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

Birthdays and Blossoms

Hello everyone who's still reading this (likely only our parents),

I hope this blog post finds you all well! We're both doing great here. This week we had some interesting stuff happen.
Tuesday was my birthday and, I must say, it's the first time I've felt really homesick since I've been here but Jesse made it really nice for me. I worked until 8:30 that night but then Jesse took me out for dinner at our favourite restaurant here - VIPS - which is an American chain I'd never heard of but that has a buffet of pasta, pizza, caesar salad, fajitas, and a million more delicious things. Then he had bought me a bunch of clothes that I wanted and had them delivered here so it was a very nice birthday.
Speaking of birthdays, every 2 months at my school, they have a big birthday celebration for all the students that had birthdays in the past 2 months. It happened to be this Friday and was an interesting and hilarious experience. I had 4 students in my main class who had birthdays and they all came to school in their traditional Korean outfits (so cute). I took a video of my students at break time all running around like mad and some of them in their birthday costumes.

Julia, Cindy, Aaron, and Thomas in their traditional birthday costumes.


In this video, my kids are running around on their break and some of them are talking to me. Pretty cute.

The actual 'birthday party' seemed more like a glorified photo op for the parents than an actual party. All the kids who didn't have birthdays sat on the floor and then, one by one, the foreign teacher for each birthday student would take their hand and walk them down the aisle through all the kids while the students sang 'Happy Birthday' for every one of them. Once every student had been walked through and sung to, they sat on chairs behind this massive table spread with tons of delicious food: pizza, cake, cookies, doughnuts, kimbap (Korean sushi-ish thing), fruit, etc. Then, each one got to blow out a candle and have a picture taken. Then, each one held a wrapped gift and card and took several photos with their foreign teacher. And that was the whole birthday party. The food wasn't touched and no party was involved.
Speaking of photo ops, I found my school's website that has photos of all the foreign teachers, which you can check out if you want: http://eccybm.com/KGV7/homepage/pageview/pageview.asp?CateCode=INTRO20#

This weekend was pretty low key. Today we got up early and went in to Itaewon (the foreign district) and went to the Rocky Mountain Tavern (the Canadian bar) to watch the Phoenix-Detroit game. It was neat to watch the NHL game and eat nachos. For a while we forgot we were even in Korea because the bar was full of foreigners and all the wait staff spoke English.
After that, we went down to Yeouido Park to meet Jesse's friend from school (the guy who he had a drink with that night after he went to the noraebong - Lee Sung Ho) at the cherry blossom festival. We met him and he introduced us to a bunch of his friends. We sat on the lawn of the National Assembly Building (I assume this is something like our Parliament Hill) while they ate a picnic - we were too stuffed with nachos to eat. Two of Lee Sung Ho's friends were super nice. One lived in Calgary for a year going to school and snowboarding and one lived in London for a year and is now one of the people who puts Korean subtitles on all the English TV shows and movies here. We sat and chatted with them for a few hours and it was neat to finally be hanging out with Koreans here - we've been mostly hanging out with foreigners so far - and, finally, we had a bit of a nice day and it was beautiful in the sun.

Me on the lawn of the National Assembly Building.

We left them after awhile to check out the cherry blossom festival that was happening this weekend. Cherry blossoms are huge in Korea and they plant cherry blossom trees everywhere and they are absolutely beautiful when they bloom. The streets were packed with people taking pictures with the flowers and going for walks and the street was lined with trees. It was really nice.

Street lined with cherry blossoms

Cherry Blossom tree

Then we just came home and relaxed. And that brings us to now. So, not too much exciting news this week. My school's supposed to FINALLY get a new foreign teacher this week from England (if he can ever get here with all the flights being grounded there), which is good because we're losing two more teachers at the end of the month.

