FIRE!!!

Between my sister and I, we are going to give my parents a heart attack.

In November, a guy with a gun walked into my sisters Engineering office on the 8th floor of a crowded building and started shooting things and people. Thank goodness my sister was able to run and get out of the building before he got to her cubical and call 911. Others were not as lucky and 5 were injured, one killed. It was a very traumatic experience, but she is ok. Thank you God!

On Friday, I too had a very traumatic experience at work but I am also ok! It started off as any other day at school. Fridays are my longer days but it was going pretty well so far. Then we had a foreign teacher meeting where we were informed that someone had to teach a 3 hour Saturday class every weekend. I decided to sign up for the one the next day to get it over with. After teaching 9 classes that day I was exhausted but decided to stay after school to plan for the Saturday class and since Caroline was still teaching, I figured we could walk home together anyway. I was in the big office on the 2nd floor of our school going through tapes with Devon, another foreign teacher, when a Korean teacher walks in and says "I've heard the news that's there a fire next door." She didn't seemed concerned but Devon thought she would go check it out. Sure enough, there was a small fire in the vacant building next door that has been in the process of being torn down for awhile now. Devon came back and reported what she saw and the two of us continued to search for teaching materials. Within minutes a little boy walks into the office (I am not sure exactly why) but he turns to us and says "Big fire, teacher." He was also very calm. Then the fire alarm goes off. Its very quiet and seems distant. I turn to my principal who is close by typing away on the computer and I ask her "Is that OUR fire alarm?" She says "yes" nonchalantly and goes back to typing. Devon and I are confused and go to look out the window again to see if it is in fact our alarm and if the fire has gotten any bigger. This time I go too. Devon was the first to get to the window and see big pieces of fire hitting OUR BUILDING. She yells and starts to run back toward the big office when I am able to see out the window too. The building next door to ours is about 10 feet away and is up in flames- HUGE flames. Our building is being hit repeatedly with fire and we are both convinced ECC is on fire. Devon and I run back to the big office quickly to inform the 2 Korean teachers making phone calls at their desks and our principal typing away on the computer. We both yell "FIRE!" but nobody seems to move. We yell it again and again before it hits our principal what is going on. Rachel (one of the Korean teachers) tells the parent on the phone she has to go because she thinks there is a fire or something and then gets off the phone. Devon and I grab our stuff and I run to the small office to grab Caroline's stuff before running to the stairs to find Caroline. It takes a little while before kids start coming down the stairs and Devon and I act as police men directing traffic yelling for kids to go downstairs and to get out of the building! It isn't a few seconds before those kids are running back up the stairs toward us panicked. Our principal is now directing those kids and all the kids coming from the 3rd, 4th and 5th floor in to the 2nd floor lobby. The lobby quickly fills with all of the students and teachers and is full of chaos. Students are pulling out their phones calling their parents frantically and a secretary is trying to yell something on a megaphone that isn't working. Our principal yells and everyone all of the sudden gets super quiet. She yells orders all in Korean and everyone except the foreign teachers seem to know the next plan of action. Next thing we know a firefighter is running up the stairs of the 2nd floor where we are all huddled and telling us all to go downstairs and get out of the building. As I am running out of the building I pass 3 frantic and crying moms who are looking for their kids to come out. I grab random kids and we started running/walking fast because there is ice on the ground making it hard to full out run. While we are running, huge embers from the fire are landing on all of us. A big one lands on my head but is quickly put out by another foreign teacher running beside me. Not too much later I find myself yelling at Caroline that there are embers on her coat and am patting them out for her. I am scared something or someone is going to catch on fire from the embers but all I can do is run and hope we are all ok. At one point we all stop running because we think we are far enough from the fire but the wind continues to blow huge pieces of fire on to us so we continue to run some more. By the time we stop again, ECC buses have arrived and are picking up kids. I am not sure if they had a system but I was pushing all of the students near me toward the bus to get them on. Finally, all of the students are either on a bus or at least way out of sight.

