A Year in Yeosu with Dave and Megan

An Ode to Korea!

2009-07-14T10:46:00.010-05:00

(From a Wayguk’s perspective…)

To Korea! The land of the morning calm.
(But the blame might lie in that last Soju bomb…)

To Korea! They say "Woori Nara (Our country)" and put "we" first.
(However with shopping, traffic and in lines it becomes "ME" first.)

To Korea! Where Kimchi is eaten morning, afternoon, and night.
(But not the wee hours, when your colon starts its fight…)

To Korea! A respectful culture that is quite remarkable.
(And the lanes of any street are considered park-able...)

To Korea! Our dearest Yeosu, City of Flowers, Sea and Light.
(But never forget to be careful – The zombies come out at night…)

To Korea! Where hiking lush mountains can inspire with raw power.
(Just ignore the men in business suits and the occasional cell tower…)

To Korea! Where eating live Squid is considered appealing.
(And dog, too! Shh. Animals don’t have feelings..!)

To Korea! Where Jimjilbangs allow people to be comfortable in their skin.
(The beach is a different story – only the fully clothed may swim…)

To Korea! Of Swine flu, Crazy Cow and Fan Death the people have learned.
(As for the Nuclear Neighbor to the North? Not too concerned…)

To Korea! The president Lee Myung-Bak might be a bit pushy.
(Now you have your own version of George W. Bush-ee..)

To Korea! The people bow, and use two hands to be polite.
(But Dong-chims to me, just don’t seem right…)

To Korea! Corporations like Hyundai work with amazing precision.
(In reality, we all know Kai-Bai-Bo makes the decisions…)

To Korea! Where after a year, a piece of my heart will stay!
(For this one I’m afraid I have nothing funny to say.)

We are out of here in two weeks! Obviously a lot has been learned, and we have gotten to know this great culture. Take this lightly! Add your own. For those from home who don't get them, we can explain in August ;-)

A Perfect (Korean) Beach Day

2009-07-14T09:04:00.009-05:00

The forecasts last Sunday called for Thunderstorms, rain at best. Megan's favorite middle school student (Jackie) invited the two of us to Mosageum beach, 2PM. We headed out at a quarter two with bleak hopes. We arrived to a full beach for a cloudy day, and I with my low expectations.

The students arrived from the Hagwon a bit late, and we could already tell it was going to be an exciting adventure, Rain or Shine (well, not so much shine!). We didn't bring any swimwear, because we hadn't planned to swim. About 30 seconds after the boys got off the bus, I could tell that was a bad choice. It only took about a minute for the first girl to be dragged into the water and tossed down... She was NOT too happy!

We started the time off with a traditional Korean game. A large circle is draw in the sand, one side cut in half, and the other cut in 1/4. These represent each of the original Korean kingdoms, Goguryeo, Baekje and Silla. Basically you just needed to knock everyone out of their kingdoms, but it was pretty fun. It ended up being a showdown between myself and two small girls, they put up a good fight!

Next, it came time to randomly try to throw people in. I ended up getting soaked, but only because I got to throw three students into the water. It was a lot of fun to take out some aggression!! Even Megan got pulled in by the students, she wasn't too happy.

In the end, we had to leave early and miss a trip to the Noraebang, to go eat dinner at Jeff's. It was a fantastic home-made sam-gyup-sal meal from Hyegyong. It was so great to see Sara and Hana again. Sara can speak English amazingly now, and Hana is as smart as ever, starting to count by 10's, add, and everything! I think Megan and I will miss them the most! We'll miss you too Jeff, HG and all of our friends of course!

Here is the full picture album, plus our going away lunch!

Happy (Late) 4th of July!

2009-07-05T22:41:00.005-05:00

Happy late 4th of July everyone! I hope you all had a safe and relaxing holiday weekend. Ours was pretty relaxing and we tried to keep some traditions alive too by re-enacting the Iwo Jima statue, singing the national anthem, and having the best firework show ever (well at least in Korea, haha). It was great weekend, and luckily for us the weather was great.

On Saturday we hung out at the beach with about 30 other foreigners, mostly Americans with some Brits and Canucks helping us celebrate. I made homemade egg salad and crab salad sandwiches for lunch and we grilled out for dinner (traditional chicken, hot dogs, and sausages). We even tried to drink American beer to really show our true American pride. I never really cared much for the 4th of July, to me it was just another loud holiday that meant no work. But living over here away from all the action automatically creates this sense of pride and respect for your country that made this 4th of July much more meaningful and celebrated event. Later at night Dave and Jeff put together a large firework show with fireworks they ordered over the internet, and it was a great display! So the only thing missing this 4th of July was the monotonous parade festivities which made it the best 4th of July ever, haha.

Now we only have three more weekends left here in Yeosu, and I can’t believe it. It still feels like we have so much time, but yet so little. It’s crazy how your mind changes day by day on your thoughts about going home. Mostly mine are extremely excited and now I simply feel that I cannot wait to get back to my roots. I know the next 25 days will be gone in a flash and I’m trying to take advantage of the time I have left with the good friends I’ve made here. While we are both excited about going home we are also both really nervous and anxious to find jobs and an apartment. Change is a good thing, but stressful thing all at the same time. I’ve been applying every chance I get to jobs I see posted online, with not much luck. I’m lucky to be home the entire month of August to visit schools and really try hard to land a great teaching job so wish me luck! Dave has been applying also to a few jobs he has seen posted but no word yet. I think we are both going to have to wait until we are back in Minnesota before we get any interviews. August will definitely be a busy month filled with job hunting, apartment hunting, and catching up with friends and family. Luckily I will be staying with my sister and brother-in-law when I get back and Dave will be staying with his parent’s for a little while. We are both really excited to see the two new additions to his family. If all works out as planned we will both start work September 1, and have an apartment by that time too, but time will only tell.

Well Dave and I wish everyone a happy 4th of July weekend and hopefully we will be seeing you all in about 3 weeks! Wish us luck on the job hunt and if you know of any teaching positions or Web developing positions let us know, haha.

Check out more pictures here!

Survivor Sado (May 31)

2009-06-12T09:36:00.005-05:00

Hey guys! Hope everything is getting warmer back in the states, haha. Last weekend Dave and I had a fantastic time with good company on an island close to Yeosu called Sado. We went out to the island to play Survivor with about 20 other Yeosu friends and 20 friends from a different city called Daegu. One of the foreigners Rich whom we are good friends with planned the whole weekend. We took a ferry to Sado at about 1130 am Saturyda and arrived at Sado about 1230. Some of the foreigners were going to camp out, while others (Dave and myself) were going to share a MinBak. A MinBak is like a really really cheap hotel room. Basically you are given a room/bathroom/kitchenette to sleep in. Our Min Bak Slept about 12 foreigners (I think it was only meant for like 4, haha). It was a cozy Saturday night to say the least. After throwing our gear in the MinBak it was time to randomly pick from a hat teams for Survivor. There were three teams of 12 people. Dave was on a team with mostly guys (it looked like a basketball team). My team was mostly girls (only 3 boys), so a lot of people seemed skeptical of how well our team would do. We decided to call my team “testrogen.”

The first challenge was a ton of fun. We had about 1 hour to search for 60 items on a scavenger hunt list. Some of the items on the list were easy, find empty soju bottle, driftwood with rusty nail, but some of the things were a little more risky like running naked into the water, haha. Overall our team tied with Dave’s team for finding 38 items. We settled the tie with a simple Rock Papers Scissors game which luckily our team won! Dave’s team had to vote off a person and they decided to vote off their captain Jen who is my best friend : ( I think they regretted that decision later on throughout the game. Our team got immunity and respect from the other teams, game time is on!

Throughout the day there were activities like sack races, wheel barrow races, three legged races, tug of war (which we obviously lost but held our own), and target throwing. Pretty simple and fun stuff. Our team kicked ASS and we won the majority of the challenges which meant the other teams were voting off their players left and right. Since one of the teams was down to 4 players, they merged with the remaining two teams. After the reorganization of teams Dave’s team stabbed him in the back by voting him off and keeping the new players! Dave was one of 2 Yeosu people on that team so I think they were trying to get rid of Yeosu people and keep the Daegu’s strong. After a much needed dinner, we went back to the games, byt this time it was about 8 pm at night. Team testrogen (mostly Yeosu peeps) was still going strong against the team that voted off Dave. After a couple more games we were down to the final 12 which meant no more teams, it was on an individual basis. I was in the top 12! The second to the last challenge consisted of 8 people (Which I was in!) and you had to boil water. We were split into 4 teams of 2 and whosever team boiled water first got to go to the finals. Unfortunately Hugo and I couldn’t boil our water fast enough. We had a good fire going, but we didn’t account for the water being so shallow, so instead of quickly starting a fire we spent more time getting wood and other materials to keep a long lasting fire which in the long run hurt us. So you could say I made it to the semi-finals. Everyone had a chance to vote for the two final people, and Dan won. They gave speeches and everything, it was really fun. That night we just hung out by the bonfire, played music, drank, and had a good time.

The next day a lot of the people left by like 1. Dave, me, Rich, Shannon, Tara, and Steven all stayed till about 430 hanging out on the beautiful beach. The beach was an isthmus with a lagoon on either side. It was perfect weather and beautiful scenery. I felt like I was on vacation! For lunch we decided to get the freshest things available, octopus and fish! We ate live octopus again on the island right in front of the beach, it was awesome.

Dave and I both want to go back to Sado again soon for another relaxing weekend. I think I am really going to miss the beach and this beautiful weather here. You just can’t beat it! But we are both really excited because we have less than 2 months left! Our boss has already asked us which days we want to leave and it looks like we will be leaving somewhere between July 30 - August 1! It is so exciting and sad leaving a place that we have grown to know as our home.

Udell's 18 day stay in the far East...

2009-05-05T20:33:00.003-05:00

Well I’m sad to say that we said goodbye to our last set of visitors today. After a 19 day vacation in Korea and Japan, my sister and brother in law left from Seoul today at 11:00 am to head back to Minnesota. It has been such a great experience sharing our Korean lifestyle with people we love. I think Erin and Brian really got a snapshot of what our life has been like over the past 9 months. They were able to experience the good and bad that comes with living in Korea.