Anyway, that's it for this week. Miss you all!
Ali

Woodstock and a bicycle built for 2

Hey everyone. It's been 2 weekends since the last post, but we haven't done any big exciting trips so it's not like you there's too much to write about. We mentioned in the last post that we would be going to a dinner our recruitment agency was hosting in Seoul. Figuring we'd make a day out of it, we went into Seoul early to a place called Insa-dong, regarded as the trendy artist area. That's because every two steps is an art gallery or an antique shop. It was basically one long narrow street that is very crowded with Koreans and foreigners alike. It was actually pretty fun just to do some browsing in this area, telling ourselves we'd be back when we had more money. There was also public displays of performance art (I guess that's what you'd call it) including one example of a woman in ropes and a guy dressed in North Korean gear with a rifle. It was a little freaky to say the least.

Not a real robot, unfortunately.

We then made our way to the pre-dinner bar which was off the beaten path down some alleys. A lot of the back alleys we've seen in Seoul remind us of carnivals; there's a hundred bright neon signs, the occasional carnival-like game, and always a large crowd of people. We also saw bars called "Woodstock, The Doors, Deep Purple, The Beatles". No luck on Frampton, though. We arrived at Beer O'Clock to see a bar filled with non-Koreans which was a different sight. We met a lot of people from all over U.S.A. and Canada. Any time we meet people from Ontario they usually say they're from Toronto - as do I - so I always ask "Are you actually from Toronto?" One of these days someone will actually be from Toronto and my question will come off as rude. The people we met came from all over Korea. Some came as far as a 5 hour bus ride. Needless to say, I'm glad we live near Seoul. By the time we left for dinner, we probably had 50 people in our group. We even met someone who graduated from University of Guelph the same year as me, and who consequently, knew a lot of the same people as us.



We all walked over to a Galbi restaurant in our very large posse, which made me feel very much like a tourist on a guided tour. I believe Galbi just means "meat" but I could be mistaken, but a galbi restaurant means that you will be at a table with a grill and the meat will be cooked right in front of you. The restaurant was the kind where you take off your shoes and sit on the floor. I'm actually becoming quite fond of this set-up as it seems to create a more social atmosphere over dinner. However, after an hour, my legs are usually cramping up pretty bad and everyone around the table keeps shifting and moving around.

The foreigners.

After the dinner, we went back to Beer O'Clock for awhile before venturing out into Hondae, the trendy night life area of Seoul. Paul, Ali's cousin, called and we met up with him at a club. It was nice to see him as seeing someone you know from back home makes the distance between Canada and Korea seem a little smaller. We hung out for awhile there before eventually calling it a night and venturing home.

April 9-12 Weekend.
This weekend was Ali and I's 3-year-anniversary, so we decided to make it into a big day with adventures in Seoul. We had read about bike tours around Han river and decided that could be fun. The weather was cloudy the whole day, but there was no rain so we decided to risk it. We went to Yeouido park, which is on an island in Seoul. Yeouido park is called "the Manhatten of Seoul" (at least that's one guy on some website calls it) because it's where all the financial buildings are and has quite a nice skyline view. The park was crowded with people walking, picnicing, bikng, and rollerblading. We even saw many couples riding tandem bicycles, which Ali and I thought could be fun. Bike huts are common in this area so we rented a tandem bike for only $6. Those things are not as easy to ride as they look; everytime we would start riding, we would swing from side to side for awhile until we got into a rhythm. There's a long bike trail that goes around the island so we decided we would try that... Not the best idea. I'm not sure why Ali or I never stopped to think that maybe travelling completely around an island on a tandem bicycle would take a long time, but after at least an hour, signs had indicated we had travelled 10 km. Riding a tandem bike is much more exhausting than a normal bike because it is so heavy going up hills and it takes a ton of arm strength to prevent the bike from tipping when you are both pedalling hard. We were pretty exhausted by the ten km mark and the dark rainclouds were looking ominous so we got out our Seoul travel book and looked up the route we thought we on. Well, it seems like going around the island is 38km and at least 4 hours... not what we had in mind. So we turned back, exhausted, both in grumpy moods. Not as romantic and cute an activity as we'd planned.


Me, having lots of fun on the playground.

