This, that, and the other

Man Oh Man. I have been putting off any kind of blogging for about a month and a half now because it just becomes so overwhelming and ends up taking me hours to write these things. But because I know I have regular followers and they have been begging me to update, I am doing this for them.
So... where to start...

Korean Wedding
Last month I went to Lupina's (one of the Korean kinder teachers) wedding. I was excited to go see what a Korean wedding was like and the differences between it and a western style wedding. In some ways it was very similar, while in others it was quite different. We walked into a building called "The Marriott Wedding Hall". Once inside we walked into a small room where we saw the bride in her beautiful dress surrounded by her friends and family. This small room was painted nicely and had a nice chair for her to sit in. Then, all of her friends and family could take turns taking pictures with her. I loved the idea! What was strange though was unlike our traditional weddings where the groom can not see the bride before she walks down the aisle, her groom was brought in to also take pictures with her and their families. After he was whisked off, a few more pictures were taken and then it was time for the ceremony to begin. We walked into this big, open room like area just feet away, took our seats and then watched as the bride stepped on to this hot pink and orange platform runway. Fake flowers surrounded her, but everything looked beautiful. She walked down the aisle with her dad and met her fiance at the alter. There we no bridesmaids, no groomsmen, no flower girl, and no ring bearer. It was just the two of them and a pastor. Oh, and there was a woman who was constantly around her fixing her dress, touching up her hair, and fixing her makeup. There were also several photographers who didn't hesitate to get in her face to get the perfect picture. The pastor talked for awhile, then the happy couple went to both sets of parents and bowed. Best friend and kinder teacher, Gina, sang a beautiful song, followed by the playing of a Korean pop song. During this song the groom took off one of his shoes and walked around collecting change in it. Then, everyone clapped and the ceremony was over. There was no exchanging of vows, no giving of rings, and no kissing. It all seemed quite strange to me. Immediately after the ceremony was deemed over people were being called up over a microphone for pictures- the groom's family, then the bride's family, then both of their families together, then the groom's friends, then the bride's friends, then all of the friends and family. When the pictures were finished, the bride and groom walked down the aisle only to meet the next bride and groom that were up to get married. There was no wasting of time. As soon as the couple exited, all of the friends and family who attended began exiting while the new friends and family of the next bride and groom shuffled in and the groom walked to the alter. It was a very quick turn around. I was almost able to see the start of the next wedding as I walked out. I should also point out that during the entire wedding, it never did get quiet as there were people in wedding hall just off this room talking, laughing and "oohing" and "awing" over the previous bride and groom and the next bride and groom to come. Weird. Anyways so following the wedding there was a reception, sorta. There was a TON of food and everyone sat at tables and ate while the newly married couple walked around and talked to everyone. She wore a Hanbok, he remained in his suit. There was no dancing, no toasting, and no throwing/catching of anything. Oh well. It was a lot of fun and definitely neat to see.


Eating GROSS-ness
A couple weeks ago Caroline, Erica, and I all decided to check out this restaurant we pass every time we go to EMART but have never eaten at. Now, usually when we go to a restaurant we aren't concerned because we have either 1. eaten there before 2. can read something on the menu and know it is ok to eat 3. are with someone who can help us. However, none of these things seemed to happen so we were on our own for figuring out what to eat. Well, this place had a cow on the outside and was a barbecue place so we assumed it was no big deal just to order anything on the menu. We read our options, knew what they said as far as reading them but had no idea what anything meant. Nothing was familiar. So, we did what any foreigner would do and just closed our eyes and pointed. Our waitress brought us our meat pretty quickly. The three of us looked at it with our foreigner big eyes. We weren't sure what we had gotten. We didn't even recognize the meat. It looked sorta like sausage but it seemed to almost be oozing fat. The waitress must have noticed our faces and decided to cook it for us. The more she cooked it, the more the sausage looking meat curled and oozed. I knew whatever we were getting ourselves into was not good. We asked the waitress what part of the body this was from as best as we could using sign language and she just kinda laughed and said nothing. We ate a good amount of it anyways. It was obviously flavored with spices and stuff ahead of time and then after being barbecued it surprisingly didn't taste too too bad. The thing that got to me big time was the texture. It was extremely chewy and squishy. We left about half maybe and then decided to go to Baskin Robbins to finish filling ourselves up. :) The next day at school we had one of the Korean teachers translate what we ate and it was..................... intestine. It was gross and definitely nothing I would have ever tried if I had known. Oh well. When in Korea, do as the Koreans do?!