When Erin and Brian arrived in Yeosu we headed straight for the Chunnam Dragons soccer game in a nearby city called Gwangyang. After their stomachs were filled with their first Korean meal (Kimbap Nara) we met up with some foreigner friends of ours who organized a May birthday party noraebong bus! Yes a Karaoke bus was their first real Korean adventure. It was really fun and a great way to throw them into the culture, and meet our friends as well. Even though they had basically rolled off the plane after 24+ hours of traveling and were placed on a singing bus with people they didn’t know they did great, and only fell asleep at 10 pm on the bus, haha. The next day we went for a hike up Gorak Mountain because the weather was fantastic. On the way down we stopped at a highly popular workout area where many kids were playing. Once Brian took off his hat, the kids were pointing, pulling their friends over and staring at him. He also got dong-chimmed (a poke in the butt) by a kid, haha. Some girl also said “ 축축한 “ to Erin which Dave translated to mean “wet girl,” haha. All of these little situations were definitely some of the more memorable moments. Luckily we worked up an appetite for dinner at Hyegyong’s and Jeff’s house. We hung out with the girls until Erin and Brian started to look like zombies haha, then we decided to head home.

For lunch on Monday we took them to Marina buffet which serves Chinese, Japanese, and Korean cuisines. I know they both loved the food, but unfortunately we weren’t able to go back for a second visit. After lunch we brought them to our school. What perfect timing too because it rained hard all day. The kids were of course curious and excited to see more foreigners at the hogwon, and Erin and Brian had a great time too. The best part was when Brian showed the kids his bald head and his goggly eyes, haha. The kids went crazy, some were even too scared to talk to him! After school we went out for a couple of drinks and called it an early night. The next day we went out for lunch at a small but delicious Korean restaurant in downtown Yeosu. It was a spicy pork/vegetable meal and I could tell that they both really liked it. We dropped them off downtown at the open market before heading off to school where they shopped and took great pictures. On Wednesday I took Erin and Brian on a hike up MuSan Mountain, the mountain Dave and I frequently hike in the mornings. Being much smaller than Gorak mountain, we didn’t think much of it at the time, but I forgot that later that afternoon they would be going with Hyegyong and Sara to Odongdo to walk around. Needless to say I think Erin and Brian were definitely tired after all that hiking!

Thrusday we were able to go to Heunguksa which is a temple near our house, the weather was wonderfully warm and sunny, and Erin and Brian really enjoyed the scenery at the temple. We had a fish lunch prepared by our boss’s wife which even Dave loved! (he doesn’t care for fish much). And since it was finally Thursday, Dave and I knew we could handle going out that night.

After class we met up with them for dinner at a Korean style BBQ. Even though Erin and Brian are vegetarians, they have a rule that when on vacation they can eat meat! Lucky for them because the meal was really good. We had a couple of drinks at a few places and then were off to Noraebong! This was so much fun, something that I really wish was offered in the states. We sang our hearts out and thankfully went to the “Mandu” (Erin’s pronunciation) or Mondu street vendor that Dave and I frequent. Erin was reluctant at first to sit down in the tent, but I think that was more or less the soju working its’ course on her, haha. We did almost the same routine on Friday night, but this time heading to Ellui for the fire show and to meet up with some friends. Now that Erin and Brian were seasoned Noraebong singers they were able to really let loose! ( I have a great video of them attempting to sing/dance/ move/entertain to MC Hammer’s “Can’t Touch This” that I’m sure I’ll be posting, haha).

Saturday was a sightseeing day in which we went to Nagan (traditional folk village). It was really cold, and therefore not as fun to walk around outside, but we saw a sign for a temple so we decided to go. It turned out to be one of the best decisions! The temple was on the middle of this mountain range and absolutely beautiful and serene. We were all astounded at the beautiful flowers and the gorgeous architecture both inside and outside. In Minnesota at least it seems like the flowers are mostly oranges, yellows and reds. Here the flowers are fluorescent purples/pinks/reds. The flowers are like lanterns glowing in the sunlight, absolutely beautiful.

Sunday we went to yet another temple (3rd temple of the trip). We met up with Jeff, Hyegyong, Sara, and Hana at Hyangiram. Erin, Brian, Dave, and myself decided to hike up the mountain before we knew how long it would take. Unfortunately it took so long that Jeff and the girls went back home, but at least we made it to the top! It was actually a little scary of a hike, but worth the view.

The next couple of days Erin and Brian went to Fukouka, Japan to get another taste of Asian culture. They were able to meet up with one of Brian’s old drum core friends, Hiro. He took them to several different places, and it looked like they had a great time. Even though there was a little miscommunication between them and a cabby in order to find the bus terminal in Busan, they made it home to Yeosu safe and sound.

We took it pretty easy the next couple of days because we were going to Seoul for a long weekend. May 2 was Budha’s birthday and there was a lantern festival going on in Seoul so we left Saturday by train to check it out. Well, after an hour trying to even find a hotel (holiday weekend) we missed the festival by a whole week, haha. Yes, the festival took place the week before unknown to any of us. We searched all night for it, but ended up strolling the streets of Seoul, checking out the sights. The next day we did some souvenir shopping in Itaewon which was fun and cheap. Erin and Brian got a couple of cool things for their house, and Dave and I got quizno’s, haha (we also got some things too, but nothing compares to a well made, western style sandwich). We also did a little shopping in Dongdaemon (the district where we were staying) and I finally got a cute Korean fashion dress which I’m super excited to wear for the summer. After shopping we went to a temple where they were supposed to have a lantern festival. We got there at about 6:30 pm and it was still light outside. There were 1,000 lanterns set up, it would have been so beautiful it they were lit up. It was cool to be in such a historic place right in the middle of a huge modern city. We checked out the beautiful handmade lanterns which depicted a story about Budha and by the time we walked out of that building the sun had set and the lanterns were turned on! So we didn’t get to see the actual festival, but the 1,000 lit lanterns were extremely impressive. That night we headed for Mexican food, drinks/darts, then noraebong before calling it an early night (2 am).

The next morning we had to wake up and leave our hotel by 7:20 because we had already booked a tour to go to the DMZ the day before. This was a little rough at first seeing as we didn’t get much sleep, but the tour was pretty cool. We went to a river valley which was gorgeous and very scenic. There was a little sandy area where we were able to lay on for about an hour before heading to the DMZ (Demilitarized zone). We went in a tunnel that North Korea had built but refused to admit it. Later on North Korea explained that they did build the tunnel but for coal mining purposes (they spread some black stuff on the walls to make it look like a mine). We were also able to go to an observation place where we could see the actual border between the North and South. We were about 300 meters from the border. This place is really surreal to see, environmentally it is so pure and untouched, but of course politically this place is extremely tainted. Military men stood by, armed with huge guns the whole time. We were only allowed a certain amount of time to stay at the couple of sites we went to, usually people were rushing us out. Overall it was a good trip, but the bus ride home was pretty awful. We had to share a conversion van with five other Japanese people and boy do they like to talk. Plus traffic was awful and it took double the amount of time to get home as it did getting to the DMZ. Later on that night we finished off the trip with Erin and Brian’s last Korean meal (Korean style BBQ duck). It was tasty and we all ate a lot, but not enough that we couldn’t noraebong one last time. I don’t know if this was a good thing or a bad thing in the end, but the lady at the noraebong kept adding more free time to our room. So much time was added that we didn’t even realize it was 3 am when we finally finished. Unfortunately we had to wake up at 7 am to get things packed and ready to leave.
Overall this was a really awesome trip.

Dave and I both appreciated Erin and Brian coming over, it’s so nice being able to not only see people from home, but share this experience with them. It was a sad goodbye (I have been trying to hold back tears for the past 2 days, haha with some success) but this was the last big plan of our stay here in Korea. We are now officially in the home stretch of our trip. ¼ left, 3 months, 90 days, however you count it, our time is winding down. While Dave and I both feel like we really want to get home, it will be hard leaving this life, our friends, and this adventure. I think we are finally feeling the bitter sweetness of this experience. It was great being able to talk about traveling and living in a different country with Erin and Brian since they have done that before too. It is also great having people from home visit because it gives us more perspective on how far we’ve come since last year. Seeing Erin and Brian’s reactions/perspectives on things that we consider normal now has also been a great way to renew our own perspective of this experience. Living here for such an extended period of time wears on you, and you grow numb to things your once thought unusual. Erin and Brian brought a new light and energy into our lives and we will surely be feeding off this for the remainder of our trip.

As usual, we took a lot of pictures while Erin and Brian were here, so click links to the four part album below...
Part One - Noraebus/Soccer Game, Musan Mt, Heunguksa Temple
Part Two - Norae Time, Nagan, Sunamsa Temple
Part Three - More Sunamsa, Hyangiram, Seoul Lantern Fest Temple
Part Four - River Valley, DMZ

Soaking in the nude!

2009-04-05T09:49:00.003-05:00

Hello everyone hope you're all doing well. This entry goes out to all of the beautiful women who read this blog. This weekend I had a pretty cool experience, one that was definitely unusual, crazy, and fun. I went with my good friend Jen to a Jin-Jeh Bong, which is somewhat similar to a sauna. It had 5 different pools that had jets, and chairs, and each pool had a different temperature ranging from 64 degrees to 107 degree pool. There were three sauna rooms ranging from 100 degrees to 180 degrees (which I definitely did not try, haha). You might be thinking, cool a nice sauna/hot tub action is always fun, but there was something really different about this place . . . you are naked! Yes completely naked, no towels, no shoes, no little swimsuit or coverup, just the birthday suit! I walked into this beautiful Grecian inspired locker room, and immediatly became giggly and nervous seeing many nude women just walking around. It was time for me to de-robe. It took me a couple of seconds to comprehend that I had to take off all my clothes, I kept thinking "really? everything?" This was quite awkward and nerve racking for me, but I had to do it. While I was having a little panic session I saw about 10 other women walk by with no worries, so I decided to go for it. I walked into the sauna area completely nude with about 30 or more Korean women walking, showering, soaking as if this is completely normal. First we scrubbed in the showers (no doors of course, haha) and then hopped into one of the huge hot tubs (I'll remind you it's a pool size hot tub). It was very beautiful and clean in there and while I was self conscious about not only being naked but being a foreigner who is naked (Korean stare more at you when you're a foreigner), I found myself walking really fast and tense like. Once I sat down near the jets and finally relaxed I realized this was something so unique and so special. I am just chilling with 30 other women ranging from age 3 - 60+ (yes children, teenagers, and young adults too) in the nude and it felt extremely invigorating and surprisingly comfortable. I am pretty self conscious when it comes to my body, but sitting there seeing all of the realistic bodies types, shapes, sizes and relaxed women was a wonderful reminder of how we should be able to appreciate our bodies and be more comfortable in our own skin. I felt more relaxed than I thought I ever could. It's not just that women were sitting and sulking, they were conversing like they were having dinner and scrubbing each other like they would to their own child. And when they scrubbed I mean they really scrubbed hard and thorough, haha. It was nice going with a good friend to talk with and overall it was a positive and an eye-opening experience to say the least, haha. I never thought I would be able to do something like this but after the initial naked shock I found it cleansing, relaxing, and interesting haha. We tried a couple of other pools (the cold one was great) and then topped it off in the sauna where it looked out to the ocean, beautiful view. There was even a pool outside you could go to and be naked outside overlooking the ocean, but we left that for another day. I definitely want to go again, Erin are you interested when you come in 2 weeks? Just wanted to share this cool and unique experience with you all.

here's to beautiful naked bodies!