The start of Cherry Blossums

After the "nice and pleasant" scenic bike ride we went back to Insa-dong because we had read about a tea shop called Yetchatjip that featured birds flying all over the place and a washroom with fish swimming at your feet. We looked down a back alley, saw a sign for 얫잣집 which I read as "Yetchatjip" and went in. They had fruity teas but a lack of birds and fish. After our fruity teas, we left, walked five feet, and went into the actual "Yetchatjip" this time with an English sign that read "Flying Bird Old Tea Shop." I guess that means they don't have chickens. It was really cool sitting in a cramped space with little birds making noise and flying by your heads - our hair got brushed a few times by them. I wondered why more places didn't do this... and then I saw a bird poop on the floor. I forgot about that whole potential problem. It was still a really cool tea shop with great tea and as advertised, a washroom with a fish bowl on the floor.

That big thing is not a fish. It took me awhile to figure that out too.


Not the clearest quality. A new camera is at the top of my gift whish list.

After dodging birds, we went to Itawon, the reverse China-town and went to "Rocky Mountain Tavern" the Canadian bar. We had a pitcher and some delicious garlic bread. We didn't get the poutine, which I'm not a fan of, but like knowing it's available. They had a hockey schedule posted of when they show NHL games. Most of them aren't live, as the time zone difference of 13 hours would make the average 7pm game start at 8am, but with hockey playoffs around the corner, I might want to make my way down there to watch a game. We wandered around Itawon for awhile before settling on an Italian restaurant. It seems that every foreign restaurant has Koreans working there who speak perfect English. I would think that many Koreans with fluent English would go into business since that's why the government wants kids to learn English, but hey, as long as we can be understood when we ask for parmesan cheese - a rare item here - I'm not complaining. We caught the subway home, but didn't make it all the way to our stop; the subway stopped at 10:30pm which seems a bit early for a Saturday. We cabbed it the rest of the way and that was the end of our 3-year celebration.

In school-related news, my job is going well with no real changes. Ali, however, has had some drama at work with the recent departure of a teacher. A girl who'd been here 7 months kind of packed her bags and went home without any warning. Turns out, she had some criticisms with how school is taught in the Hogwon system but Ali is suspicious that it was more because she missed her boyfriend and a bunch of friends were having weddings coming up she wanted to go to. Anyway, Ali's work schedule will probably continue to be a bit hectic until new teachers arrive.

That's it for now. Next weekend we might go to a Cherry Blossum festival in Yeouido park since it's almost their peak season.

재시 (Jesse)
알리 (Ali)

Dancing Queen and Smashed Motorcycles

Hey everyone!

So I'll just update you on what's been up since Jesse's last post. First off, we got our new April schedules and mine got MUCH better. I have started teaching two new kindergarten classes in addition to my original class and they are both great. I don't have to work until 8 any night and finish at 7 two nights, 6 two nights, and 5 on Thursdays. I still have the terrible class but it's gotten much less terrible because the ringleader of all the trouble has been expelled and 4 other kids have been transferred to other classes. They are still my worst class but now I can at least control them to some degree.

The bad news is that my better schedule isn't likely to last long. The guy who was supposed to replace Jake (the teacher who just left) never showed up. Turns out he was drafted back into the American army and couldn't come. Also, another teacher (my roommate, actually) is being fired because she has some vision difficulties and they are worried it will affect her ability to supervise the children (Korea is really un-accommodating to people with disabilities). So, losing two foreign teachers will make us have to cover a lot of work but I get paid well for overtime so it's not such a big deal.

We bought cell phones as well, which was a bit of an adventure. We ended up getting them for 50,000 each (about $50) and apparently it's a good deal. It took us ages to do, though, because, obviously, no one spoke English and we had no idea what they were asking but apparently they asked if we wanted them to charge the phone before they gave it to us. I said yes and we had to wait for over an hour for it without any idea what was going on. Our cell phones both work though and we just refill credit on it when we run out. Texts are really cheap so we text most of the time.

