another lesson in kpop

if you don't care or want to know about korean boy bands, stop reading now.

here are some of the best kpop songs out right now!

my favorite right now is Ring Ding Dong by Shinee (boy band all 19 and under). if you listen closely they say that something is "fantastic" and then "elastic" which makes no sense, but is hilarious.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=roughtzsCDI&feature=fvst


another group that everyone here loves is called 2PM and they are playing at a club on christmas eve... so yea we are def going to be there. haha. their most popular song is called "again and again" and the middle schoolers go crazy for it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cUgReo37ECw&feature=fvst

this is another song called "sorry sorry" by super junoir. i used this song in class to teach my kids what "shorty" meant. hahaha yeah i know... but they say it in the songs here and the kids have no idea what it means. so here is the super group (13 members) called super junior. oh and i have the chorus dance memorized.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AAWqnA8PdcY&feature=fvst

k-pop is actually so fun and addicting. i wish that pop music/boy bands were still popular in america because its so fun to listen to and dance to at the clubs. it's also helpful to me for learning korean because the kids tell me what they are saying, and i hear the phrases and words over and over everywhere i go. haha. but yea check out shinee - the song is addicting.

a korean thanksgiving

first just wanna say i hope everyone had a great thanksgiving! (oh and happy 50th wedding anniversary to my grandparents!!)



thanksgiving is my favorite holiday so i was anticipating a hard day/week last week. ultimately, however, i actually had a really good thanksgiving. me and my friends from gwangju cooked ourselves a thanksgiving feast, rivaling any of yours back home. we had roasted chicken instead of turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, carrots, broccoli, rolls, dak galbi, yorkshire pudding, and pecan pie with vanilla ice cream. also, lots of wine obviously. we all got together after work and cooked the meal and then sat around all night playing games and drinking wine. it was very nice.

one of the teachers at my school even bought us some dak galbi (basically chicken stirfry) to cook for thanksgiving because she knew it was a big deal. also at school all week i've been teaching about thanksgiving and asking the kids to tell me what they are thankful for... best answers so far have been: for being pretty, for my smart head, for cigarettes, and for my english teacher. hahah love it.
other than that i've settled in a very "normal" life here with not much exciting to report. my typical week is spent working, and then i go out on the weekends with my friends... very much a typical 20 somethings life except i live in korea. so sorry i have nothing exciting to report! my mom is coming to visit on friday though, so we will be doing lots of touristy things.

pepero day

So here is one of those Korean holidays that I have never heard about. Today is Pepero day in Korea. Basically it is a version of Valentine's Day (which they celebrate also) in which you give your boyfriend/girlfriend/friends/whomever pepero. Pepero is a long stick cookie dipped in chocolate. Since November 11 is 11/11 it has been dubbed Pepero Day because 11's look like Pepero sticks. Many people think the candy company made up this holiday as a ploy to make money, which could definitely be true since every store is making a KILLING on pepero. But I, or course, am a sucker for stupid holiday's like this so I bought some boxes of regular Pepero (only 550 won, around 50 cents each) for my students, and they gave me some of the almond kind in return. Here is a note I got from my student Kelly with a box of Pepero since I know you guys love hearing these:

"To Sera~
Sera teacher! Hello^^

I'm Kelly. This is pepero!!

delicous cookie!~!

This is for you!

You are very cute girl!

and nice girl! HA HA ^^

From, Kelly"

loves it.

happy pepero day!

my korean birthday

This past friday was my birthday... I didn't really expect much at school, in fact I didn't even expect people to remember, but I got such nice things all day! A lot of the kids sang happy birthday to me in class and yelled it at me in the hallways all day. One girl, one of my favorite students, brought me a whole big box full of snacks. My teachers also got me presents, like apples, chocolates, etc. One of my coteachers actually put together a pizza party during some of my down periods for me, which was very sweet. It was a really good school day.

So Friday night was my birthday, Saturday night was Anna's, and Sunday was Rebecca's. Naturally we had to do the weekend right.

On Friday night me, Amy, and Rebecca went out to dinner for some Korean food and went home/to bed pretty early. On Saturday we had rented a hotel room at the Grand Hilton in Seoul so we checked in promptly at 2 to take full advantage. We hung around the room all day, took bubble baths, and ordered room service. We also made jello shots with the jello my mom sent me from America. Around 9 a lot of our friends showed up and we had a little hotel party. We went out that night and it was really fun. The weekend was a really good one and made me very grateful to have the friends I do in Korea, this experience would definitely not be anywhere near as fun without them. Also, thanks to everyone from home who wished me a happy birthday!! miss you and love you.

halloween

Last week i taught my kids about Halloween. My coteacher told me it was the best halloween lesson she has ever seen, which just shows how much i love the holiday - that i would put that much time into a lesson. I made all the kids say trick-or-treat once they were done with their work for candy and wore a witch hat my mom sent me. It was actually pretty fun.