"Fishing" Trip at Bangjukpo Beach!

2009-03-30T08:48:00.009-05:00

I stayed over night out at the beach on Dolsan island this weekend. Their were about 9 people who stayed over night, and maybe 15 people who came throughout the day. It was a little bit colder than average, especially with that ocean breeze rolling in, but it felt great to be outside all day. We fished off a fishing pier during the early afternoon..... Well, wait let me rewind a bit. Megan decided fishing wasn't going to be her thing, so my friend Ed and I went out to Emart, bought our fishing rods, some cheap-o bait, and got our McD's lunch (Big Mac!). We then started our short quest for fireworks, while also heading out towards Dolsan, Banjukpo beach to be specific. This beach is about 20km from my house, out in rural Dolsand island, on the way to Hyangiram temple. In fact you could see the temple from the beach, especially the path light up at night.

The place we stayed in the red one with "Spanish" looking arches.

We arrived out at the beach at about noon. Rich, our friend from New Zealand made us feel like totally chumps, but helped us get the line on our rod nonetheless, thankfully. This lead to Ed and my fishing, which lasted all of about 30 casts, maybe one or two hours. We fished, chatted, and generally hung out for a while. A few more people arrived, and we decided to check into the beach/cliffside minbok (kind of a Korean small hostel / B&B type place). THe price was kind of high, 50,000 Won per room, but we bit the bullet since the view was awesome. After that we unwisely switched to fishing from the shaded side of the cove, which was absolutely miserable. I personally made only one cast at the time, and mostly hung out and tipped a few back. Finally some wise guys decided we should switch back to the other side of the cove, and eat dinner. At this time we went to the beach side mart and bought about 30,000 of roman candles and bottle rockets (whistlers with report to be exact). Ed and I also did a short jaunt on a ocean side cliff walking path, which was awesome, hopefully he will have some pictures. We eventually made it over their and had a great dinner of samgyubal (Korea grilled pork), Mondu, and a bunch of other GREAT food. It was a lot of fun. We hung out their, and did a few of our fireworks, much to the chagrin of the locals out fishing. We had music playing from the car, I'm sure the locals had never seen anything like it. It felt a lot like being back in Minnesota, good friends, relaxing and having a lot of fun.

Once the sun went down around 7:30PM, two pretty cool things happened. First, a camoflauge jeep showed up full of about 10 soldiers. I thought they'd been called about the fireworks, but they could've cared less. They were actually there for the rotating duty to watch out for spy activity off the cove. It was pretty cool, we talked to them for a bit and they said a beach fire was all good, and out of their jurisdiction. Secondly, all of these mysterious lights popped up along the tidal river from this beach. We thought it was more soldiers checking out... whatever. It was rather a bunch of older woman, shining the light back and forth, over and over again, with a small net in hand. We couldn't spot what they were trying to catch. Ed and I watched for a while, when finally the woman we were observing scooped her net and put something in. We kindly asked in the simplest Korean, (Mua ah yo) what is that, she shined her light and said (Jang-uh Seki) I knew Seki meant animal baby, and we later learned the other word to be eel, pretty interesting, and fun to watch. You just don't see as much stuff like that back at home. Just before sundown the beach was full of the older ladies pulling out the sea weed, which we saw hanging to dry later that night also. Those are some of the things that make living here interesting, and a small reminder of the culture I am surrounded by each day.

At about 11PM or so, we moved over to the beach to start the bonfire. Wood is a bit harder to come by here then it was back in the North woods. We had to "borrow" someones old scrape wood (or so we thought) to get the bonfire going. This was also the time we went crazy and lit off the bottle rockets and roman candles. After the wood adventure, we were relaxing for a while when a group of Koreans came and visited us. I used my Korean (although we had to fluent speakers with) to ask where they were from and what they do, etc, which was a lot of fun. Then, one of their friends was thrown into the ocean, nice guys, huh? They didn't turn down the Soju we offered them, of course. Eventually the sleepy bug hit, and my goal of staying up and watching the sunrise at the Hyangiram temple came crashing down at about 3AM. The minbok offered Korean style bed (a blanket on the floor) and an empty room. We slept 4 people deep sardine style, and I'd guess my roomies didn't like my snoring one bit.

The other room, just to get an idea.

The next day we had another good brunch at the fishing pier. No one caught any fish that day, and only a flounder and a rock fish the first day, so we had to enjoy some chicken, eggs, bacon, and some other treats instead. I headed back to Yeosu at about 12:30PM, marking the end of the 24 adventure. In the end it was a lot of fun, being able to bond with my friends, and enjoy the outdoors.

Anyways, that's my story. Now that I see how long this ended up being I will probably copy it on to the blog. It was obviously the biggest adventure and most fun I've had in a while!! I have hit 8 months today, that means only 1/3 of the time here is left until I come home!

Hanrahans in Yeosu!

2009-03-22T10:38:00.019-05:00

After several months of anticipation to have my parents come visit I’m sad to say it has already come to an end. We sent Mom, Dad, and Tim home on an 8:45 am flight this morning and while the goodbye was short and sweet, the aftermath is really making me homesick.

It was a really busy but fun week with the family. After finally getting my hair highlighted up in Seoul Dave and I met my parents and brother at the airport. They were of course the last people to walk through the gate, but they made it nonetheless. We took the bus to the hotel, dropped off our stuff and then quickly went to eat subway (I don’t think my family knew exactly why their first meal of the week was subway, but by the end of the trip they figured it out, haha). My dad spotted a jazz club and we attempted to go there, and to much of Dave and my surprise, it was a legitimate live jazz club. We stayed for a couple of rounds and then headed back to the hotel. While I was in the cab I noticed I had lost my wallet. After crying a little, the cabby dropped us off where we needed to be and luckily didn’t kick us out on account of having no money. I lost the train tickets along with my wallet, so the next morning we had to purchase more train tickets. But we made it to Yeosu in the afternoon, everyone together with only a wallet lost in the shuffle. When we got into town we took the family to Kimbap Nara and they ate their first “Korean” meal. I could tell my brother has been practicing with the chopsticks, but NOT mom and dad, haha. We took them on a scenic drive of Yeosu, stopped at e-mart for some grocery shopping and got McDonald’s for dinner. Everyone was exhausted, including Dave and I so we made it a short night.

The next day while Dave and I worked, Hyegeong, Sara, and Won kindly took my family to Nagan, a traditional folk village. They stopped at a flower festival as well where my brother got hit on by a drag queen, haha. That night we relaxed, had some cake (it was my birthday) and had a couple of drinks. The next day we took advantage of the beautiful weather we have been having and went to Odongdo, Dolsan Park, Jinnamgwan, and the open market, all before we had to work. The weather all week long was amazing! No rain, and mid 60’s the entire time we were in Yeosu. My family was pretty impressed with the open market, it’s not every day you get to see fresh fish chilling in the alley, and a pig’s head dangling from the ceiling. Good thing we ate beforehand. After school, Dave and I took them out for a Korean style barbecue. I think they all liked the food very much, but the spices got to my dad the next morning. After dinner we drove through the industrial complex where I think everyone fell asleep in the car at one point in time (besides Dave). We came home and chilled the rest of the night.

On Wednesday we had a Korean style picnic lunch out at Shindock beach. We turned this into a candid photo shoot taking silly and fun pictures on the beach. It was a lot of fun, and got some great pics. My mom also successfully attempted a cartwheel on the beach (she does this every once in a while to make sure she can still complete it, haha). While we were driving back there were a couple of times we had to get out of the car while Dave drove over the speed bumps in order to not bottom out our car, but besides that the little Elantra survived the Hanrahan’s, haha. This was the day the fam came to school. Our boss and his wife gave them a warm greeting and they had tea and potatoes ready for them to eat. While Dave and I were preparing for class, my mom and dad talked with our boss and my Maric (our boss’s 2nd oldest son) took my brother to look at a comic book store. It was great having the family in school, all of the kids were amazed and excited to see them. Some of them were even nervous and scared. I made up some questionnaires that the kids used to interview my family, it turned out to be pretty fun. I think my mom, dad, and brother were really excited and happy they could get a chance to see the school and the kids. My boss also took my family aside and basically said “teach my son how to play jazz.” Well his son only plays violin, and my dad doesn’t play violin. My dad taught him a jazz scale and they listened to Max (boss’s oldest son) play violin. Exactly what my parents wanted to do, haha jk. They missed one of my classes that I actually had a special lesson prepared for my family because my boss wanted them to hear his son play the violin. I think this little lack of communication situation gave my family just a little taste of how this school and Kologic (Korean logic) can get very daunting and annoying. After having dinner at the Hagwon, my family took a cab home and waited for Dave and I to finish the rest of our teaching.

Thursday I didn’t have to work! Unfortunately Dave did, but I think it was nice for him to just get out of the house alone for a couple of hours, haha. I took this opportunity to hike the mountain with everyone. It’s the mountain Dave and I hike frequently, and even though it was foggy and rainy early in the day, it cleared up while we were hiking. The flowers have just started to bloom so it made for some beautiful scenery. After the hike my mom and I went to Lotte mart and then the open market closer to our house to pick up a few more things. That night we all had dinner at Hye-gyong’s sister’s apartment. Hye-gyong, Jeff, Sara, Hana, Jahn-oak (Hye-gyong’s sister), Won (Hye-gyong’s brother), Hye-oak (Won’s wife), Jay-yeong (Hyegyong’s neice), Hyun-sa (Hyge-gyong’s niece), and my family. It was incredibly nice of Hyegeong’s family to do since technically I am not a part of their family. They are such a generous and supportive family, thank you! We had a traditional pork dinner sitting on the floor, which I must admit my family did pretty well at. It was delicious and much appreciated; what a cool experience for my family. We visited awhile with them and then set off for home. We played scattegories at home while having a couple of drinks (luckily my dad brought some good whiskey from home). Then we hit the town and went to a soju room where my parents had their first and last taste of soju, haha. After that we were ready for the noribong! This was probably the most fun night of all, everyone was singing and having a great time. We didn’t get home till 3:30 am!