I can not even begin to explain how chaotic all this was. Students and teachers were everywhere and nobody knew exactly where we were supposed to stop or even where all of their students were. It was a mess but eventually there were no students anywhere in sight and a bunch of the foreign teachers had somehow found each other. We waited in fear for what was happening to our school a long way down the street. Finally we all decided we wanted to see our school's fate and walked together on the other side of the street back toward the fire. The embers weren't falling nearly as bad now and we had to know what was happening. I thankfully had my camera and began to take pictures. All of the pictures have been posted to facebook. Keep in mind these pictures were taken a good 30 minutes or longer after we evacuated the school so the flames were actually much bigger and scarier than you even see in the pictures. And during all of this, the road was not closed to traffic. There were all sorts of cars going both ways past the fire and at one point the fire fighters had even hooked up a hose to a hydrant across the street and it was being run over by the cars. Cars drove over the hose for awhile until a van drove over it and broke it. The hydrant had to be turned off and the hose fixed before being turned back on to help put out the fire that was still burning strong. Everyone in Gwangju gathered across the street and watched the building next to ECC burn down to nothing but the metal frame.

After watching for awhile all of the teachers decided to meet up at a local coffee shop to wrap our heads around what just happened and talk about the next plan of action. On our way to the coffee shop all of the Korean teachers were called back in to school to make phone calls to parents letting them know the evening classes wouldn't be happening and what just happened. The foreign teachers still met at the coffee shop and shared our traumatic stories. We got word that the owner of our school told all of the Korean teachers that they had to be back at school the next day (Saturday) at 9am to help clean up after the fire. The foreign teachers decided that we wanted to show our support and would all be at school at 9am to help too. Come to find out, our help was not needed as the damage to the school was beyond what we could clean up and a cleaning team was being called in. All of us went in the school to check out the damage and take pictures. There were broken windows from the heat on the 4th and 5th floor, glass on the floor of the bathrooms, ashes everywhere, and out back we could see our owner and our school technicians cars that were crispy on the hood and in the engine sitting where they were parked the day before, waiting to be towed. On the fifth floor where the kindergarden classrooms are (middle school classes in the afternoon and evening) one room was in need of serious repair. There were a couple big holes in the ceiling that I guess the fire fighters made to drain the roof of all of the water that was sprayed. Lights were hanging down and drywall was absolutely everywhere. Surprisingly, I think this is the only room that wont be in commission the next week or so.

Everything is now sorta a blur and I can't really explain what was going through my head on Friday night. I know I wanted to get all of the kids out and was concerned about them first and that's why I acted as a police directing traffic on the stairs rather that running out of the building myself. But looking back everything was really just done on impulse. I don't remember thinking about anything, it was like my body just knew what to do. I don't remember thinking about grabbing mine and Caroline's purse, I just did it. I guess it was also impulse to wait to find my roomie before leaving the building as well. I can't remember what the kids looked like whose hands I grabbed and ran with, I just know I was concerned with them getting to safety. I don't remember seeing a lot of fire trucks or a lot of fire fighters but our school principal told us yesterday that over 200 fire fighters and 50 trucks responded to the fire at some point or another. I don't remember a lot of the details but the overall experience I will never forget. It was scary and something that I hope never has to happen to anyone. I am glad the building next door was empty and was in the process of being torn down anyways and I am glad that as big as the fire was, that nothing in the surrounding area really got hurt too much. A middle school backed up to the building and it is just fine as is the electronics building that is on the other side of the building that caught on fire.

School is still scheduled for tomorrow but I am kinda curious how many students show up, especially from the evening classes that were there for the fire. Anyways, I hope my Monday turns out to be way less eventful than my Friday and I hope your Friday was less crazy than mine!

I LOVE you all so much and miss everyone like crazy!