I've been trying to socialize more with the other foreign teachers in Uijeongbu. I went out for a girls night with a bunch of them the other night. It's really neat meeting people from so many places. At my table of 5 girls there was one from Ireland, England, South Africa, and another from Canada. Last night, was Jake's farewell dinner. Jesse and I, as well as all the foreign and Korean teachers at our school went out for gelbi (basically meat that you cook at your table with a million side dishes). I had pizza instead but it's fun to hang out with everyone.

Jesse went out with the teachers at his school one night as well and it sounds like he had a crazy time. I won't be able to explain it as well as him but, basically, they all went to this huge restaurant (there was about 50 people) and ate. He had to sit next to the principal for most of it and had to awkwardly offer to pour him drinks (and was corrected on his etiquette several times). He had to go from table to table socializing with everyone. Afterwards, they all went to a noraebong, which is basically a place where you rent a room and do private kareoke. He sang Dancing Queen because they didn't have 'Don't stop believing' and he was already in the D's. I wish I had photos of this but he said no one was taking any pictures. Everyone else sang Korean songs so he just had to clap along for over an hour. Then some guy walked him home and, it turned out, he wanted to get a drink alone with Jesse so Jesse went with him and they had a drink and talked for awhile but the guy's English wasn't very good. The guy apparently works maintenance at his school and wants to hang out with Jesse more often now.

This morning, on my way to school, I witnessed a pretty brutal car accident. A motorcycle (they drive insane here) smashed into the back of a bus at full speed and he flew off his bike and the papers he was transporting blew all over the road. There doesn't seem to be any real traffic rules and, if there are, they are completely ignored so I'm sure this kind of thing happens all the time but it was pretty awful to see. I think the driver was okay and the ambulance got there right away.

As Jesse said in our last post, we are going to Seoul this weekend for a big dinner with all the foreign teachers who went through our recruiter. We're going to try and do one more touristy thing while we're there but we haven't decided what yet. Jesse and I are planning to do a temple stay soon where you spend a weekend in a Buddhist temple and live like the monks do. It sounds interesting and I'm pretty excited.

We're still getting cold and rainy weather. I'm excited for spring to start for real!

Happy Easter everyone!
Ali


This is the group of teachers at Jake's goodbye dinner enjoying some chicken gelbi.


Jake, Me, and Jesse at Jake's goodbye dinner.


One of my kids, Abraham, doing his colouring.


My class doing their work. This isn't their normal uniform, it's their gym outfit.


The South Korean flag waving in the wind.

Yellow Dust and the Average Day

In our constant search for things uniquely Korean, we discovered something new without even trying: yellow dust. Wikipedia states that yellow dust is a seasonal meteorlogical phenomenon of yellow dust clouds originating from China and Mongolia and being carried by winds over Korea and towards Japan. So basically, there's just yellow dust everywhere in the air making it seem like you have a bad pair of sunglasses on. It used to be nothing more than desert sand but apparently now it's got many of China's pollutants in it. This might make it sound like you wouldn't be able to resist coughing your lungs out, but Ali and I were outside - in what we were later told was a terrible yellow dust day - and other than the colour of everything, we didn't even notice. If you look back at that picture of me outside of the theatre, you might notice the yellow tinge to the air. I'm told it only happens a few days a year, so fear not, we shouldn't see too many days like that.

In other news, Ali and I will going back into Seoul next weekend for a dinner that our recruitment agency is hosting. They expect around a hundred Native English teachers so that be quite a different sight than we're used to now. On the teaching front, I've now been teaching for 3 weeks and have settled into my daily routine at school which I will now describe in painful, excruciating detail.

The Average Day at my Uijeongbu Elementary School:

I arrive at school and stand by the main gate for about half an hour talking to students. By talking, I mean asking them questions that have short answers. Each day is a different grade so the questions differ. For the grade 2 day, I might ask "How are you?" and "What's your name?" For grade 6 day, I might ask "Where are you from?" and "How's the weather?" The kids have to all line up for their mini-conversation with me where they then receive a sheet of paper that reads "Great Work." I'm not sure yet if these sheets translate to any physical reward or whether the abstract praise is reward enough for them.