Friday both Dave and I had off of work! We were a little sick from the night before, but nothing that a little McDonald’s can’t soak up. We took everyone to Hyangiram (a temple on the south side of Dolsan island). It was very beautiful outside, and at the top of the mountain we took some great pictures. We also went to view the turtle ships and drove through the famous Marae tunnel that Koreans built by hand while enslaved by Japan. That night we went out to dinner with Jen and took the parents to Ellui, the bar where most foreigners hang out. There they got to see the fire show and meet a couple of our friends. I took my brother home early and we got some Mondu from the nicest foodstand lady in town. My parents stayed out for a bit longer with Dave and they also got Mondu (or according to Sue – Mongu) later that night.
The last day we got kimbap nara one more time and headed to Gwangyoung for a soccer game. It was really fun because it gave them a chance to just sit and watch Koreans, haha. They were able to experience the storm of “Hi, how are you?” and the other fun things that go along with this culture. We headed home and after a whole week of no rain, it started to rain. Mom and Dad walked and got a pizza (all on their own) for us and we just visited and watched a movie. The next morning we headed our early to say goodbye and put them on a plane home.

I don’t think I have been as homesick as I have been these past several hours after saying goodbye. It meant so much for me to have my family travel all the way out here to see me. Dave and I both had a great time visiting, and had a lot of fun sharing our Korean life with people from back home. It was the best birthday gift I could ever ask for. I am so lucky to have such a great family! Thank you so much Mom, Dad, and Tim, we love you!

p.s. Only three more weeks until the next set of visitors come! And only 4 more months left of Korea! Time is really going by too fast.

Here are the pictures part one!

Part Two!

Visiting Season Approaching...

2009-02-25T07:40:00.003-06:00

Megan and I are getting really excited, because as the frigid Midwest winter continues, finally a few people are heading to the other side of the world to check out how we really live over here.

March 14 - 22
Megan's parents and brother Tim will come during the UW-Milwaukee spring break. They will have a quick, strenous trip, but we have planned the travel and got a few days off to maximize their experience here. This one has been in the cards for a while, so we almost have the plans to an hour by hour level!

April 17 - May 5
Breaking News! Erin and Brian, the Udells, have BOOKED their trip from April 17th - May 5th. They will take a week or so in there to hit up at least one other Asian country, to complete the experience, but they will have an extended stay in the 'Su.

We are SO excited for both these visits. The timing is perfect and has been driving us through this mid-contract stretch. Not to say time still isn't flying. We have now hit the 7 month point of being in Korea, and are rapidly approaching the 7 month point of our contract. I can almost not believe it, but then I think back about all of my experiences, and realize that, I have grown a lot, we have had a lot of fun, and these next 5 months will FLY by, especially with all these people visiting. It really makes Megan and I feel loved. I know that my family would be here just as fast, but health reasons and TWO new cute nephews have unfortunately prevented that. Instead we will enjoy the FULL Hanrahan clan.. Unbelievable!

I am also a little closer to that announcement, so keep checking the blog for updates.

Added the Twitter Widget

2009-02-22T10:11:00.002-06:00

If you couldn't tell from the widget above and to the right of this blog post, I added the twitter widget. I might relocate it depending upon how much I actually use it, but I think it might be kind of nice...

This week we haven't been up to much. On the bad news side, the car is going to the shop straight away on Monday morning. Following a long line of events that probably should have led to me taking it it, the power steering went out on Saturday afternoon. The car has since been parked at Jeff's, waiting to be taken to a service station. Luckily the availablity of cabs here is great, along with buses, so getting around is not a problem, even if it takes a few days.

Hopefully the car isn't totaled, seeing as almost any repair puts it into that range!!

Valentine's Week Update

2009-02-15T11:11:00.006-06:00

This month has not been nearly as busy as last month, but instead of battling weariness Megan and I were stuck battling apathy. After our virtual 12 hour shifts of January, we needed to rediscover what to do with our open mornings, and later nights in February. The first week of February resulted in a quite boring, and even slightly depressing result, in which we just wasted away the mornings and evenings, browsing the internet, or something similar. This week we remembered how to make things a bit more enjoyable...

The first thing was, adding a morning hike back into the plans. I think exercising always lifts one spirit, and nothing is more spiritual to Korean people than mountains. For those non wayguks who read this blog, Koreans mostly bury family members with plots on the side of a mountain, "for the view". If you look back at some of our earliest pictures, you can see an example of the mounds. The high temperatures didn't hurt last week, but we even made it up to the top today in 40 degree and rain (I wore shorts and a long sleeve-t to the shock of the locals). Regardless, adding this back to the morning routine definitely was a key to reducing cabin fever.

The other key thing has been socializing. We have both made some good friends here after six months, and we just need to get out of the house once and a while. Megan was lucky enough to have a girls only Valentine's party on Saturday afternoon, and we just had a few nights out with Gwang-he our co-worker, and our good friends Ed and Jen. This has kept us sane...

Other then that, I've been filing my time studying Korea, and doing a bit of side web development, for those who don't know, check out huminsight.com, for a tiny bit more about what I do, but expect a big announcement in a few weeks, I can't say exactly when just yet. I went out to Emart this week and bought a Hanja book (Korean via Chinese characters) made for little kids, to study the Hanja, and just improve my understand of Korean. I think I have become addicted to studying it, but it has slightly improved my quality of life, I must say. It's nice to tell someone something nice, or catch a kid using a swear word, haha!

This weekend, Megan had the valentine's party, like I said. At that time, I went over and toured the Yeosu Industrial Complex, for something to do. It is really INSANE. It is just about 8km straight of refineries, chemical plants, etc. It is really an awe striking place... I think I will go out, and get some pics. I might ask JS or another Yeosu-ite where I can hike to snap some good photos, it is almost unbelievable... And a bit scary, too!

We went out just for something to do each night, but didn't do anything to uniquely interesting. Today, we headed out to Suncheon, the next town over for our Valentine's dinner, Outback Steak House. It was GREAT... BLOOMIN' Onion mmmmmmm! The cost was.... reasonable, W70,000. My steak was quite mediocre, and really fatty, but apparently the Korean's like the fat. Megan has her first salad in ages, a Mango Chicken w/ Honey Mustard to be exact. After that we checked out Suncheon's various shopping outlets for a bit, and headed back.

Well, not too exciting as far as blog posts go. I'd love to get some nice social commentary pieces, or a bit more in depth, but that doesn't happen when you start a post at 2AM...! I hope to update a few more times during the week, I know I left some stuff out, especially objective piece as opposed to a summary...

Wrapping it up, some news, we hit 6 MONTHS at the end of January, and are now officially scrappy Korea vets. My sister Angie had ADORABLE son, named Adrian. He is incredibly cute. My sister Laura's 6+ month old, Noller skates, has been battling a fever, so we all wish him well. Megan's parents are coming in less than 4 weeks!!! We are SOOO excited. No pictures this time around, so I'll just leave you all with a video I enjoyed from Youtube! Bye, don't forget to email!

If you liked it, check out http://www.cloudcult.com . They are a veteran, indy band from MN which I've been listening to a lot lately. Alright, I must SLEEP!

Solnal Weekend in Fukuoka, Japan!

2009-01-27T09:18:00.008-06:00

We have been insanely busy this month, working a morning shift (9:30AM-12:30) along with our regular teaching hours (2/3PM-8PM) at the hagwon. This has made our lives quite miserable, but the time has flown by. This was the reason you have likely not heard from us, and the blog has been barren. We have done nothing worthy of note, besides work, and sleep until this weekend. I have nothing else to say about it, other then that we are finished in the next three days, and we should get fat pay checks.

Last weekend was Solnal, or Lunar New Year, Chinese New Year, whatever, in Asia, so we had Monday and Tuesday off! This allowed us to final clean all of December and January's dust from our house today, but more importantly we made it to Fukuoka, Japan from Saturday-Monday. I will give a brief outline of the trip, plus we got about 40 pics and a video!

Friday night after work we headed over to Yeosu Bus Terminal to catch the 10:30PM bus to Busan. We arrived in Busan, and after an expensive (W20,000) taxi ride over to port, we found a cheap love motel and spent the night. The next morning at 9AM, we headed over to the domestic (lost in translation) ferry terminal, and then walked over to the international terminal. We got on the ferry, and had a great ride on the Kobee Beetle Hydrofoil. It was really cool, the boat uses a jet engine and rides mostly above the water besides a small fin. The ride was 115KM and took about 3 hours. We arrived in Fukuoka and found our way to the Central Hotel. Fukuoka was hit with an ultra rare snow storm (about 2 inches). So, we got many great pictures.

The first day in town we checked out the local shopping areas, andfound our way to this Canal City shopping mall. We bought nothing because any item would have literally busted our trip budget (Y30,000 ~ $300). Afterward we went back to nap so we could check out the Fukuoka night life. At about 10PM we meandered over to the downtown area, and searched and searched for a pub called Three Kings. We found it after about 1/2 hour and we rewarded with two pints of Old Speckled Hen for our troubles (for Y1,800). After that we went to another bar called Small Spaces. Like the name implies, it was a small, yet intimate and cool bar. There we had our first (and only) sake of the trip, and a few beers. We never found out the name of the beer because everything was in Japanese. We met a man from England who was the manager of a band named Keith who was touring in Fukuoka that night. He told us about how people in London were so excited about Obama, and the changing opinion of the world about America. It was much more rewarding then having to explain old Bush. They also played a video of a band called Special Others, who are part of the new Japanese Indie scene, that we really liked. I will post a video... On the way back I was devastated to find the famous Fukuoka food stands all closed, but was determined to get some the next day.

The next day we decided to try to see a few sights of Fukuoka, and decided to scrap our plans to visit Nagasaki (St Paul's sister city). It was raining, so we had to use umbrellas, but it was a little easier compared to heavy snow. First, we walked over to Subway to get our first subs since Itaewon... MMMMMMMMM! Then, we walked over to the Fukuoka castle ruins. The museum was closed, so we just enjoyed the beautiful moat surrounding it. After that, we took the subway out about 15 minutes to the other side of town. We were hoping to check out Fukuoka Tower and a temple, nearby. We tried to go to the temple first, but we were having a hard time finding it. We finally stopped and asked for directions, but the 7/11 employee didn't speak enough English to help us out. Luckily, a French guy who lived in the area was walking by, and he kindly pointed us in the right direction, on top of a large hill, and told us that it was the first time he had seen snow in town in a long time. On the way, we walked through a neat American style neighborhood, that happened to be having an open house. We decided to check it out, but unfortunately the interior design was modeled after an American home... it was gorgeous, but not too exciting! We finally got up to the temple, and admired the beautiful views it offered, which you can see in the pictures. We found the stairs on the other side of the hill down, which were only about a five minute walk from the subway station, although we walked for about 40 minutes to get around it the first time! We then went back for a nap.

That night we wanted to try a Japanese restaurant, so we went back to the same area we'd been in last night. We finally chose a cute looking place, but there were no pictures or English descriptions of the food. Luckily, a waiter there spoke excellent English, and helped us order... From the Italian style menu!! We order Fettucini with Oysters, which was great, but not what we'd hoped for. Later on we went to some of the many arcade rooms, and challenged ourselves with a bunch of the fun, crazy games. We managed to get a video of one of the Japanese gaming masters. The game's name was Pop'n Music... We headed home early so Dave could get his street food fix... Plus we only had Y1,000 left to spend!!

