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.

anthony bourdain style

This past weekend I left the Seoul area for the first time since arriving in Korea. Me, Rebecca, Amy, and Frisch decided to head to Busan, a city on the southern tip of Korea, with no real

plans or hotel reservations. We knew it was going to be a good weekend to go because we had heard about a fireworks festival happening.

We all headed to Seoul Station after work on Friday and caught the 9:00 bullet train. The

bullet trains are really popular in Asia (they're the same ones i took in Japan 2 years ago). We

basically got from the top of the country to the very bottom in 2.5 hours, which was awesome. We bought some juice boxes full of soju and drank them on the train ride.

We got to Busan around midnight and took cabs to Haeundae beach, which is the most popular

spot in the city, and met up with our friend Tom who lives/teaches in the Busan area. We found a hotel pretty quickly with enough room for all 5 of us. That night we walked around Haeundae beach which is beautiful. Busan kinda reminds me of the Miami of Korea, with posh hotels and such lined along the beach. The girls headed home around 3 while the boys decided to go to a casino until late that night.

The next morning we headed to the beach to check it out in the daylight. We laid around and took a walk along the beach. I collected handfulls of sea glass, for some reason there was tons!

After our relaxing afternoon on the beach we headed to a seafood restaurant to try out some new cuisine. Now until 2 months ago I was sure I was allergic to shellfish, however, right before I left I decided to try crab... and guess what? I wasn't allergic. Since arriving in Korea I have also tried more crab, shrimp, and to add to the list I tried clams in Busan. Because of my "allergy" I had never had clams before, and neither had Amy or Rebecca. The restaurant we went to was right on the beach, the perfect setting for our first clam adventure. The clams were plucked right out of a tank sitting in front of us and we cooked them ourselves on a little fire at our table. They were pretty good, I guess, I don't really get it though, they don't have much flavor to me.

After our seafood we headed to starbucks and a convenience store to pick up some dessert and some wine. We took a cab to Gwangali beach around 6, but we maybe should have gone earlier. The beach was PACKED with people. There was a fireworks show starting at 8 so we spread out our blanket and opened our bottle of wine. We passed the time by doing some sparklers, eating our desserts, and drinking. There had to be literally close to 100 thousand people on the beach we were at. The beach looks out over the ocean and a huge bridge that looks kinda the brooklyn bridge meets the golden gate. Around 8 the fireworks show started. The fireworks were pretty much the coolest fireworks show I've ever seen. They were set to music and half of the fireworks were set off of the bridge.

After the fireworks we went to a bar in the area for a drink. We were sitting there and all of sudden 2 kids from Semester at Sea walked in. I hadn't really been friends with them on the ship, but i recognized them and Frisch knew them. It was crazy to just run into them at the bar and it reminded me how small the world can be. After that we headed back to Haeundae beach and went out to a bar called "thursday party".

The next morning we had to check out by noon so we headed to the beach again and hung out for an hour or so... then we headed to the rail station and bought tickets back to Seoul on the bullet train leaving just 30 mins later. So convenient. They even played a movie on the train back! We got back to Seoul around 6 and had dinner, and I was back in my apartment by 8. Overall a really fun weekend of traveling... It felt really good to get out of my comfort zone of Seoul and sleep somewhere other than my comfy apartment for a whole weekend.

take a tour of my apartment

so here's a video of my apartment, for those who have been asking to see pictures... i figured a video would show it better. enjoy!

gwangju-si

The town is live in is called Gwangju. If you google Gwangju, South Korea, however you will find a much bigger city to the south with the same name. My city is much smaller. It has around 200,000 people living here, but in Korea that is a semi-small town. South Korea is one of the most densely populated countries in the world with 48,379,392 people crammed into an area the size of Indiana. My city, therefore, may sound as big as Madison and there may be just as many people, but it feels much smaller. Most Koreans live in apartments and not houses, so the city is much smaller area wise.

Map of South Korea: The orange part is Seoul, and Gyeonggi-do surrounds it.