They don't celebrate halloween in Korea, which definitely made for some awkward moments and stares when you're on the subway in full costume, but it was halloween! so i didn't care. For the weekend we all stuck around Seoul. On friday I went to a party that felt like I was back in america/college - beer pong and all and saturday I went to seoul. Rebecca and I dressed up as hippies. We went to a place called Itaewon, which is the area that grew because of a nearby American army base. This is why we thought it would be a fun place to go for halloween. It was definitely full of costumes and halloween spirit, which was fun, but most of the people were military and the air around the bars was much different. We headed back to our usual, more Korean, stomping grounds called Hongdae for the rest of the night.

Sunday morning wasn't so pleasant for me, as I woke up to realize i had left my wallet in the back seat of a cab. Therefore, all my money, cards, and the keys to my apartment were gone. I had to spend the night at Luke's house (thanks Luke!) and go explain myself the next morning at school. Not very much fun. So now I am currently in the process of getting all my cards back, etc. very annoying.

Other than that, Korea got really cold this week (like 30) which is super lame... and i turn 22 on friday, which i am not looking forward to. Although I am looking forward to the party/cake/activities. Thats all for now, anyeong!

seoraksan

This past weekend me and some friends decided to go on an adventure to the "crown jewel" of south korea, Seoraksan National Park. We met up at the East Bus Terminal in Seoul and bought tickets to the town of Sokcho. Sokcho is a town on the East Sea, directly East of Seoul. The bus took around 3 hours and when we got there we hopped in a cab to our hostel right near the park. On arrival we discovered that our room was "ondol style". In korea instead of heating their houses with hot air, they pump hot water through pipes under the floor. The floors are nice and warm and this heats the room. This heating system is called "Ondol" and due to the toasty floors, many Koreans sleep on the floor. So we didn't have beds, just sleeping pads, pillows, and blankets. I didn't really mind it, the beds here feel like you're on the floor anyways. I miss my foam matress :( Anyways, we set up our beds and went to bed early so that we could get up and go hiking the next morning.
We woke up at 8 and after finding some random food for lunch and breakfast we headed to the park. We started our hike and were surprised at how many koreans there were. Sorry if this blog becomes a rant but the national parks in Korea really bother me.... There were literally thousands of people hiking with us. At many points we had to literally wait in line to countinue on the hike. We joked that we were waiting in line for space mountain and wished we had gotten the fast passes. The Korean national park experience is nothing like the American one. Instead of a peaceful hike through the forest we were literally being pushed out of the way, waiting in lines, and trying to manuever through crowds. Very different from my trip in July to Glacier National Park in which I got to experience the most beautiful scenery I have ever seen with just my family... maybe seeing another human being every 4 hours.

The scenery was beautiful in Seoraksan, and the fall colors were amazing... but I couldn't seem to enjoy it as much as I wanted to because I was so frustrated with all the people. This is just another case I guess in which Korean culture is very different and hard for me to understand. I love the American National Parks way too much I guess.
We made it to the top of the mountain called Uslan Bawi after making our way up through Buddhist temples and hermitages and then came back down. We went back to the hostel then out for pizza and beer. We ended up meeting 2 Korean boys who spoke very little english but we went to the Noraebang with them, which is a karaoke room. We sang the English songs they knew and the Korean ones we knew. It was a funny night. The next morning we went to the beach in Sokcho for a little while and then took the bus back to Seoul.

Now I don't want people to think I didn't enjoy myself in Seoraksan, it was a fun weekend. I just really dislike the national park system in Korea and wish it were different... but thats just my opinion. Seoraksan was beautiful, I just wish they would do something about controling the crowds...

tanbeol middle school

my school is pretty big compared to most others that my friends teach at. there are around 1,700 middle schoolers. me and luke split them up, i teach the 2nd grade and half of the third grade and he teaches the 1st grade and the other half of the third grade. this means i teach roughly 800 students a week. for this reason i only need one lesson plan a week, and i teach it 22 times to 22 different classes. so that makes life really easy.


a typical day at work is coming to school at 8:20 and classes start at 9:00. i am done with work at 4:20. usually i have 4 classes a day for 45 minutes each, meaning the other 4 hours are spent sitting at my desk on facebook, planning weekend trips, or reading books. in fact i am currently writing this between classes at my desk.


my kids are for the most part good. my 2nd graders are split up into classes by their level, so i have red classes (they know lots of english) all the way down to green (they know nothing). the red classes are really enjoyable, the kids understand everything i am saying and actually care about learning english. the green classes on the other hand don't really care about what i am saying, and can't understand it either... so they basically talk/sleep the entire class, which is really frustrating. i always have a coteacher in every class, and i have 4 different ones. they translate and help me teach the material... but are mostly there for discipline and to keep the kids in check.

at school we get an hour for lunch at the cafeteria, and i actually really like the food. after we eat luke and i go up to the english cafe and talk to kids for extra credit. on wednesday in the english cafe we have a noraebang (a karaoke singing competition) for the kids (the songs have to be in english).

other than that life at school is pretty straightforward. it's a pretty easy job especially since i get to teach the same lesson 22 times for an entire week... that means ill only make around 50 lesson plans a year.