After this, I teach four 40 minute classes before lunch. The classes start with kids singing a song - this week I chose Beatles "Hello Goodbye" - and then I ask them what they did yesterday. Most kids played computer games to the wee hours of the morning. I guess they need time to unwind after a 830am - 8pm school day. We then watch some videos of these cartoon characters and I talk about the English that was heard. The kids are generally good but not as angelic as some may say. On the whole, I'll say their a little better than North American kids, but you still have some troublemakers that you have to get to pay attention. My co-teacher will sometimes whack a kid on the arm, not too hard, but more than you could get away with in North America.

During the last 10 minutes, we always play some sort of game that leads to kids screaming "Jesse teacher" as they want me to pick them. These games are usually fun, but can turn chaotic.

Lunch always consists of rice, kimchi, a soup, and 2 other side dishes that rotate. I really like that lunch is never the exact same every day and am growing quite fond of Korean cuisine. Of course, Ali and I still eat pizza and spaghetti so who knows if I would feel the same way if it was all I ate.

After lunch, there's about 3 hours left in my day and I plan other lessons and do whatever school work needs doing. Usually kids come into the classroom to clean for a bit because Korean schools don't have janitors. The kids clean everything. I'm out at 4:30 pm and that's my day in a nutshell.


My very large elementary school.


The classroom where I spend most of my time.


I'm pretty sure not all Africans carry spears and shields as this board might suggest.

First week teaching, etc.

Hi everyone!

We just finished our third week in Korea. I started teaching this week. I really love my kindergarten class - they are so cute and it's so much fun to teach them. We had cooking day on Thursday where we made canapes and Friday was Colour Day and my class was the purple class. We mostly just sang songs and made crafts all day. I taught my kids the Hokey Pokey and Hello, Goodbye and they are too adorable when they sing them. They can't really say 'hokey pokey' so they just call it 'Ali-Teacher Song'. Every day before they go home they say, 'We sing Ali-Teacher Song??'. So cute.

This week was a bit lousy though because I was really sick all week with a really bad cold and cough and I have a pretty terrible schedule right now. I work from about 9am to 8pm most days because I am waiting for another teacher, Jake, to leave so I can take over his kindergarten classes. Once he goes, I can get rid of some of my elementary classes and hopefully leave a lot earlier than 8. I definitely prefer kindergarten to elementary. The elementary classes are fine for the most part but their english is, surprisingly, way worse than my kindergarteners. Most of my classes are just teaching phonics so, in an hour, I will teach the letter 'J' or something so it can be really boring. And the kids are much older so they have way more attitude and are a lot harder to control. I have one class that are about 10 years old and it's 11 boys and 3 girls and they are horrible. Even my boss said in his 3 years here, he's never seen a worse class. They talk Korean non-stop, text on their cell phones, punch each other, never do their homework, bang things on their desk, yell, run around, yell at me in Korean, don't know any english... it's the worst. I hate having that class and am very hopeful they are one of the ones I get to get rid of when Jake leaves.

Other than that, this week has been good. I've been learning a lot about how everything works. I had to write report cards this week for students I only taught once, so that was interesting. I basically didn't know anyone I wrote report cards for. I really like the other foreign teachers and my boss is really nice and said I'm doing a good job so far, so I'm happy!

Jesse's week went well too. I think it's a mark of status for a public school to have a foreign english teacher so they like to show Jesse off to the parents. They make him come early so he can stand outside the gate to greet students as they come in and they gave him these little 'Good Job' cards to hand out to students who have a conversation in English with him. This basically resulted in him being totally swarmed by hundreds of kids wanting 'Good Job' cards.