CHRISTmas and New Years!! :)

Merry Christmas and Happy 2010 everyone!!! It seems weird to me that its already 2010. 2009 seemed to fly by! Boy has it been an exciting year!

This Christmas was my first one away from my family (and extended family). I always spend Christmas in Ohio and I get to see all of my bagillion cousins, aunts, uncles and Oma who I haven't seen since the summer. I was expecting Christmas to be rather hard since I wouldn't be with who I am always with or where I am always at. However, thanks to skype it was a lot easier than expected and although I missed everyone, I wasn't nearly as homesick as I thought I would be.

Christmas and New Years this year had an unexpected twist that I absolutely loved. One of my bestest friends ever, Austin, came to visit me for 11 days and spend the holidays with me. When I moved to Korea, I told all of friends that they should really come visit me over here and although I really wanted it to happen, I was sorta just kidding. However, Austin actually came and we had an absolute blast!!

ECC gave us 4 days off for Christmas, then we had to work for 3 days, then 4 more days off for New Years. Too bad we had to work for those 3 days in between but I guess in the long run it was kinda good because Austin ended up getting sick and thank goodness it was only during those 3 days. So Austin got here late on Wednesday and Thursday was our first day off. Poor Austin got a couple hours asleep before we woke up the next morning around 7am to catch our bus to Sokcho. Sokcho is a city in the north-east part of the country super close to the border. It is known for its national park- Seoraksahn. We had never been here but I had read good things about it and it was supposed to be pretty awesome and beautiful. Plus some of our co-workers were going so we figured why not. The last thing I wanted to do was stay in Gwangju for Christmas and think about how I wasn't in Ohio with my family. It ended up being Caroline, Steve, Jason, Erica, Austin, and me who went. It was an awesome decision to go because it was in fact beautiful and we had loads and loads of fun!

The bus ride up was 5 and a half hours long and because we hadn't really eaten much for breakfast, all of us were starved when we got up there. We walked for a bit until we found the first place where we could go inside and eat. It happened to be a Chinese restaurant. We ended up eating some really good chicken and fried rice. After eating we had to hop on another bus which was supposed to take us to our hostel. Hosteworld kinda let us down with the directions because all it said was get on this bus- and that's it. So once we were on the bus we weren't sure where we were supposed to get off or anything. We got off at the last stop which was at the entrance of Seorak National Park but there was no hostel in sight. Lets just say after lots of debate, broken conversations that didn't really help and lack of another way to really get there, we decided to walk 20 minutes back to the town we past while we were on the bus on the way in. When we got to the town we didn't see a sign for our hostel but on second glace, with the help from my eagle eyes, there was in fact a tiny sign that read our hostels name. We checked in and then it just got crazy. The guy started showing us random rooms and none of them had more than 1 double bed which was not as expected because we thought we were getting one with 4 beds. So after a lot of craziness we finally ended up in a 1 huge room with one bed. It was actually more like 2 rooms, one being a kitchen. Anyways, we all decided we would sleep in the one room and close the curtain-ish door to the other room because for some reason the floor in that room only got hot in places and we figured we would be warmer if we were all in one room. It was like a huge sleepover and was actually pretty fun all being in the same room.