The final day we just slept in and took the now simple public transportation back to the ferry. We had a full day of travel: Ferry 2-5 -> taxi 5-6 -> bus 6-10, and made it safely back to Yeosu.

Overall, Japan was great. The people were incredibly kind, fashionable, and the culture is incredibly fun to observe. We say Sumo on TV, and the game nerds at the arcades, the most stereotypical things! The public transportation was intuitive, architecture reminding me of Minneapolis, and was great. We even discovered a new favorite band, Special Others, and Japanese indie rock scene. To any fellow Wayguk-ins reading this blog, I most definitely recommend a visit. I leave you with the music video that we saw in Small Spaces... Also, my sister is due to give birth to a son any day now, so wish her good health!

We miss everyone, please write!!! Anyoung Hasayeo! In the mean time, check out the pictures!

Vietnam Trip in Photos and Video

2009-01-11T05:35:00.008-06:00

We got about 360 photos and 8 videos from the trip, but we removed many duplicated, and the ones that didn't turn out so good to some up with a grand total somewhere between 200-250. Facebook only allows 60 photos per album (well, there is a way around this, but I have yet to figure it out), so there are four separate links. The photos are well commented, so please take your time:

First day (Christmas Day), arriving in Ho Chi Mihn, photos of our all day walking tour (Revolutionary Museum, Notre Dame Cathedral, War Remnants Museum

Ho Chi Mihn Museum, Saigon Streetscape, Tourist Festival, Arrival and first day in Nha Trang, Boat Tour

Boat tour continued, Chom Tower, Hot Springs, New Years Eve, Monkey Island

Waterfall tour, Night Train, Co Chi Tunnels, Milwaukee Restaurant, Last day.

Now is the video part of our tour, I will embed them from youtube, they aren't the best quality, but I think they're pretty fun.

This first video is just us waiting at an intersection. This is seriously a standard intersection, with light to medium traffic. The congestion is a huge problem here.

This next one is us crossing the street. You just had to walk in a straight line at a steady pace, and traffic would flow around you. It was actually kind of fun! Especially at night, wearing black ;-)!

This next one was during our cab ride to the Ho Chi Mihn museum. No more comments needed.

This next one again hardly needs a comment, only set up. This happened during our rainy, miserable boat tour... Which turned it into our fun... Awesome boat tour:

Two extreme bad ass people PARASAILING...

The last three are all feeding the monkeys at Monkey Island:

I hope you enjoy all of the media, we enjoyed the vacation!

Vietnam Trip Summarized in Emails

2009-01-11T05:24:00.003-06:00

Hello Blogosphere, I was going to write a full recap of our trip, but I thought I'd just write a short summary which we gathered on the way back to Yeosu, and then just put the emails I wrote to my family on the blog, since they captured my feelings at the times.

Here is the first email, recapping the first few days in Vietnam, and going to Nha Trang:

We made it safely into and out of Ho Chi Mihn City (HCM). We had few problems, which was really nice. Vietnam is much significantly, visibly, poorer then Korea, which leads to some interesting things, and some very sad things. For example, Mothers will use their children to try and sell cigarettes or gum to tourists who are out at night. We even saw one mother training her less then two year old child for this future job.

The weather has been in the 80's, or so, which was quite nice compared to around freezing. It is really humid, even more so then the weather in Minnesota Summer. The architecture really reflects the french colonial period of Vietnam. The buildings are tall, skinny and colorful. Some of them still visibly damaged from the war. We got to about 3 mueseums in HCM, one of which was a war memorial museum. It was really neat, but sad. There were hundreds of pictures of wounded or dead children, elderly, or other civilians.

We ran into a little trouble getting to and from Nha Trang. We had to take the 6AM flight this morning, which meant that we had to "wake up" at 4AM. More accurately this meant that Megan and I slept for about an hour combined. There were no flights coming back, period. We are going to have to take a night train, on January 1st (one day early), we will arrive back in HCM at about 7AM. The nice thing is this will allow us ample time to find all of the deals around our neighborhood (district one). The bad thing is we have to spend an extra day breathing in the fumes of 10000000000000000000 motorbikes.

The weather in Nha Trang was rainy when we arrived, and cloudy for most of the day. We are going to go on an all day boat tour of the islands of Nha Trang tomorrow, for some snorkling, sea food, etc. The next day we will (likely) go scuba diving. Nha trang air is much cleaner then HCM, but the markets are more expensive. I think the people in HCM might even be poorer then those in Nha Trang.

Here is the next email after we had completed the boat tour:

Today has been another rain filled day. We did nothing but walk around near the beach and do a little bit of shopping when the rain let up for about an hour or two. It has not been a good vacation, beach, sun, and relaxation wise... Korea was much more sunny, we have yet to see the sun in Nam, haha. We are making the best of what's available, but as far as it goes, Nha Trang doesn't have a lot to do in the rain. It is like being in Vallyfair in the winter... Not much going on. What now turns out to be a blessing, which we thought was a curse, is that we are going back to Ho Chi Mihn City one day early. This will enable us to find some kind of day time tour and get some more shopping in.

One good thing is Nha Trang has cheap beer (between $0.80-$2) that also tastes better then Korean beer, and cheap, good Western, Thai, Vietnamese, basically any kind of food you can ask for. I have been living it up with delicious burgers, and other things not available in Korea. Also, the people here speak much better English. I think it is due to two things. A cultural difference between Koreans and Vietnamese people, Vietnameses are more inclined to try to speak, and many Koreans just like speaking Korean, only. Also Vietnam is much more touristy, so all of the people speak English, so they can communicate with Korean, Japanese, Chinese, Russian, French, and other Western tourists who come here.

Yesterday we had an all day / all rain island tour of Nha Trang bay. It ended up being pretty fun, but a bit miserable at times too, when driving the boat in the cold, wet rain. I swam for a while but could not snorkel since the visibility is terrible from the rain. Megan and I also tried parasailing, which was pretty fun. We recorded a video, so look forward to that. THe tour guide also did some singing and dancing, with live music from the crew. The drummer had to be about 13 years old. There are much looser child labor laws here, like I'd mentioned in my earlier email.

Here is the final email I sent from Vietnam, it goes over our touring in Nha Trang, the traveling, shopping, and the rest of our time in Nam:

We are setting up for our final night here in Ho Chi Mihn. We took the night train back from Nha Trang, which actually went pretty well. We arrived in HCM at about 6:45AM, took a cab to our hotel, dropped off our things, ate breakfast and then caught a tour bus out to the Co Chi tunnels. The Co Chi tunnels were the tunnels that were instrumental in the VC beating the allied forces during the Vietnam war. We learned a lot about the history of Vietnam during this trip as well, and had a pretty good tour guide. We had a chance to walk through the tunnels, which were quite a bit wider then the original tunnels, and get some good photos. We are at about 300 total for the trip, so I'll try and find the best of those to show everyone. The other good thing was that the weather cooperated today, finally. We were able to stay dry during the tunnel tour. A fun thing of the tunnel tour is the diversity of the people on our trip. We had Americans (us), English, Irish, German, Chinese, Korean (us), Russian, French people on the tour. You really learn how English is truly the global language when you have a group like that.

We got back at about 4PM, then went out to dinner, and did a lot of shopping. The goods here are so cheap that Megan and I were able to buy new large backpacks (like the BWCA trip size ones), and a bunch of other tourist trap kind of decorations for ourselves and friends (and maybe family ;-) ) as well as a few food items we cannot find in Korea (popcorn). I think I said this already, but Vietnam is much more international then Korea. I have enjoyed food from about 6 different cultures and world regions. In no particular order: Vietnamese, Thai, Russian, Chinese, American, English, and maybe a few others.

Yesterday was a fun, but also slightly miserable day. We had a few hour long tour fit in right before our night train to HCM. We took a private van out to "monkey island". Basically many monkeys live on this island, and then they have this cruel show we see at the end, were the monkeys are forced to perform and look really unhappy. The good part was we got to feed them, and it didn't rain. Next, we were supposed to see a waterfall, by the name of Bo Hahn (or something). We took, about a 45 minute drive down a flooded country road to get to the cold, wet jungle path. After about a 1.5 KM walk through TREACHEROUS terrain (I was wearing $1.50 flip flops btw), we got to the waterfall, but it was so flooded we couldn't stay long. Then, about 100 meters into the return trip, my $1.50 flip flops BROKE!!! I had to walk 1.4KM through the Vietnamese jungle on this rocky path BAREFOOT! In the end it wasn't terrible, but I think I took some solid steps towards the pain threshold of a Buddhist monk.

New Years Eve was really cool. Though the weather was really bad, we had a dance party on the beach. The Sailing Club had a big DJ set up on the ocean front, and we got to go out there. The rain started down pouring, and we all got soaked, but it was all in good fun. During the day we say a cool old Buddhist temple called Chom Tower, and then went to a mud bath, and the guys of the trip got a 45 minutes massage. It was the first one of my life. It was pretty cool, and relaxing. The traditional Vietnamese way is for the masseuse to walk on your back, so that was interesting.

Tomorrow we may take a tour, or we may sleep in and just burn time bumming around HCM, finding interesting things to take some more photos of. Ho Chi Mihn and Vietnam has been a lot of fun, and a needed break from teaching. Although the weather hasn't been great (or even good for the most part) we made fun out of it. I was able to get closer to Jeff, and Hye Gyoung and have a lot of fun a lot the way.

Finally, the last night we took the night flight back from Saigon after basically sitting around all day. We decided that we were not interesting in a five hour train ride back to Yeosu, so we canceled out tickets (95% refund, 2 hours before time, pretty awesome) and then bought two tickets back for W180,000. We arrived back at noon, and basically slept and heated up the house for the rest of the day. Afterward, winter camp started, I was bit by a dog, we met our new co-worker, etc. This will all be in another blog.

Hello from Ho Chi Mihn City

2008-12-27T09:45:00.003-06:00

Hello everyone. Dave saying hello from Vietnam via my iPod... We leave for Nha Trang at 6am... We have tons of pics. Hope everyone had a good Xmas!!