Lunar New Year
The regular New Years that we all know and celebrate is celebrated over here, as well as the Lunar New Year. This is awesome because that means a couple days off and a gift certificate from our school's owners. (Yes, we work at an AWESOME school!!) We took advantage of our 4 day weekend and decided to go skiing for two of those days. Leading up to the holiday we asked the Korean teachers where we might be able to go that wouldn't hopefully be as crowded but we were assured that traffic was going to be bad everywhere and that there wasn't such thing as a ski resort without a ton of people at it in Korea. And with the holiday, there was no way we would be able to find any place that wasn't crowded anywhere. We have been skiing 2 other times and have found this to be true and is always crowded, but we really wanted to go skiing one last time this season so we figured it was worth it. Jay, a kinder teacher as well as one of my favorite Korean teachers, helped us call the travel agent place we went through the past 2 times we went skiing to get us a discount price. When she got on the phone and told the guy it was for foreigners and to put it under my name the man got excited and told her that he knew me. After getting off the phone she asks me if I know a Mr. Kim. Now, if you know anything about Korea, you know that everyone and their brother has the last name Kim. So to ask me if I knew Mr. Kim would be like asking me if I knew a Mr. Smith back home. Caroline replied for us "Yes. We know lots of Mr. Kims" to with Jay laughed and realized what she had asked. Anyways, I guess he apparently recognized me from he other times and was excited we were going again. So Caroline, Jake, Devon, the new teachers Matt and Melissa and I all packed a backpack full of ski clothes and left Saturday morning at 5:30am for the slopes. There was absolutely NO traffic which started off the day well. Then, when we got to the ski resort and on to the slopes we couldn't be happier. There weren't that many people at all and no lines. The more advanced slopes didn't have many people on them and even the easier slopes were by no way crowded. The past two times we had been we have always had to wait in lines anywhere from 10-50 minutes long. This time there were NO lines. We had a full day of skiing before we met Mr. Kim again who took us to our hostel at the ski resort. We only paid $20 each for the night. That's right, we stayed AT the ski resort in a hostel and only paid $20. You can't beat that!!! I think I am going to build a hostel on ski resorts in America. I think I would be rich because staying at any ski resort in America is ridiculously expensive. Anyways, so we looked around the area for awhile before eating dinner at this very typical Korean style restaurant. As soon as we walked in, they showed us to a table like you would find in America (because we are foreigners) but we pointed to the tables on the floor and asked if we could sit there instead. I think we put the staff in shock. The couldn't believe foreigners would want to sit on the floor, but we have been in Korea long enough to 1. not only be used to it but 2. know that the floors are heated and that we were freezing. So we enjoyed dinner and stayed warm. I had Bulgogi- 불고기 (meat) and mushroom chigae- 찌개 (soup). It was ma-shi-da 맛있다!! (delicious!!) We hungout that night and watched the Olympic's opening ceremony and some of the Olympic games before going to bed on the hot floor. We woke up early the next morning, ate some yogurt and crackers and stuff we got from the convenience store next door for a cheap breakfast and then headed back on to the slopes. We hoped for the best but figured the slopes couldn't be any emptier than the day before but boy were we wrong!!! Day 2 was even less crowded! There was absolutely NOBODY there!!!! Some of the chair lifts had nobody on them and there definitely was never any kind of wait. In the morning and early afternoon,coming down the slopes, you wouldn't see someone for hundreds of feet and then when you saw someone it was another couple hundred feet before you saw anyone else. It was AMAZING. I have never seen anywhere like this. Let's just say we got 2 FULL days of skiing in and had a BLAST!!!! We were definitely glad we went! We were exhausted the next day and just kinda hungout, went grocery shopping and enjoyed the day off. That night we went out for Monica's birthday. She is also a kinder teacher and the most bubbly person I have ever met. After some fun we went to a noraebong or a karaoke room. We practiced our knowledge of Korean pop songs and even danced to the songs we now know dances for due to kinder graduation. It was tons of fun. On our last day, Caroline and I went downtown and saw the movie "Valentine's Day". It was cute and am glad I saw it but won't be a movie I own. We also went to the World Cup Lotte Outlets to spend our gift certificates ( I can't decide what I want so I ended up not buying anything). We had a great long weekend and it definitely made for a short next school week which was just what the doctor ordered!!!


The Typical Week
I don't think I have ever written about my typical day and week. I think the last time I wrote about actual school was back in the beginning when I was REALLY confused about everything. I was just figuring out my hours, my classes, what I was teaching and did not know too much about anything. You will be glad to know that I have more than figured things out and I absolutely LOVE teaching here. It only took about a month to figure things out and another month to get into the groove and feel confident. I have now been teaching a little over 7 months. The days fly by as well as the weeks. I honestly can not believe I have been here that long. For those of you that don't know, I have asked to extend my contract 3 more months and stay until the end of October. Anyways, to explain my days, here it goes. Everyday I teach different things to different classes. There are 10 Kindergarten classes grouped by age and number of years at ECC. To give you an example, on Mondays I teach Art to two classes, story reading to another class, phonics to another class and then English conversation to 2 different classes on different levels. These two classes are my everyday classes. On Tuesdays I teach a theme lesson to a class, art to another class, drama to another class, story reading to a class and then math or cartoon to my younger everyday class and an American textbook to my older everyday class. Wednesday is filled with different classes as well as Thursday and Friday. I like my schedule because it allows me to teach different subjects to different students which keeps it interesting. It also gives me 2 everyday classes that I have fallen in love with. One class is 6-1 which means they are 6 years old and have been at ECC 1 year. The other class is 7-2 meaning they are 7 years old and this is their second year at ECC. They both are fantastic at English and filled with some of the cutest kids EVER!!!
The 7 year old classes (there are 6 of them) will graduate this Friday which will be really sad and I will definitely miss them a ton. At the same time though, I am just as excited though to meet the new students who will be coming. I will update you about the change when it happens on March 4th.


When, oh when, will I get better at this blogging stuff. Definitely not this week as Kinder graduation is just around the corner and I am sure that will continue to be stressful. It is also the end of the month which means evaluations and tests out the whazoo to be be copied, filled out, given, and graded. Maybe look for my next post somewhere around March 6th or so hopefully after the start of the new school year. I love you all so much and miss everyone TONS and TONS. Keep those letters coming, I LOVE getting mail!!!! :)