I went to Namdaemun Market.

Today, I went to Namdaemun market. Kara and I wandered around town starting at Myeong-dong, which is a popular shopping area. We started walking towards the subway and got sidetracked by the market. There were so many people here! Good grief! I don't love going out when things are so busy. I grew up in a very small town--just a few hundred people--and get a little clausterphobic! There are a few hundred people living on my block in the city!

The weather has gotten pretty hot lately. My skin gets a little sweaty (gross) and then I am covered with dirty, polluted, yellow sand at the end of the day. The subway cars have turned on the AC (called air-con here). It makes things much better! Especially when you are sharing a car with a few hundred people! :)

Career in acting?

Last week, I had my debut in acting! :) My friend Ken (in the hat and jacket) is an aspiring director and asked me to appear in his short film. I had a small role (very small--5 lines), but it was fun anyway. The short film was for an English class. We were supposed to model a dialog in a 'natural' setting. After our street scene, we went to a galbi restaurant (bbq) and finished up there. After taping, the guy with the blond wig and I got into a heated argument/discussion about patriotism. I am slightly patriotic. OK...not slightly. I love my country and will defend it despite its shortcomings. This guy is American, but is not as devoted as I am. He doesn't believe in what America stands for--he thinks there are so many problems and that the country is a joke! He challenged my patriotism and got me angry. I don't like when Americans say horrible things about America! I could go on and on... We argued and discussed this topic for awhile, and were even able to part peacefully.

Fan Death

I had an interesting conversation this week with my co-worker. She informed me of a very dangerous appliance used in many people's homes: the electric fan. I pulled some funny, yet widely believed, information from Wikipedia.com and fandeath.net:

From Wikipedia:

Fan death is a South Korean urban legend, which states that an electric fan, if left running overnight in a closed room, can cause the death (by suffocation, poisoning, or hypothermia) of those inside. This belief also extends to air conditioners in the car. Fans manufactured and sold in Korea are equipped with a timer switch that turns them off after a set number of minutes, which users are frequently urged to set when going to sleep with a fan on.

From fandeath.net:

The only country to believe in fan death is South Korea. If you ask any Korean about fan death, they will almost certainly vehemently argue that it is indeed true. It seems Koreans of all ages, professions (including doctors) and education backgrounds believe it.

Koreans use the media as proof. Newspapers and TV continually attribute deaths to fans.

If you approach a Korean about this issue, their first instinct is to defend their culture to foreigners even though they may not agree with the belief themselves. I will commend anyone on his/her effort to convince a Korean that fan death may not be true, but I think it would be a very difficult task. Even if they did believe you, I still secretly believe they would turn off the fan, or make sure the window or door was open, when they went to bed.

Chongdong Theater and the Cartier Exhibit

Last Tuesday, my co-worker, Mrs. Kim, took me to the Chongdong Theater to see a traditional theater performance. There were lots of drums, dancers, and fans in the performance. We couldn't take any pictures while inside, but I snapped a couple of blurry photos outside after the show. It is a must-see in Korea! Great performance!


I forgot to mention, before going to the theater, we killed a little time by visiting the Cartier jewelry display at a nearby museum. It was definitely one of the coolest exhibits I've ever seen! Tons of jewelry and huge, sparkling gems! My favorite was a huge piece (way to big for 99% of women to wear) with tons of diamonds, rubies, emeralds, topaz, and other shiny things encased in an extremely ornate platinum necklace! Beautiful! :)

Mr Ko's Art Exhibit

My art teacher friend, Mr. Ko, had the opportunity to display some of his work at a national art gallery last week. He displayed 9 pieces he sculpted from various woods and metals. He asked me three days in a row to come and see his exhibit, so I went on Wednesday when I finally had my afternoon/evening free. He was so proud of his work and his exhibit--he is really talented and should be proud! My favorite piece is this one:


It is a 3-dimensional piece made from iron. It has a view from all angles. He was selling it for $300. Not bad if you are in the market for some good art!


I always hunch over when taking pictures with shorter people. I am wearing heels, but still, don't I look gigantic?

Sports Day and Class Shirts

Sorak-san Mountain Hiking

Korean Cooking Lessons 요리 강습

Tonight was my first Korean cooking class! It was really cool because my friend Kara's student's mom invited us into her home (gasp!) to teach us how to make a couple of popular Korean dishes! It is really rare for Koreans to invite people into their homes--I'm not sure if it is just foreigners that are kept at arm's length or if it is everyone. I just know that I have been in two homes since I have been here and that it is BIG deal!

The first dish in our series of classes is my personal favorite: chap chay. I love it because it is full of noodles and veggies and has a sweet/savory flavor. I learned how to prepare it tonight and I am confident that I can reproduce the magic! :) The second picture I posted is the pre mixed dish. The final step in making chap chay is mixing all the ingredients together after the seasoned noodles cool a little. Kara and I were sent home with a large portion of fresh, yummy food (that won't last long)!

맛있은
("Mashita" means delicious in Korean.)

Racecorse Park

Yesterday was an easy day for me at work. The students had a poetry/painting/picnic day at Racecourse Park. We all had to be there at 9 and I left at noon!