5 Month Milestone Reached / T-Minus 12 hours to NAM

2008-12-24T08:03:00.000-06:00

We are about 12 hours until we take our train up to Seoul for the trip to Vietnam. It is finally here! We also reached the five month milestone today. We arrived in Yeosu on July 24th, and will be here until July 31st, 2009 (working at least). It is also Christmas Eve. We had to work today, which wasn't too difficult since we did mainly Christmas activities, but we took our middle school students out for a party day. We went bowling for about an hour and a half (after we were supposed to be finished for the day). Neither Megan or I minded. The kids absolutely loved bowling. Two of them had bowled a few times before, and two of them were having their first time bowling. For the first game the kids were cheering 4/5 pin throws like they were a strike. It was a lot of fun. It is also rewarding to give those kids a break from studying. They go to school all the time, and if not they are in after school hagwons. The South Korean educational system is so competitive, but it really breaks the kids spirits, sometimes.

We are packing tonight, then getting up at about 6AM to get in touch with some of the family on Christmas Eve... From there we leave at 11:30AM from the train station (two blocks from our house). We arrive in Seoul (Yeongdeungpo-gu) at about 4:30PM, then at some point we take a bus over to Incheon. I think we will stick around in Seoul for just a bit to get some western food for our Christmas dinner. The next morning we are off to Vietnam!! I will try and get online at least once or twice in Vietnam, and post on the blog... or at least email. In the mean time you can check out the weather in Nha Trang Merry Christmas Eve!!! Happy New Year!

Yeosu Christmas Party / Oyster Dinner

2008-12-21T09:37:00.000-06:00

Modeling our X-mas sweaters.

Hello blogosphere. Dave here. I really thought I'd crank out a few more blogs in December, but we got pretty busy. We are three work days from leaving Yeosu for a week. I've been really busy working on various things outside of work. Planning, web development, etc, so this time has been flying by. We haven't even started packing for Vietnam yet, but we are only bringing one bag and one backpack between us, so we will be traveling quite light. I think that we'll buy a lot of cheap stuff in Vietnam, and maybe even a second bag if we get enough! We have to use backpacks because everyone travels by motorbike in 'Nam, so luggage does not fit that system well. By looking forward to this trip I think both Megan and I overcame the burn out we had been experiencing at the start of the month. When you talk to other teachers, everyone goes through it. You get sick of the teaching hours, the students, the often confusing (by Western standards) communication of superiors, and other random problems that come up. This vacation is really coming at the perfect time. Jeff has said that it will be like a reset switch has been hit, and you can roll through work for another few months. I am looking forward to that.

동침 Dong Chim!!

This weekend was the Yeosu (foreigner) Christmas Party. Megan and I decided to find some nice Christmas sweaters to wear. They actually turned out pretty well, but I had to cut the turtle neck off of my sweater with a scissors! The party was at the same place as the Halloween party - "Ebada". Some people in town set up a really cool deal with a local orphanage. The "cover charge" for the party was either a gift for the kids, or a donation. A lot of people were also going to the Orphanage on Christmas day to give the presents and play games with the kids, but for obvious reasons we couldn't make it. We sang some Christmas carols, and had some delicious egg nog. I never knew egg nog was so good! I provided the party music again, and I think that went pretty well... As far as satisfying the tastes of people from 5/6 countries can go.

This evening we took a short trip out to Man-sang-ri beach to have a meal of FRESH oysters. They catch them in the morning, and serve them in the evening. Jeff paid for the entire Kim family to eat out. That was really nice of him. The oysters tasted GREAT. Basically the server puts a big plate of oysters over a flame on your table, and you just take them and eat them. You wear a handsome white glove to grab the boiling hot oyster, and then pry it open (if it is still closed) with a knife and scrape it out. I had raw oysters before which were OK, but cooked are great. It also speaks volumes to how my food pallet has increased. When I first got here I don't think there would be much of a chance that I'd try a food like that. I would NEVER had considered it back at home. Nowadays I didn't even give it a second thought - because it's so good!! I think my tastes have changed just a bit from when I've left. I mean I even (sort of) like Kimchi now and Megan loves it!

Well, we have a few pictures from both the oysters and the Christmas party, so check them out. I am looking forward to warm weather, and hopefully checking out some interesting sites while we are in Nam, so expect some blogging!

Merry Christmas everyone. We miss you so much! I hope to hear from each and everyone who reads the blog!! Trust me, even a one or two sentence comment or email makes our day.

Happy Holidays - enjoy the pictures!!!

Happy Holidays!!

2008-12-17T09:35:00.000-06:00

Merry Christmas everyone! Here are the latest pics! I hope you are all having a wonderful holiday season and enjoying yourselves. I didn’t think I would miss being home as much as I have lately. I thought that with our Vietnam trip and the lack of Christmas celebration here I wouldn’t be homesick, but that’s not the case. I miss being home during this time of year, I even miss the snow (just the pretty stuff not all the storms). I miss the cookies, the songs, the feeling you get from being with family and friends. I miss the Christmas Eve parties, Christmas day food, and the Christmas Story movie marathon, haha. I’m lucky that I have Dave here to keep my spirits up. I’m also glad that at the Nareabong (singing room/Karaoke) they have Mariah Carey’s “All I want for Christmas is You,” which I can’t sing but love trying. We are also very lucky for the wonderful x-mas packages sent to us, thank you to all of our families! My mom sent Dave and I a singing snoopy and another dog for our classrooms and the kids love them! The kids are so entertained by the movement and music, they think it’s the best thing in the world. Dave’s mom sent us a couple of Christmas books one being The Night Before Christmas which has wonderful illustrations. When I read the story, even to the “bad” classes, the students listened in silence while gazing at the pictures. Dave and I are really excited to take out our middle schoolers on Christmas Eve. Instead of class we are taking them bowling so that should be a lot of fun. I don’t even know if any of them have ever been bowling before. These kids definitely deserve a little fun because all they do is study. When asked “what will you do on Christmas, you have no school or Academy” the response is “study.” You can just tell how stressed and tired they are even before they talk. I can’t wait to see their reactions.

I’ll give you a little update about our Vietnam trip, but look forward to a very long blog entry about it when we get back. We are leaving on Christmas day to spend five long hours on a train to get to Seoul where we will meet up with Jeff and Hyegyong. We will most likely have a fun night in Seoul (including a western style meal!) and then hop on a plane the next morning where our destination is Ho Chi Minh (Saigon). We will spend a few days there in 80 degree weather sightseeing and shopping. Then we are off to Nha Trang to spend the remainder of our trip lying on the beach and possibly scuba diving???! Overall, our trip is ten days long. We are going to spend Christmas and New Years in Vietnam, that pretty cool! I think this trip will be relaxing and hopefully re-energizing at the same time because when we get back from Vietnam Dave and I have a full schedule at the Hagwon with winter camp. We will be working in the morning and in the evenings, and even though it will be long and tiring it will hopefully bring in some extra money for our next trip

Here are a few pictures of the snow in Yeosu (it only lasted for about 10 minutes), and some Noreabong action. I’m really starting to like this Noreabong idea, I wish there was something similar back in the states. It’s a great workout too because all I end up doing is dancing, haha. This also might seem a little random but living over here where I have to speak so literally I feel like I am losing my vocabulary or that it is just getting rusty. Sometimes when I write or say a word I haven’t used in a long time it strikes me as being incorrect. I am so used to speaking as little as possible to my students, keeping my sentences short, simple and to the point so they can understand. Back home I could use complex words without thinking about their meaning because it was natural, but over here I think about the meanings of words much more (even small words). It is a really strange sensation when you are speaking to think consciously about the words you are saying. Languages and communication can be kinda crazy sometimes, haha!

Well sorry for that random thought but I hope you all have a wonderful Christmas and New Years. Dave and I appreciate all of your love and support. Keep up the e-mails and comments we love hearing from you. See you all next year!

Dave wishes they had this one at noraebong.

December Above Freezing? MC Mong!

2008-12-04T07:52:00.000-06:00

Suncheon Bay...

Being (almost) born and raised in Minnesota, I know December to be a bone chilling month that is only justified by the fun events of Christmas and New Years Eve to make it worth while. I have found out that other places in the world are not like this. It is currently December in Yeosu, and it is still significantly higher then freezing. It feels like those days in March or April, when it's still technically cold, around 50F back in Minnesota, but it has been so damn cold all winter that you are walking around in shorts and a tshirt, but in December! I cannot believe it... I won't rub it in, I mean it's not that much better, and my house is just as cold, but I am able to be outside and not curse under my breath the entire time, which is nice.

We have some pictures to put up from the last few weekends (this is a link to them). These are from three different events. The first one is from the Thanksgiving party at Jeff's house. Unfortunately there are only a few stray photos from that night. The next weekend (11/29-30) Megan and I took a trip to the next town over, Suncheon (순천). We visited the "famous" tourist sight, which is Suncheon Bay (click for more info). It was about a 30 minute drive, and the first time I'd driven out of Yeosu. It was easy to find as most signs were in English, plus I figured out how to read it in Korean just in case. Saturday was quite cold and windy, so we didn't stay for long, but we got some cool pictures. We then went shopping at some of the big stores, Home Plus and E-Mart. We bought some clothes for the first time. Once in a while you can actually find a size that'll fit a Westerner, but not every time. That night we stayed in and I just did some work at home.

Sunday was the big foreigners Thanksgiving party. It is getting pretty neat now, since we have met many of the foreigners, so we can have a chat in English with some people, and catch up. The food was AMAZING. Shannon (from California / New Jersey) went to the closest big city (Gwanju) and picked it up. It tasted delicous. There was a lot of cool people there and a lot of good food.

Last night (Wednesday night) Jeff, AJ (Upscale) and I went to a concert at a local night club. This was a kind of strange Korean style club called a "booking" club. You can read more about "Booking" if you'd like, but the just of it is, guys just point to a girl they want to talk to, then the waiter drags them over. We didn't partake, because we just wanted to see the famous Korean rapper MC Mong (MC 몽). We had to wait until 12:30AM for the show to start, and it lasted about 25 minutes, but it was pretty cool. We were the only foreigners in the club, so we stood out. MC Mong also noticed this, so he said "where are you from?" To which Jeff replied "We are Americans (미국 사람 입니다). He then gave us props, and gave Jeff a fist pound, which was cool. All of the Koreans around tried to grab onto him when he did it. It is so strange being in the minority..! A famous celebrity still notices you.

The next weekend will be pretty good, and it is now only 3 weeks on the dot until we leave Yeosu to head to Ho Chi Minh City!! Pretty unbelievable. I will leave you with the MC Mong Song that was stuck in my head all day, I'm crazy (for you!)

Happy Thanksgiving!

2008-11-27T21:42:00.000-06:00

Hello blogosphere... I just wanted to write a short update on how we spent our Thanksgiving. Last weekend Jeff had a party of about 10-12 over for a Thanksgiving meal. He wisely brought stuffing from home, so we had turkey, stuffing with gravy. It was SOOO good. Megan also made homemade apple pie from scratch! It was great.

