Lots to update you on... last weekend's activities

So, I have been slacking and have not updated this in awhile so now I have a lot to tell you about. Where to start.....

Last Saturday Caroline and I went hiking. This is a Korean past time and we thought we would give it a shot. Koreans get all decked out in their hiking outfits, with hiking boots, special bookbags, hiking sticks and more. Caroline and I are lacking in the hiking gear department so we left the house in a t-shirt, athletic shorts and tennis shoes. Guess what? This was perfect, so we will not be investing in any hiking gear while we are here! Anyways, hiking was sooooo much fun! The mountain we hiked was practically in our back yard. It's awesome! We walked out of our apartment complex and maybe for 5 minutes before reaching the mountain. We climbed about 50 million steps to get from the bottom of the mountain to more of the top... ok, so maybe I'm exaggerating a little. It was probably only 150 steps but it felt like a ton and they were quite steep that even this gave us a workout. Once we got to the top of the steps we reached a bridge. We followed a trail for a long time one way before we realized we were starting to go back down the mountain, so we turned around and began our hike back the other way. We hiked for quite awhile, stopping twice along the way to play on some exercise equipment. It was so much fun because they have these twisty things, pull-up bars, this rolly thingie and other fun stuff to play on. We finally reached the top of the mountain which had a great view. We could see part of the city and several mountains. We continued to hike for awhile before turning around and heading home. We had such a great time while getting a workout that we have both decided that we are going to start hiking regularly. In fact, we have set a goal to hike some mornings before school. I'll let you know if this ends up happening and how long that lasts. hehe

That night, our head foreign teacher, Ian, decided we should all get together and meet the new foreign teachers who are going to be the other 2 Kindergarten teachers. On a side note, this is kinda scary because there are only 4 foreign kinder teachers and Caroline and I are the other two. We have only been teaching like a month now so it is going to be strangey to not be the rookies anymore but instead the people the two new people turn to in order to get help and ask questions... AHH!!! Anyways, so they had just gotten to Korean like a day and a half earlier and Ian knew they would be bored and not know what to do, so he arranged for everyone to meet them at dinner. Only thing is, they were supposed to be in quarantine just in case they had swine flu so we were to have no contact with them. Oops. So if asked we were going to pretend we just happened to meet them at the restaurant because they just happened to be there for dinner too. Anyways, so the restaurant was the same one we were taken to by our school's manager the day after getting here. We have been there a couple times now and each time it gets less and less spicy! yippee!!

On Sunday, we went to church for the first time. It was ok. The pastor was super creepy in the way that he talked and prayed. It seemed like he was being possessed and was either going to cry or explode every time he talked. I didn't like this. Neither did Caroline so we might try somewhere new next weekend. Not to mention, the service was really small and I just didn't like it overall and there are other places to go so hopefully we will figure something out. Anyways, so after church we finally went downtown during the day (we have only ever been at night to go to the bars with the other foreign teachers) and just walked around for awhile. Neither one of us did too much shopping but we each got a couple of small things like puppets for our classes, and I got the cutest pair of socks with a boy and a girl talking on one of those cans with the string in between them phones. We had lots of fun window shopping and it ended up being a good weekend.

I will update you on this past week and weekend tomorrow because there is so much to write and this has already been a long post.

Love you all and miss you more!!

3 Day Weekend to Busan

This past weekend was a 3 day weekend. We had some sort of holiday on Friday, but I couldn't tell you what. Either way, it was nice to have a long weekend and Caroline and I definitely took advantage of it. We took a bus 3 1/2 hours away to Busan.

We stayed at a hostel. I am becoming quite the hostel frequenter. Up until this summer I had never been in one, now I have stayed in too many in so many cities and countries to even count. I love it! People at hostels are always so friendly and we always end up having a good time. Not to mention, the experience is always something different. This hostel was called the Actor and Backpacker hostel. We didn't meet any actors, but that would have been neat. It was a unique hostel because we had to go in a building and walk up 4 flights of stairs. Then we had to walk outside and on to a roof and this was the start of our hostel. The hostel was on top of a roof. It was sooo sweet and had quite the view. The owner, Mr. Lee was very nice and had a cute dog named Cha Cha. They lived there and the hostel was basically his house. Sound familiar to our hostel in Seoul?! :) Caroline and I want to start our own hostel now. Our apartment is pretty big, especially for Korean standards and we could easily put bunk-beds in our living room and rent them out to people. We are currently in the process of finding bunk beds for cheap somewhere. :)

Caroline's family went to their beach house last week and she was sad she couldn't be there, so we decided since we got our first pay check, which was next to nothing because it only had 2 weeks of pay on it plus deductions for insurance and crap, we would spend some of our paycheck on traveling to another city to hangout. Busan is known in all of Korea for its beaches so we figured we would take our own beach holiday.