Funny story: there were a couple of thousand students at the park. At least 800 of them were mine, but I couldn't seem to find anyone I knew (including teachers). The students were not in their uniforms, so it was difficult to tell who was who. A group of girls said hello to me, so I went over and sat next to them thinking they were my students. Well, after about 15 minutes of chatting, they asked me what school I worked at. They were from a high school in the area and were definitely NOT my students! I had to wander around for another 30 minutes before I found the kids that went to my school! At least I made it in time for lunch! :) The parents prepared a lunch for the staff in honor of Teacher's Day. We all received gifts and flowers and chocolates! I like this holiday! :)

After work (at noon), I went and ran a few errands that I had been putting off (hair cut, the bank, etc...) before meeting up with Kara for a movie. We saw Penelope at the mall. It wasn't too bad--it has a good message (especially for a culture with mirrors and plastic surgery everywhere--although, the same could be said for many other places around the world). Has anyone seen it yet? What do you think?

Interesting Day

I saw a video today at work--it was embedded in another person's blog (yes, I spend my working hours surfing the internet...sometimes I have 4+hours of prep time...gets boring). It didn't work to upload, but it was showing guys doing really great tricks with a soccer ball. I think these guys are super talented--I have never seen anything like it! I can't even do that stuff without the ball! Sorry it didn't work to upload! I will try again another time...

I am not sure why, but today I had an interesting day. More interesting than usual.

I have been addicted to this blog for the past two days: http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/. It is written by the author of the book The Four Hour Work Week. If you have some spare time (at work, if you live in Korea), check it out. He has posts on how to manage your time, take mini-retirements and how to lose up to 30 pounds in a few weeks without going overboard. I am attracted to the travel posts, such as the one about living like a rock star in Buenos Aires! :)

On the way home from work, I noticed the street fruit stand trying to sell their watermelons for $25! I can't believe that anyone would pay that much for a watermelon! They aren't even the XL oblong ones sold in the States! Martin and I bought a watermelon off a street stand this summer in Romania for a couple of dollars--and that was a top-of-the-line model! $25? No way! The price of fruit here is unbelievable. I just bought three apples for $3.50 (which isn't actually horrible if you didn't grow up eating as many as you can eat off the tree) and passed on the $19 strawberries.

Today I received no less than 3 aloe drinks (pronounced "aloe-ay" here), one box of apple juice, a white dress shirt from a student's mom (it is Teacher's day soon), and a box of homemade donuts from a co-worker's friend! It is not uncommon for me to go home at the end of the day with health drinks or rice cakes, but today was quite the mother load!

I am leaving for Japan on Thursday morning--I am excited to get there! Has anyone been to Tokyo? What was your favorite thing to do?

Bowling in Korea

Last night, I went bowling with a couple of friends near Yongsei University. We met a new group of people: the international students from this university. It was so fun to hang out with these new people--most are around my age and are here as students. There was a guy from Egypt, one from Hong Kong, a girl from Belgium, one from Japan, and one South Korean. It was so fun for all of our cultures to come together and just hang out for the night. They were really refreshing to be around because they were all career/education minded and a little older and more experienced than many of the English teachers in Seoul.


If any of you have ever bowled with me, you know that bowling is not my best game! It is pretty hit or miss for me--sometimes I bowl an awesome game, and other times I struggle to even reach a score of 60! Well, tonight was a pretty good night for me! My score was 128 for the first game! I got a couple of strikes and a couple of spares!


When we left the bowling alley and headed to a restaurant to finish off the evening, I saw this sign and decided that some of you would get a kick out of the spelling error! It never gets old for me! I laugh every time I see English mistakes! On the menu at the restaurant, you could order "grirred godfish." No lie. We contrived that the item must be a griLLed option, but were not sure what kind of fish was being served. Goldfish, maybe? Ewww! Cigalettes anyone?

Birthday Brunch

Yesterday I met up with a former co-worker for our joint birthday celebration. We ordered our meal and shared this special pecan pie for dessert.

This co-worker is planning to come to the States for a study abroad program this fall, and she will be located in San Diego! It will be fun for me to be able to show her around in my country and introduce her to my culture. She has never been out of Korea, so it will be an eye-opening experience for her, I am sure.


I have added a new page element to my blog: a countdown! I want to clarify that I am not adding it because I can't stand it here so much and can't wait to leave--that's not true. Things have leveled out for me lately and I don't mind being here (although, I am excited to get back, too). It's just that I saw a couple of other friends have these on their blogs or facebook pages, so I decided to put one on mine too! I think it is pretty cute and didn't realize that I only have 3 1/2 months left! I'm coming up to the one year mark really fast! Is America ready for me? We will find out soon enough! :)

Tresaures?

I got a birthday present from a co-worker yesterday... It is a really nice black Calvin Klein T-shirt, but as my friend and I looked a little closer, we surmised that it may be a knock off! I completely missed the typo the first time I looked at the shirt--my mind just rearranged the letters automatically! My friend and I tried to figure out if there was a code to crack or if a tresaures are a kind of dinosaur we didn't know about.

My birthday was on Wednesday. I had a seminar in the day and was finished by 2. I was still feeling sick, so I came home for my daily 2 hour nap (lately, I've been taking lots of naps). For my birthday, Kara took me out for dinner at Tony Romo's (where we occasionally go for our cheeseburger fix) and ice cream at Baskin Robin's! It turned out to be a pretty good birthday despite being sick!

I think I am finally healthy and am not sure what I had, but it wasn't fun. Today, I am meeting a former co-worker for lunch to celebrate our birthdays (hers was 10 days before mine). Should be fun!