So the rest of that day we walked around the area checkin out what was happening, which wasn't much and eventually ate dinner at a traditional Korean BBQ place. It was alright, but nothing special. The next morning was Christmas Eve America time which was when I planned to talk to my family since this is when ALL of my aunts, uncles and bazillion cousins are at my Oma's house celebrating. It was really neat because my mom and sister made sure EVERYONE in the family said hello to me via video chat on skype so I felt like I was actually there. By the way, I have 12 aunts and uncles and I think 21 cousins so that was fun getting to see and talk to all of them like I would if I was actually there! :) After my long skype talk, Austin and I headed to the park to meet everyone. When we got to the park we found them almost right away and did some walking around together. We saw this HUGE Buddha statue that was pretty neat and I of course got some pretty cool pictures of it with the mountains in the background. We then all took a cable car up one part of the mountain. According to the cable cars pamphlet the ride up was supposed to be "one of the most unique adventure attractions on Earth. It was pretty cool but I don't know if I would go that far. I got some great pictures though. When we got to the mountain we all sat for a bit to take it all in. There were frozen waterfalls off in the distance, snow in the mountain tops, and the view was gorgeous! Then, the boys and I decided we wanted to hike up this other little part of the mountain which looked pretty steep. Caroline and Erica sat and enjoyed the view while we took this scary climb up. It was definitely more than worth it because the view only got better! Plus, a guy at the top was selling medals and whistles that he would engrave with your name, I guess for making it to the top. Being the little teacher I am and always thinking about when I get my own classroom back home, I decided a whistle would be a perfect souvenir. I am going to need something to call my students in from recess and this was engraved with my name in Korean, Mt. Seorak, and the date (Christmas!) I wouldn't forget where I was for Christmas 2009 now. We enjoyed the view from the peak and took some fun pictures in front of a Korean flag before going back down to meet the other 2. Once we got down from this climb, it was awesome because it started snowing. It ended up snowing for only about 5 minutes but at least we could say we had a "white Christmas" right?! We took several more photos and enjoyed the view fr awhile and then headed back down on the cable car. Once we got to the bottom we took a long hike through the park to get to a waterfall. We saw a couple smaller half frozen waterfalls along the way. The hike, the view, and the sound from the waterfalls were awesome and quite peaceful. I really enjoyed it a lot. Once we got to the waterfall we kinda just chilled out there for a little while and once again enjoyed the scenery. It really was beautiful in this park! We met up randomly with a couple of Steve's friends and the 8 of us began our trek back to our hostels. We took a shortcut through the woods and over a river and finally made it to our hostel. We cleaned up a bit before heading up a road beside our hostel to a fancy hotel that had a western style restaurant. We wanted something nice (and fancy seemed fun) for Christmas dinner and we got just that. I opted for Chicken Cordon Bleu which was absolutely AMAZING and by far the best thing I have eaten since being here. Others opted for Salmon, Calamari, Steak, etc. It was delicious! Plus, all our meals came with 2 hot dinner rolls with real butter and a very yummy salad with Italian dressing!!!! Let's just say Christmas dinner was AWESOME and exactly what we were looking for. After dinner I spent awhile on skype with the fam since now it was Christmas morning their time. Then we all just stayed up watching a movie, talking, laughing and enjoying each others company.