This weekend we didn't really do much because I was still sick and exhausted. Last night, though, Jesse's co-teacher got him tickets for this performance at the Uijeongbu Arts Centre and we went but I don't think anyone else from his school showed up. It was pretty funny because it was all these random acts with varying skill levels performing. We saw 20 women with acoustic guitars perform Ob-la-di, Ob-la-da, little kids sing and dance to 'We Go Together' from Grease but translated into Korean, 6 old men sing 'Oh Happy Day' (not very well), and many more. It was pretty interesting and we found out Mamma Mia! is coming to the Arts Centre in June with Korean actors and I'm sure this promises to be interesting. We're definitely getting tickets.

Anyway, that's all for my first week of teaching! Miss you all!

Ali



Here is a video of the Ob-la-di, Ob-la-da performance. Might be the most boring rendition of the song I've ever heard but if you're interested, check it out.


Jess outside the Uijeongbu Arts Centre

First Weekend in Seoul

This weekend Ali and I finally left Uijeongbu to check out Seoul and discover more of what Korea had to offer. We knew Korea's transportation system, including the Seoul Metropolitan subway, was regarded as one of the World's best and it lived up to it's reputation. There are so many lines and so many stops - approximately 400 - that we thought beforehand it may be a bit confusing. But everything is connected at so many points and all signs are in Korean and English that travelling was a breeze, as long as you don't mind looking like a tourist, straining your eyes looking at subway map in your hand. Another bonus is that most subway trips cost only 90 cents.

We were eager to check out Seoul - one of the biggest cities in the world - and experience its rich culture so naturally our first stop was the Itawon district, the reverse Korea town of Seoul. Itawon is home to many restaurants and shops that cater to foreigners. It had its own version of little Italy, a middle eastern area and even a Canadian pub that served poutine! I've never liked poutine that much, but I still liked the idea that it was available. We met with Ali's friend Marijike, who is teaching in Incheon, and two of her friends she's made up here. We explored Itawon for awhile and could have forgotten we were in Korea; there were just as many foreigners as Koreans it seemed. Deciding to get food we can't back in Uijeongbu, we stopped at a cafe for lunch where we had some Western staples like hamburgers and french toast.

We were eager to see some sort of tourist attraction, but with none of us being erudite historians, we were unsure of where to go. We picked a palace on a map of Seoul and headed there. It was called Unhyeongung palace and for only thirty cents each, we got to explore the grounds and take lots of pictures. It was pretty interesting and definitely worth the money.

Not ready to call an end to our sightseeing, we made our way to the Myeong-dong subway stop to see North Seoul Tower, which is Korea's CN tower, so to speak. We walked uphill along roads for quite awhile before we noticed elevated trams (is that what they're called?) going up to the tower. We found the place and took the tram to the top. It turned out that this is White Day weekend. Koreans celebrate Valentine's day on February 14th, but unlike for North America, this is a day that women get gifts for the men and share their affection for them. One month later on March 14th, men return the favour on what the Koreans call White Day. It turns out that seeing North Seoul tower is a romantic occasion as the place was packed with couples.

North Seoul tower is not as tall as CN tower, but its location at top of a mountain provided a great view. Walking around the base of the tower was pretty cool because you already get a great sight on the surroundings. We paid to go up to the observatory which provided a nice 360 degree view of Seoul. There was also this ingenious idea where each window panel had the names of a few cities on them, indicating the direction and exact distance to the city. We looked directly at Toronto only 10 607.77km away! Practically there by all accounts.

After North Seoul tower, it was about eight pm so we made our way to the Hongkik University area. We were told it was a good location for going out and we had a nice pub dinner and went to a few places. Our first trip into Seoul was a success and with Ali being the inveterate explores she is, I'm sure we will go back soon to do some more sight seeing. It was also nice for Ali to see her friend Marijke again and her two friends Odi and James seemed really nice. It's really great to make other friends in Korea.

Today we just took it easy. It's seems like Ali is getting pretty sick with a cold and sore throat and has to start teaching tomorrow so we just lazed around and watched movies.

We'll update again at the end of the week.

- Jesse


Ali looking toward Toronto from North Seoul Tower. Can almost touch it!


A view of Seoul at night.


Ali and I at the base of Seoul tower.


The group trying to figure out where to go next and looking like huge tourists.


The palace in Seoul.