Before going to the beach though, we spent the first day there shopping at their well known market. We walked up and down many many streets filled with vendors and stores selling every and anything. Neither one of us bought too much but we both did end up with some sweet socks that cost less than a dollar. Also Caroline bought an umbrella and a fan, and I bought a sweet watch for about 4 bucks. I would say we got some pretty sweet deals. This was tons and tons of fun even though we didn't buy much, just Korean shopping is a unique kind of experience and one that I always enjoy.

The next day, we decided to experience the beaches. Because Busan is known for its beaches, it also means that Busan beaches are known to be packed. We definitely found this to be true but it was still really fun and reminded us a little bit of home. There were people absolutely EVERYWHERE. When we first got to the beach, we were immediately approached and asked if we wanted to buy an umbrella, chairs and an intertube. We bought (rented) the umbrella which we realized later was required but decided our towels and the mat they give you would be sufficient and a chair was not necessary. So the way Korean beaches work, or at least in Busan, is that once you rent an umbrella a guy leads you to it and then puts it up for you. There are about 1000 or more umbrellas on the beach all in rows. One umbrella touches the next so there is absolutely no space where there isn't shade. Koreans like the shade and none of them like to layout. This is because Koreans believe the whiter you are, the higher the status because only working people have dark skin from being outside all day. Anyways, so after seeing that all of the umbrellas were touching and there was no sun to be had unless the umbrella remained down, we accepted the fact we would not be sun bathing either. However, the guy who sold us the umbrella I guess realized we wanted to layout so he put us 3 rows back from anybody. This was too funny because if you looked around everyone on the beach was in the first 3 rows, and then there we were the only foreigners on the beach in the 6th row. :) But it was good because we could keep our umbrella down and not bother anyone or force them to be in the sun. You can imagine the stares we got though- more than usual.

After laying out for a little while we became hot and decided to get in the overcrowded water. It was really cold at first so we just waded. Then 2 foreign boys along with their Korean friend who apparently doesn't like Koreans (weird huh) approached us and invited us to sit under their umbrella and talk. We did and what we thought would be a small talk conversation turned into a 2 hour conversation and ended with us being thrown around and tackled in the water by them. It was cold at first but we quickly got used to it and enjoyed swimming, or should I say drowning and being thrown around. :) It was fun though. Oh and a boat or two would drive by every so often to make waves and everyone in the water would ride the waves and get pushed into each other, and as much as this sounds miserable, it was surprisingly really fun. Nobody cared and everyone just kind of accepted the fact that you were going to run in to someone. A smile would then be exchanged followed by laughing at us foreigners and then another wave would come and it would happen again. It was lots of fun. We ended up being at that beach for quite sometime before heading back to the hostel to shower before walking to another closer beach to look at it.

This beach is supposed to be less clean and pretty but also has a better view with a nice bridge in the background. It was a 10 minute walk from our hostel to this beach. It seemed to be about the same as far as it being crowded goes, but the LONG bridge was beautiful and there was a place to walk and places to eat all up and down the beach which we thought was fun. We ate dinner along the beach and then just walked along the beach and enjoyed the Korean beach experience. We stopped to just hangout and sit, but we weren't sitting for even a minute when a Korean guy approached us. He just wanted to talk to foreigners and practice so we talked with him for about 45 minutes, or longer, and then began walking again. We stopped to take several jumpy pictures and pictures of the bridge. then we talked for a bit and watched a cheesy Korean play that was being put on along the beach and then it turned night and we were able to see the bridge all lit up. It was soooo pretty and changed colors every couple of seconds. We both got some great pictures. We talked for a long time just sitting on the beach before heading back to the hostel and passing out! It was a long day but super fun.

We left the next morning, rode the 3 1/2 hours bus home and then just kinda crashed on the couch and hung out for most of the day. It was a great 3 day weekend.

This weekend Caroline and I want to go hiking here in Gwangju since it is known for its great hiking paths on its enormous beautiful mountain. I can't wait!!

I love and miss everyone tons and tons!!!

What I have noticed so far...

Korea is so different from America in soooooo many ways. I thought I would inform everyone of my insights that I have had so far while being here.

1. Korean guys all carry man purses. No joke, starting around teenage years you will see almost all guys carrying some sort of bag or purse. Caroline and I sat in a very crowded bus station waiting for a bus from Seoul back home and counted the number of guys WITHOUT a purse, and I think out of about 100 guys, only 15 were without. That is definitely not something you would see in America. What do you think they carry in those things anyways?