Yesterday was Thanksgiving Day. A few kids knew about the holiday. I had the kids draw the "turkey hands" and passed out stickers from my Mom! They love stickers. I will post some high (and low) lights of the hands. It was bitter sweet to be here, because we got to have great conversations with our families, but it really makes you miss home. There was a small party we got to after work (about midnight!) and stayed until quite late at AJs.

Today I will repeat the hand turkeys, so it should be a fun day overall (and hopefully easy). This weekend there is a big foreigner party over at Rich (a New Zealander, actually!). I will keep you updated.

Happy thanksgiving, and thank you so much to those who emailed, skyped, chatted to us today! Please do it again this weekend!

Gas Smell Explained. F***** NEIGHBORS.

2008-11-17T19:18:00.000-06:00

The last two nights Megan and I have had to spend the night away from home because of a nasty gasoline smell that was protruding from our bathroom. I will get into details, but first I need to give a short lesson on sewers in older Korean homes. Our shower has a direct line from the sewer to our bathroom. If you haven't already thought of what kind of issues that could cause, just take a minute to look at all of the piping in your home. Notice how all of the pipes have a U-shaped bend in them, if they come from a smelly source? This is not a coincidence, this bend keeps smelly gases from coming back up from the sewer. Normally this just causes a slight problem of a little stinky air coming back up, but the occasional drain-o, plus careful bathroom door management, will take care of the smell. This time, however, drain-o was not the solution.

After we finished hiking the mountain on Sunday, we got back to the slightest of gasoline smell in our home. We didn't think much of it and headed over to Jeff's. We got back from dinner, and the smell was much worse, coming specifically from the bathroom. Of course this is quite alarming, knowing what I just explained above. We were getting headaches from the few minutes we'd been inside, so we decided to spend the night at Jeff's (who graciously accepted).

The next day our boss came over, and thought that we could possible detour the smell by pouring water down our drains. This seemed to help slightly, combined with our windows being open all afternoon, so we left for work as usual. When we got back the smell was as strong as ever. We called up our boss, who agreed that if we are getting sick, we should spend the night in the hotel (on his dime, though he wasn't too happy).

At 10AM this morning JS came back, and talked to the neighbors. Here's what happened. The dummies oil tank which held the oil to heat their home broke and spilled into the Sewer!!! Are you kidding me??? The didn't bother to tell the neighbors!!! Knowing the sewer explanation I gave above, wouldn't it cross your mind to let someone know??? ... They have know that the smell well seep into neighbors homes, let alone the affect it could have on the water... But no... They didn't bother to tell anyone. Well, JS figured out why, and we are going to follow up today to make sure these fools actually alert the CITY to what they did. This could threaten the health of our entire neighborhood, especially us... Who knows what could have happened if someone dropped a cigarette in (since the sewers are just also accessible from street level)...

F******************* NEIGHBORS!!! Apparently wisdom doesn't come with age.

Fall Colors - Weekend update!

2008-11-16T07:41:00.000-06:00

Besides the fact that our house smells like gas (no, no, no... not that kind) it has been a pretty good weekend. After getting home from taco night at Jeff's we walked into a gasoline smelling home. We think it's coming from the bathroom drain, but whatever it is it was making us sick within the 10 minutes of being home. Luckily we have family in town, sleepover at Jeff's! Our boss is coming in the morning to check it out, hopefully it's nothing serious.

On Friday we went out to lunch with our Korean co-teachers before school. We also got a little holiday shopping done at the local markets. That night we were anticipating a small bowling night with Jeff and a few others but many other foreigners joined in the festivities which turned out to be really fun. We bowled a couple of games and decided to move the party to the bar.

Saturday was pretty much a lazy and recovery day for us. Dave was able to watch the Gopher basketball game online which was really cool. I think for the most part we don't mind not having TV. It would be nice to be able to watch some shows and/or keep up with sports, but I don't miss it as much as I thought I would. After the basketball game we went out for a country drive. The scenery was gorgeous and the sky was incredibly clear. It's nice being able to go on a drive anywhere we please, that independence makes us feel more comfortable here. That night I went over to a friend's house (Jen) with another girl (Joelle) and we cooked spaghetti and garlic bread which was really delicious. Dave went out to dinner with a friend and then later met up with some others for a little bit. It was a good night and nice that we were both able to do something with other people for a change.

Sunday we finally got back on the mountain. We climbed the bigger mountain (Gorak) which took us about an hour to walk up and 45 min to walk down. It was perfect temperature and the trees were really beautiful. On our walk down the mountain we could hear a girl and her dad a little ways back practicing English "what is your name?" and "where are you from?" We knew they were practicing in order to talk with us, but we were just wanting to walk down the mountain in peace. They were tailing us for the last half of the walk down, and were only a couple of inches behind us. We tried not to give them any recognition and tried walking faster. We finally lost them when we turned to go a different way off the path in order to get to our car. The girl then yelled "HI!!" to us. Most of the time Dave and I gladly say hi to people who can say hello to our faces. But when they are tailing you down the mountain and not respecting your privacy it gets to be a little frustrating. Some people just see you and think "ooo, let me practice my English on them." It gets old fast. Luckily we were looking forward to taco night at Jeff's so it didn't bother us too much. He used the Peterson recipe and it turned out great.

Next weekend we are already starting our Thanksgiving celebrations. Being away from home during the holidays I have realized how big of a role media plays in our holiday preparation and celebration. Since you aren't bombarded by TV, movies, and shopping malls forcing you to celebrate the holidays it's up to you to recreate that desire. For me, I have little desire to celebrate the holidays because it's not surrounding me. I know if I was back at home I would already be listening to Mariah Carey's "All I want for Christmas is you." It's refreshing having the holidays become much more simpler and personal. Actually it's refreshing not having to rely on the media to fulfill your celebration desires. The one thing I will miss is the fact that my family will be together when I cannot be with them. It's comforting to think that holidays have that special ability to bring people together. Lucky for me I have Dave and his family here, it makes Yeosu a little less distant from states.

I hope you are all having a wonderful holiday season. I've heard it's gotten a lot colder back home. Today was about 60 degrees and I am loving it! I have never lived in a place before where "winters" do not start until January and only last for a month or two, and I must say I was missing out, haha. I absolutely love the weather here. There is still enough seasonal change that reminds me of home, but it is far less drastic. The leaves have been changing colors for an entire month now. Unlike back at home where you are given an allotted week to go take fall pictures and enjoy the beautiful weather, we have been enjoying this cool weather for almost 2 months. I do think it will get colder this week, but it has definitely been a wonderful fall.

Well keep the e-mails coming and/or comments. We love hearing from you and life back at home. Until next time!

Check out the rest of the photos!!

Chunnam Dragons Fans

2008-11-11T21:05:00.000-06:00

Dragons Stadium

Last weekend we ventured out of Yeosu for only the second time since arriving in Korea. This time we took a short trip via train and bus over to 광양 Gwangyang. It is a small town of about 120,000 people, spread out kind of like Yeosu, but most importantly it hosts the Chunnam Dragons of the K-League (top flight Korean soccer). We made the trip with Ed and Jen. We met up with some friends of theirs who were from Gwangyang. It was a fun time overall, though the soccer was sub-par. The Dragons played Jeju United, who is also near the bottom in league stadiums, to a 0-0 draw... We got to "tailgate" outside of the stadium, which more accurately means drink $2.50 Hite beers at the temporary Korean style restaurants set up outside of the stadium. It was also interesting to see the not-so-typical snacks. I had dried squid jerky, and the standard Ramen noodles, during the game... There was also silk worm larva available... So much for peanuts and cracker jack! The game was a lot of fun... Maybe about 7000 people were there. People were excited as usual to see foreigners, so we were glad to be a service. We also managed to get 4 tickets for 10000 won, which normally would've been 28000, so that was a good deal too! It was the final game of the season, but the 2009 season starts in March, so if you are visiting in spring you know where we'll be going!

Earlier in the day we went shopping in Gwangyang and found a gem. A knock-off 1987 Twins World Championship sweatshirt!! It was yellow, of course. Megan HAD to purchase the sweat shirt, especially because the Dragons home uniform is yellow. Gwangyang was a beautiful city, you can tell the local companies put a lot of money back into the community. The leaves are changing right now, much like Upper Midwest October, so we decided to walk back to the bus stop from the game. It was beautiful being surrounded by magnificent reds, yellows, and greens on the trees and mountain-side.

My new Korean friend and my new Korean outfit purchased from the sidewalk market...

Saturday HG, Jeff and the girls came over for a lunch. We had our first meat from the Head of some animal at the restaurant at the corner of our block. The food was pretty good. The restaurant was quite new and it was reflected in the slow service!!

Friday night we made our second trip of the year to the Cinus theater down the street in Yeochon. We caught the new James Bond sequel. It is always nice to check out the theater... There were even some other foreigners attending! Going to the movie showed me how much my ability to communicate (simple things) in Korean has grown. Last time we saw a movie was the first night we learned to read Hangul, the Korean alphabet. This time around I was able to quickly read and figure out movie titles, successfully purchase 2 tickets for the 11PM show though 9PM tickets were still available, and also order a unique item at the concession stand. It was kind of rewarding to know that the studying has paid off a little bit, though I have a LONG way to go before I can began to understand the SIMPLEST thing out of context... Or anything not involving shopping or buying for that matter!

Well, hope everyone is having a good time. I know the Weather is starting to turn cold back home. Here is is upper 50s or 60s during the day and I absolutely love it. It is the perfect temperature for someone from Upper Midwest. The Koreans think it is COLD! They don't even know what cold means! Hope to hear from you all soon, I appreciate the emails and blog comments from the past week! It is ALWAYS great, even a one liner.

As always, here are the pictures from the post!

Live Octopi

2008-11-04T09:21:00.000-06:00

My Adult class wanted to go out to a meal, and upon the suggestion that I like Sushi, took us to a live fish restaurant. Of course, there are some variations between Sushi you'd expect in Minneapolis, and Sushi you get at a "moa" (Korean for live fish) restaurant. The end result was actually quite delicious, and we got to pallete some uniquely Korean tastes (For those keeping track at home, this was exactly the type of meal that nearly KO'ed my Mom and when we visited for Jeff's wedding in 2003) About 4-6 different types of raw fish, jumbo shrimp, large octopus, some seaweed and sushi wraps and last... Still SQUIRMING small octopus!! It was shocking to see this served on a plate. Of course the dish garnered little reaction (besides the normal reaction when you see a delicious dish) compared to Megan and my amazement. In the end, we ended up giving it a shot, and we decided to take a video. Thanks much to Jay Hyun for the meal, and showing me how to eat it. The videos are in order, first the dish about 30 seconds after being served, still squirming, and second, me taking a bit at a still kicking tentacle!

The SQUIRMING Delight

Now it's my turn...

