dip it into the boiling stew to cook it. Next was some noodles and lastly was some rice. Ali found enough food she could eat so dinner wasn't a lost cause for her. Korean culture emphasizes a lot of sharing so many restaurants follow this style of serving big plates of food that people pick and choose from. I love buffets so no complaints from me.

I was surprised by how many Native teachers there were; Uijeongbu is a small city so I would've guessed a handful but there seems to be maybe thirty. The people we met were from English speaking countries all over the world including South Africa, Ireland, England, Canada, and U.S.A. After dinner, we all went to a bar where there were more foreigners - Uijeongbu is home to a very large American military base. The bar was fun and drinks aren't expensive, but you can smoke in a lot of buildings in Korea which can become a bit annoying because the bars are very smoky.

Today, Ali and I ventured out towards Hoeryong Temple, located at the base of a Mountain. There's a lot of mountains and temples around where we live so we decided to finally take a look at the closest one. Hiking and mountain climbing seem like popular past-times as we saw lots of Koreans with backpacks and hiking gear going down the trail. The trail to the temple was only 2km from our house, but it was a pretty steep incline. When we reached the temple, we saw several buildings all amazing to look at. Some of the buildings had lots of small pictures on them full of detail. There was a Korean man that greeted us right away and asked us where we were from. He invited us into one of the temples for a Buddist service. Being a Sunday morning, many people had come for the weekly service. Inside the prayer temple, the wall was filled with hundreds of gold Buddah statues. I wish we could've taken a picture but there was a service going on so it seemed like a faux pas. We stayed for about ten minutes of the service where we sat on cushions on the floor and bowed numerous times.

I begin teaching tomorrow, Ali begins work on Wednesday.