The next morning Steve, Erica, and Jason all got up super super early to go hiking on this super steep part of the mountain while Caroline, Austin, and I decided to enjoy sleeping in and just check out more of the park. We ended up seeing a temple, some other traditional Korean architecture and more of the park and the mountains. It was lots of fun and again we took some pretty fun pictures. We spent several hours walking around before we all met up again. Caroline, Erica, and Jason decided to get the only bus home that afternoon because it had been a long but exciting weekend, while Steve, Austin and I decided to stay. When we went up to Sokcho I had read about a huge water park that had many hot springs and stuff and I really wanted to check that out. Plus Austin told me before coming that he wanted me to find a hot tub in Korea. Austin and I like to spend a lot of our time hanging out in my hot tub back at home, so he joked that I had to find one here so I did just that. I wasn't about to go back to Gwangju without going to the hot spring water park. I am really glad we stayed because that day turned out to be super fun. We went back more in to the city (away from the park) and found another hostel to stay at for the night. This hostel was nice and the owner was full of information. He helped show us what to do and where to eat. So the three of us spent the rest of the afternoon checking out a pretty awesome light house. We got to go inside which was really neat and check out the water and the view from the top. Then we climbed to the top of a hill and went in this temple looking pagoda thingie (I know, I give some pretty great descriptions ;) ) and enjoyed the scenery from there too. Then we walked around for a bit before catching a bus to the water park. The water park was called Waterpia and was as awesome as expected. Let me just try to explain this place. Its more of an adult water park than a children's place. When you get inside you go to your respective locker rooms and get changed. Let me take a step back. Now, Koreans are usually very conservative. When they go to the beach ALL of the girls wear clothes or cover-ups over their bathing suits in to the water. You wont see any girls with just bathing suits on. So, when i walked in this locker room I was expecting everyone to be modest but let me just tell you they weren't! There were Koreans from 1 to 100 just walking around, lounging, hanging out completely naked. Yes, you might say well duh Whitney its a locker room, but seriously I expected everyone to be conservative even behind closed doors based on how conservative they were out in public- they weren't! Anyways, so you could go out 2 doors- one led to the saunas full of nakedness and the other led to the pool area. Because it was the 2 boys and me and the saunas were separate for guys and girls, we opted for the pool area. We found a couple hot tub like areas but they were packed and I knew there were more so we went on a search for the others. They turned out to be OUTSIDE. That didn't stop us though. We went from hot tub to hot tub checking out the many different kinds. There were several different kinds all of different temperatures and contained different jets and stuff. When we got bored of one hot tub we would get out and literally RUN to the next one. The air was EXTREMELY cold, especially after being wet, but ti only made the hot tubs more enjoyable after getting in them. We spent several hours at this water park and all of us enjoyed it immensely! After Waterpia we went to eat a late dinner. We ate at this place that let you pick your own meet which was marinated in different sauces and you could have "all you can eat for only 7,000 won." This is about 6 dollars and was definitely worth it. It was delicious and you couldn't beat the price. We passed out pretty hard that night and caught the morning bus the next day that got us back to Gwangju around 3pm. It was a FANTASTIC Christmas break!

I went to school the next 3 days which seemed to actually fly by. Austin was sick and was feeling like death so he laid around those 3 days while I was at work which if he was going to get sick this was the perfect time. He finally started to feel better on the 3 day which was perfect because the next day we planned on going to Seoul for New Years. Seoul "gongs" in the new year with a HUGE bell. Basically its the Times Square of Korea and one of my partner teachers from school even ended warned me "don't die!" We woke up in the morning with our bags packed and everything only to get a phone call from some friends from school that were going to go with us telling us to go look outside. It had snowed the night before!!!!! There was about 6 inches of snow on the ground and the roads had not been salted or anything yet. After much debate we all decided not to go get on a bus for 4 hours in the snow and bad road conditions and that we would just enjoy the New Year here in Gwangju. This turned out to be a lot of fun and I am not disappointed that we didn't end up going. We spent that day (New Years Eve day) with several of the ECC foreign teachers. Jake, Devon, Erica, Jason, Steve, Caroline, Austin and I all headed downtown to walk around. We walked down "Art Street" the only famous attraction in Gwangju, but not much was happening, like always. It was still fun though. We shopped for a bit and just enjoyed each others company before heading back home and just kinda hanging out for a little while before going out that night to celebrate. The same group of people along with 2 more foreign teachers from ECC, Sam and Steph and Alan ( the guy from China who we often hangout with who showed us around Beijing when we went in October) all went back downtown that night to celebrate the new Year together. Let's just say we had a LOT of fun!!! I am glad we ended up staying and celebrating with everyone!

The next couple of days went by super fast. We played in the snow and enjoyed Gwangju. Austin and I went to see Alvin and the Chipmunks the Squeakquel one day. We did a little night hiking one night which was lots of fun and one day we went skiing. Skiing was a blast but ridiculously crowded! We still enjoyed ourselves though and I think everyone was glad we went.

Basically my Christmas and New Years were AWESOME! I am soooooooooo super glad that Austin came and I had a ridiculously good time hanging out with him! This was his first time out of the country and I think he really enjoyed his time here too. I am definitely glad he came!

I hope everyone had a great Christmas and New Years too!!! Happy 2010! I hope its a great year for everyone! I love you all so much and miss you tons and tons too!!