My city is located in Gyeonggi-do province, which is the province surrounding Seoul. Most cities in Gyeonggi would be considered suburbs of Seoul. In order for me to get to Seoul I have to walk about a block to a bus station and take a red inter-city bus for 40 minutes. This bus drops me off at Gangbyeon Station, which is on the Green Line on the subway. The Green Line is the central loop through Seoul so from there I can get almost anywhere in about 30-40 minutes. It's really easy to get downtown and the subway is HUGE but really easy to navigate since it's all in english. I go to Seoul at least twice a week nowadays.

Map of Gyeonggi-do: My city is to the Southeast. Gwangju.

As for my actual city, I don't live in the main downtown drag, but on the main street we have faves like Baskin Robbins and Dunkin Donuts. An E-Mart just opened which is like a Korean version of Target meets Meijer. We have most things you could need.

a lesson in k-pop

k-pop is basically the only music everyone in Korea listens to. It's basically like the music I listened to when I was in middle school, like nsync and britney spears, but even more over the top. The singers are usually groups of 5 of more girls or boys and the music is very very poppy. Some of the groups (like super junior) have up to 13 boys in the group.

The funniest part of k-pop is that everyone here listens to it. the teachers at my school have the songs as ringtones, the old men blast it in their cars, and the business people are listening to it on their ipods on the subway. most k-pop also has at least a few english words in it as well and sometimes it's not very correct. for instance a group named KARA sings a song called pretty girl and the chorus goes "if you wanna pretty, every wanna pretty". which obviously makes no sense.

my favorite 2 groups are 2NE1 (4 girls) and big bang (5 guys).

my current favorite, however, which is much more poppy, is called "gee" by a group called girls generation which has 9 members. check it outtttt.

korean bbq (aka samgyeopsal)

So i've been here for 2 month already this Friday. A lot of the things that seemed crazy and foreign to me when I got here are now normal to my everyday life here. I forget that most of you still would like to hear about the little Korean things, food, and traditions that happen on a regular basis so I am promising to try and do blogs about things like that during the week and not just about my life on the weekend.

This first post is going to be about samgyeopsal, or Korean bbq. One of the most common foods here is called samgyeopsal and it involves pork or beef you cook yourself over a grill at your table.

After you cook the meat, you take it with your chopsticks and put it in a lettuce leaf. You add a whole clove of garlic and some hot bean paste sauce (and whatever else you might want) and pop the whole thing into your mouth at once.

The Korean's love this dish and there are resturaunts on almost every corner serving simply samgyeopsal. If you're ever planning on coming to Korea, plan on eating it. It's actually really really good. The great thing about going out for samgyeopsal is that it is served family style and the side dishes are free refills. That's all for now, more Korean tidbits soon!

english names.

This week in school I am really enjoying the lesson I am doing. I am giving all of my kids English names. I made a list of my favorite English names (my friends, family, and fave celebs). I pass out the list at the beginning of class and tell the kids to pick an English name and then make a name tag for their desk. Some of the kids know some American celebrities and what not and make up their own names too.

My favorites so far are:

Jack Sparrow
Ron Weasley (My girlfriend is Emma Watson)
Michael Jordon
Barack

It's also funny when the kids are named after my friends. Like today in one of my classes the front row was Nicci, Alan, and Matt. I couldn't help but laugh and i was wishing I had my camera. And in another class the girl named Lauren wouldn't stop talking, so typical. Its funny because I don't even assign them names, they pick them. Noone has picked Barney yet though, sorry Barn.

Anways I'm probably having too much fun suggesting that kids name themselves Tayshaun or Justin Bobby, it might be bad karma. But they are having fun with it too. Maybe I'll take some pictures tomorrow and put them up here.

midterms, cocoon, and gyeongbok.

last week was midterms for my school so i only had to come to work until noon everyday, which was awesome. on wednesday i went shopping in myeong-dong and spent way too much money (oops) and on thursday rebecca and i ventured to a vintage market. this is one of my favorite finds so far in Seoul. Dongdaemun market is one of the world's largest wholesale markets and you can find basically anything on the planet there. In one building of the market (called Gwangjang market) there are 2 floors of secondhand clothes. The only way I found the place was because i researched it on the internet, its actually really secluded. The market smelled like mothbolls, which was awesome, and had tons of vintage leather bags, jackets, boots, t-shirts, and all around awesome things. I could have spent hours upon hours there digging through all the things. At the market I got a sequined vest, shirt, a little purse, and a Detroit Tigers shirt.