2. No matter the age, height, or outfit being worn, Korean women all wear heels. We have seen heels on the youngest of girls to the oldest of women. We have seen them worn with shorts, t-shirts, or something fancy. Women who are already really tall still wear heels. And the Korean teachers at our school wear their heels on their 15 minute walk to school only to take them off as soon as they enter the building and wear slippers all day. NUTS!

3. I like to think of chopsticks as skis. Much like in skiing, if you cross the ends, you are in trouble. Its all about holing them parallel and never letting them cross.

4. Some things here are backwards. For example, the faucets at school, you have to push down instead of pull up in order to get the water to turn on. Also, the fast forward and rewind buttons on a tape/CD player are completely opposite and what would look like the fast forward sign to us would be the rewind button here. That definitely threw me off at first.

5. The trick to eating is you go to your food, don't bring the food to you. Although it is traditional to bring the fork full of food to your mouth in America, if you do that here, you will end up with food either all over yourself or possibly back on plate or on the floor because you can only hold on to things with chopsticks so long.

6. When Koreans teach other Koreans English, the letters S, F and random words are taught wrong. The kids at school all pronounce the letter S as "Essa" and the letter F like "Effa". Also, my students and all of the korean teachers at the school say the word strange as "strange-ee". There are also other words I can't think of right now that get the ee sound added to them as well.

7. Random American sayings that make absolutely no sense are printed all over things here. For example, I bought a jewelry box the other day that read "Is like an apple. The smell of sweet apples. The girl is a gift of the apple." I had to buy this because it was just sooooo great. You would think they would pay an American to

8. Spicy to a Korean would be deadly to an American. Koreans eat a TON of extremely spicy food and think nothing of it. They don't taste the spice at all. I hope I develop this taste bud soon because I am dying here. :)

This is all I can think of at the moment. I know I had more, so I will add to the list when I think of them. :)

Love and miss you all!!

Summer Vacation trip to Seoul

This post is WAY OVERDUE. So, here goes another long entry that you will need a HUGE chunk of time in order to read.

After teaching for just one week and one day, we were told the school was having summer vacation and we would have to take it, even though we just got here. Its one of our longest vacations (6 days) we will have while we are so it kinda stinks it was so early on, but we were excited about getting out of Gwangju and seeing somewhere else. Our school currently has our passports in order to get us alien cards so staying in the country was our only choice. After much debate we decided on Korea's capital, Seoul. Although I would have loved to travel outside of the country just because, I will not even pretend that I didn't really enjoy our trip to Seoul. It was sooooo much fun and definitely a good choice for our first time off.

But before leaving for Seoul, we spent our first day off hanging out with our Korean best friends and doing laundry. Both interesting experiences. Ok, so to backtrack, our Korean best friends are two Korean guys our age that we randomly met on the streets walking home from work one day. They stopped us and talked to us for a bit and proceeded to say that they wanted American best friends and that they could be our Korean best friends. Caroline and I both laughed, but decided that it might not be such a bad idea to have someone who can speak the language and help us figure out Korea a little more, around sometimes. Anyways, so we emailed back and forth for days before they got a little too anxious (We are pretty sure they want more than best friends and instead girlfriends) and finally we agreed to have lunch with them. One guy can barely speak English and the other guy is a little better but there is still definitely a language barrier. This just made for an interesting and funny lunch. They ensured us "We study English this week" so the next time we can have an even better conversation. None the less, we talked about all sorts of things at lunch and had a good time. As they dropped us off at our door they told us to have fun in Seoul and that "We wait for you". whatever that means. hehe. We have already since arranged to have dinner tomorrow with them. Apparently its going to be takeout and we are having it at our house. I'll let you know how that goes. Anyways, so after lunch with our friends, we did laundry. This was quite the experience as we have not been told how to work our washer and it is definitely all written in Korean. It has about a million buttons and setting you can push, so we pushed several buttons before getting it to turn on. It worked for about 7 minutes before draining all of the water and turning off. We are guessing this is the prewash setting or something. who knows. Finally, after pushing more buttons we got the washer to stay on and wash our clothes. At the end, the water drained from the washer and on to our floor. I thought for sure we were going to flood our house but apparently the reason our laundry room is so big and has a drain is so that this can happen. The water eventually went through the drain on the floor and left us with just a damp room. Weird. Anyways, it worked and we began hanging our clothes outside on our laundry rack to dry. Apparently it takes more than half a day and a night to dry clothes this way so we each picked a couple things we wanted to take with us to Seoul and used our fans in our room and my hairdryer to finish drying them. We packed and then left our house to catch a taxi that would take us to the bus station that would take us there.