The weekend officially started on Friday and we headed to Hongkik University or Hongdae as it's called (Dae means University). We went out to dinner and then hit the bars and clubs. We met some Koreans who took us to a club called Cocoon. It was a packed dance club that reminded me of London+Acapulco. We eventually went to Burger King around 4:30AM to wait for the subway to open at 5:30 and then all went home. I walked into my apartment around 7AM. Killer.
That day I mostly slept off the night, but then it was the guy I work with, Luke's birthday. We all went out to dinner in Bundang for some Indian food and it was sooo good. After dinner the group was headed back in Seoul to Hongdae and I decided I couldn't do it again (i know im old) so i met up with Amy, Adam, and Rebecca around the corner at a bar. We hung out at the bars for a little while, smoked some apple hookah, and then all hopped in a cab to my house. We had a slumber party at my place and in the morning cooked some eggs and watched Michigan lose to Iowa. We had woken up in the middle of the night to see if Wisco was worth watching... aaand it wasn't obviously.

On Sunday Me Amy and Rebecca decided to keep to our tradition of not wasting Sundays and doing something touristy and went to Gyeongbok Palace in downtown Seoul. This palace is one of the biggest tourist attractions in Seoul and it's HUGE. We walked around for a few hours taking pictures and enjoying the perfect fall day (sorry to all you at home, its still around 70 during the day here). The palace literally took 2 hours to walk through and was full of doors and colorful fun things to take pictures of.

After the palace we walked around the main drag of Seoul. The downtown area acutally reminds me a lot of Chicago. I could tell it was going to be a cool sunset so I wanted to watch it. We happened to be walking near one of the tallest buildings in Seoul so we decided to try and see if we could get to the top somehow. We took the elevator to the top floor and stumbled upon an amazing resturaunt with 2 story windows overlooking the whole city. We decided to have some expensive glasses of wine and enjoy the sunset. Sometimes spending money on something like this is worth it. We also made reservations here for November 6th (yeayuhh).

Chuseok present.

I just received a Chuseok present from one of my kids... its colored pencils, candy, and a small notebook. But the best part is the letter he wrote me in English, so I thought I'd share:

To Sara:

Hello! Sara!
I'm daniel Kim (Korean name kim in tae)
Last weekend is Korea traditional special day Chu-seok
So, I'm giving a present to you.
I'm not sure what my present means in America. But my present contains a lot of my true heart.
I hope we stay in close.
I wrote it Last Friday in school.
But i heard "you didn't come school" at after school.
So i give this today.

Sincerely, Daniel Kim (kim in tae)



so precious, right?

chuseok weekend

This past weekend was Korea's biggest holiday of the year: Chuseok. It's a celebration of the harvest and everyone travels to their hometowns to honor their ancestors. For this reason, traveling anywhere was out of the question and we stuck around Seoul/Geyeonggi-do. The holiday is kinda comparable to our Thanksgiving.

Saturday morning I met up with some of my friends and we headed to the Korean Folk Village in Yongin (south of Seoul). We were expecting a traditional village full of Korean history, however, it was a little more commercial than expected. Kids in traditional hanboks were feasting on corndogs and churros.

The whole day wasn't a waste, however, we got to see some pretty cool things like traditional Korean dance, herbs, holiday attire, and games. It was kinda comparable to Disney World meets Greenfield Village... but in Korea.

That Sunday Me, Amy, and Rebecca decided to head to the World Cup Stadium used for the world cup in 2002. The stadium itself was closed but we got to walk all around it and take in the asthetically pleasing area they chose. It was a brisk fall day and being outside and walking around the park area was nice. The stadium sits on the west side of Seoul and you can see the mountains peeking up behind it (to the left under the trees in this picture).

The weekend was a nice long break from work, but now I am back. Although this week is midterms so I am not teaching at all, just sitting at my desk all day everyday. I am about to go out for a traditional korean dinner with the English department. Fall has begun and I officially feel like I am not a tourist here anymore. That initial excitement/fear has worn off and now i acutally feel like a resident of Korea.