All went well until we got off the bus in Seoul and headed to the streets to find our hostel. All we had was an address and name of the place. We got on a metro and found a stop that we guessed would get us there. Lets just say after we got off the metro, we walked around for a bit before deciding we had no clue where this place was and we would never find it without help. This reminded me of my Europe travels and I immediately decided that we should go somewhere where people might speak English and be able to help us. We found a Starbucks. The people who worked there passed around our sheet of paper with the hostel name and address before a girl walked in and ordered a coffee. Apparently, the guy behind the counter found out she spoke English and handed the paper to her for her to help us. She took us to her boyfriend who helped us look up the address again and google map the place. We got a general idea and the couple walked us up and down the streets for probably 15 minutes in search of the place. Here they thought they would sit down and enjoy their coffee but instead they were sent roaming around the city with us. They were both so nice and so helpful. They spoke perfect English and come to find out this was because of their schooling. The boy was a physics major at University of Illinois and the girl had just graduated from Berkley. We were impressed. Finally after lots of walking and searching with no luck, the girl found the building. Everything was written in Korean and there was no way Caroline and I would have found it on our own. They walked us up to the door of the building and when we knocked, a Korean guy answered it and it definitely just looked like his apartment. We walked in and there were 3 sets of bunk beds and a computer and that's it. No reception, no common room, and looked nothing like any hostel we stayed at in Europe. This was straight up a Korean guys house that he put bunk beds in and called a hostel. There was one other couple there which made it less sketchy and helped us to feel better about the situation. It turned out to be a fine place and we stayed there 2 nights. We even spent the next day with 2 guys that "checked in" right after us and had a great time with them.

So the first night after "checking in" (by that I mean putting our stuff on the bed to claim them) we went out to explore. We walked around Sinchon, which is name of the area where we were staying. There was lots of shopping and fun stuff to look at. We mainly just window shopped, except for I did get a knock off brand of Converse All Stars for only $12. So that was sweet.

The next day we went on a city bus tour with our new friends from the hostel. We didn't end up riding he bus long because you could not see anything from it, so instead we got off around the fifth stop and walked on our own around the city for some sightseeing. We spent most of the day at this one Korean Palace that was divided into 12 sections and is the biggest palace in Korea. It was soooooo sweet. I got soooo many good pictures, all with beautiful mountains in the background or other awesome views. Those pictures will be up on facebook shortly. After that we ate some good Korean lunch and then did some more walking and sightseeing. Late that night Caroline and I made our way to the Seoul Tower and rode a cable car up to it. The cable ride itself was a lot of fun but when we got to the top of the mountain that has the tower, we bought tickets and went up the tower itself to see the view of Seoul at night. It was so amazing!!! Caroline and I took several pictures but they do not do it justice. It was beautiful! We spent a couple hours there and then made our way back to the hostel to pass out. It was a good day.

The next day our friends took a tour to the DMZ, North Korean border, which was something we both wanted to do but because our school still has our passports we weren't able to do that. :( Instead, we went shopping in Itaewon. This is a super cheap area of town with lots of stuff to buy. Caroline and I both did well and ended up with our names in Korean on a necklace and some other random souvenirs. After shopping, we went to Yongson Army base so I could relive my childhood experience here. I took a million pictures and surprisingly enough a lot of what I remembered was pretty accurate. However, a lot of it seemed so new to me as well and so different than I ever pictured it. It was a lot of fun getting to see my old school, home, friends homes, and everything else. After exploring for awhile, Caroline and I eventually made our way to the commissary in hopes of buying America food that we cant buy here in Gwangju. We had no such luck as Korea now requires that everyone have a rations card in order to get in and buy stuff. So we left empty handed and disappointed. It was still a good day though. That night we stayed at Caroline's friends apartment in Seoul. It was really tiny, a one room studio apartment but it was nice of her to let us stay there.

The next day we went to the national Museum of Korea. This museum was kinda neat, but would have been a lot nicer if we could read Korean. There was an explanation under every piece of art, statue, artifact, etc but it was written in detail in Korean with just a very very tiny description in English. It was still cool though. Later that day we headed back home. The bus ride took about 5 hours due to traffic and such but it wasn't too bad.

Yesterday was spent grocery shopping, getting ourselves prepared for work today and just kinda hanging out. It was a relaxing day and good end to our vacation. Today it was back to work. It was a good day at school.

Sorry this post is EXTREMELY long! I need to start updating more often.

I miss everyone soooooo much but am so glad for skype and facebook so I can keep up with everyone. I love you all lot and lots. Skype when you get the chance, it makes my day!!! :)