Halloween weekend

2008-11-02T02:47:00.000-06:00

Happy Halloween everyone! I hope you all had a great holiday weekend. This was our first time celebrating a holiday outside of the States, and I think it went pretty well. It was so weird celebrating Halloween over here because the majority of the people do not know anything about it. In a way it is really exciting to teach Koreans about Halloween because it is actually a really fun holiday when you think about it. My adult students were fascinated with the process of trick or treating, and why Halloween is celebrated. Having to teach others about something that is so natural for me really gave me a different perspective of holidays in general. Back in the states I feel like I never thought too much about Halloween besides partaking in the normal holiday behavior (watching horror movie, carving pumpkins, going to costume parties). I celebrated Halloween because it was something I have always done and everyone around me does as well. This year I was able to celebrate it with the reason that Halloween is a really unique holiday with an interesting history. Explaining to people that kids go door to door asking for candy and adults even dress up in costumes made me look at Halloween in a totally different way. I feel that all the holidays we celebrate over here will become more special to us than they ever could have become back in the states simply because it makes you appreciate them more.

Even though at times it seems that we have acclimated ourselves to Korean culture we still have some little tendencies that come up as reminders that we are far from the “normalcy” of home. For example, on Saturday (day after Halloween) I saw an old woman sitting on the side of the road selling pumpkins. I thought to myself “Why is she selling pumpkins? Halloween is over!” After about 30 seconds I remembered that no one here celebrates Halloween and that Koreans buy pumpkins not to carve but to eat like any other fruit! This was just one of many little reminders that I am not in the Midwest anymore. Even when I feel I am becoming more used to Korean culture, I realize how big of an influence my own culture has on my behavior, thoughts, and attitude.

Dave and I really are starting to appreciate the little things while over here. When we received cards and packages from home we were ecstatic! Even if they might seem like small things, they are big for us. Dave’s parents sent us very cute Halloween cards with stickers inside. I utilized this card and the stickers as much as I could throughout the week while explaining Halloween to my students. Same with a package my sister and my mom sent. Even though it just had fun, normal Halloween things inside, to my students these things were gold! One student offered me 20,000 won for the stickers and the Pez dispenser! (I told him at least 30,000, haha).
We have been here for ¼ of a year, and it’s already November! I can’t believe it. I admit that sometimes I wish I was back at home doing the normal things I am used to doing. My attitude about living in Korea can change as fast as Korean drivers can switch lanes. This trip has made us re-evaluate many things about ourselves as individuals and as a couple. But I’m proud of the fact that we have made it this far, and are continually growing stronger together. We are lucky to have such wonderful friends and family who support us and lift us up when we’re feeling down. Thank you, we appreciate you!

We have a lot of pictures of our Halloween activities, costumes and the big foreigner party below. Dave and I went as milk and cereal. We also had a mini party at the Hogwon. We had the students touch mysterious body parts without being able to see them. Some students were so frightened; it was a really fun way to celebrate Halloween. I hope you enjoy them! Keep writing e-mails, messages, letters, anything! I can’t stress enough how much we enjoy reading what is going on in everyone’s life! We miss you, take care!

Here are photos from Halloween weekend!!

Happy Halloween

2008-10-30T11:04:00.001-05:00

Happy Halloween everyone! We will be chaperoning the Yeosu foreigner Halloween party on Friday, then having a weekend in on Saturday and Sunday. Expect photos of our costume. All I can reveal is... Milk and Cereal!!

Dave's Hagwon students

2008-10-18T01:52:00.000-05:00

Finally brought the camera into the classroom on Friday October 17th. I had my really cute kindy level class get a photo, and a few other classes through out the day.

The kindergarten class can make or break the day. Today it went really well, we played a few extra games (hokey pokey, duck duck goose (gray duck)) because they were really wound up from the photographs. On days were they do not want to behave, or someone hits some one, some one spits, etc... Well I know it will be a long day!

Here is the link!

Now and Then 10/17/2008

2008-10-16T23:38:00.000-05:00

I have about two minutes before I have to go to work so I thought I'd write a quick blog about some of the things that have changed in the daily life here in Yeosu. Just an idea of how our comfort level has grown here, and how this place is becoming a second home versus a place in which we are visiting.

Typical Weekly lunch selection:

Then: Spaghetti Noodles / Pasta Sauce, PBJ Sandwiches, Mondu(dumplings), Ramen

Now: BBQ Chicken + Veggies and Rice / Curry + Rice / PBJ + Fried Shrimp / Eggs and Pancakes

As you can see the diversity of what we eat, as well as the deliciousness has grown significantly. The ability to cook your own homestyle food makes you feel just a bit more at home. There is quite a few times where you cannot get the things you want (tacos) or things just right (the taste of cheese), but we some creativity you can make great tasting western style food every day!

The only problem is all the Korean people complain that we don't eat an Korean food. Well, we eat it for dinner everyday, and we don't know how to make any. For now we'll stick to our new menu!

Approaching Three Months

2008-10-12T09:49:00.001-05:00

We have now been here for well into two months. The time has had it's ups and down, but I try to be an even keeled person when it comes to personal things, although some might have me pegged as a bit impatient, or spastic (a spaz) but we are still here. It is harder then I would like to keep in touch with people, and that has made my life slightly more lonely here as of late, but there is always something to help you get your mind right. This weekend it was a fun day with Hana and Sara, last weekend it was going to Seoul and getting some re-exposure to Western culture, next weekend who knows what it will be. There are times when I feel like I could spend many years abroad, and there are times, sometimes during the same day, where I feel like I cannot wait to get home. The weather is beautiful, the scenery is beautiful, but we will see. Who knows what will happen in the rest of our year here. For now, we will sit back and enjoy it.

As far as details of what we have been up to since the "Night of the Living Slugs", I will try to keep it brief. Last weekend we took our first trip out of Yeosu, going up to Itaewon, the foreigner district of Seoul. Anthony "Upscale" joined us. It was a lot of fun. We got Mexican food, Subway, Middle-Eastern Food, delicious late night eats, met some new people from all over the place, and basically felt like we were back in America for the weekend. At the same time, it got played out fast, people trying to get you to buy things, prostitution, etc... That stuff can get old. It was a great place to visit, but it made Megan, AJ and I appreciate the exposure to Korean culture we are getting in Yeosu. It gives you a slight feeling of pride to know that you've made it in a place where there are less then .01% people like you in the population, and not many things that bring the comfort of home. At the same time, it made Yeosu feel like a home away from home - the feeling you get after arriving back to your apartment or house after a long weekend away. There was also some cool perspective for me because I visited some shops, and remembered some alleyways from when Mom and I visited Jeff back in 2003. I cannot believe that trip was five years ago!!

I think Megan and I are beginning to be settled in at school. I am not going to claim that teaching the students is by any means easy, but we know what to expect. I now know what a good day teaching entails, what a bad day teaching entails, and at least have some ideas of how to make a class go smoothly. In the grand scheme, I know that I can handle what I deal with on a daily basis for the rest of my time here, but that doesn't always mean it's easy. I think anyone here can get a new found respect for teaching, and realize how exhausting it really is. I come home exhausted everyday, but I also have a feeling of satisfaction for conquering the students that day. I know it's a strange way to put it, but sometimes the kids can manipulate you, and really hurt your feelings if they want to. At the same time, a fun lesson coupled with interested students can make the day fly by... Sometimes that just isn't possible with 7 different leveled classes rotating day by day, but when a class is fun, it is awesome!

This weekend we kept it low key. We both were in no mood for an exhausted Monday, so we stayed in on Saturday night. Megan caught a cold, so she has been battling that, and I was just plain tired. We hit up the open market to get some Curry, fruits, veggies, and the whole sale store to pick up chicken and some frozen snacks. We snapped some photos of an experience that is becoming strangely typical... We hung out with Jeff, HG, and the Girls all day at Dolsan park, which was a lot of fun. The weather was about 72 and sunny all day. We have a lot of photos, and will get them up soon. We hit up Lotte mart on Sunday morning and made a much needed upgrade to our food supply. We are finally getting a feel for what we actually eat and what is just a waste of money... Sunday afternoon was a "Canadian Thanksgiving" party, thrown by the many Canadians in town. We came expecting kind of a show up and say hi affair, but we ended up staying for about 3 hours. We played Frisbee, catch, and just had a great time with another beautiful day of weather. The local Yeosu-ites were in awe to see such a large group of foreigners out. Many people stopped by to say hello, try throwing the Frisbee, and to check out what kind of food "wayguks" eat.

We will see what this week brings, but a few things an English teacher can begin to depend upon: The sun will rise in the morning, the people in the town will stare, the kids will shout hello, the Yeosu traffic will still be counter intuitive and our students will show up for English class. Looking back at my post, I hope I didn't come off negative, positive, I am just writing off the top of my head. Some days it seems difficult, and life here can be hard. Most days are good, but it is hard not to miss your good friends and family... However - There are still those moments in which you are walking down the street, looking out the window, teaching a class, shopping at the mart, where you just take a step back, give yourself that deeper perspective and think to yourself... "Wow, I am in South Korea... That's pretty incredible!"

Here are some photos...

The trip to Seoul... 12 photos.

Open Market, Beautiful Yeosu, Dolsan and the Cart Man... 40 photos.

Slugs . . .

2008-10-01T08:51:00.000-05:00

So I had to say that last night I ran into a little problem. I got up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom and when I walked to the kitchen to wash my hands I was surprised! There was a slug on the soap dispenser! Luckily I saw it otherwise I would have had slug hands. Well after getting up enough courage to scrape it off and throw it away (mind you this took awhile but luckily Slugs are slow) I managed to open the door to the garbage and it was a sight from a slug horror movie. A slug fell down when I opened the door scaring me half to death. I had no idea where it came from at first and ran away thinking the ceiling was going to collapse and slugs were going to fall on top of me. I had enough and decided to wake Dave out of his slumber for help. When he pulled out the garbage there was another big fat slug sitting in the garbage. Our Slug count is now 3 (small one on the soap dispenser, big one on the floor, and another huge one in the garage). Well ,Dave was not very happy with me waking him up so he put the top on the garbage and said it was fine and walked back to bed. I, of course, knew something more had to be done. I carefully placed the slugs that escaped back in the garbage with the rest of their family and lifted the garbage bag up to tie off and place outside, but to my surprise there was a slew of slugs! There must have been at least 5 other huge slugs all carefully, slowly, and slimly crawling their way up. I quickly tied off the garbage and placed it outside. I felt like I stepped out of a dream. How could there be that many slugs in our house? I have never in my life seen a slug, but now I have seen them all.

Not in a million years would I have thought I would be surrounded by slugs! What a gross and useless bug! I can't even imagine what else can get into our house, I'm just hoping it doesn't get worse!

Well, I envy all of you non slug finders and hope that you will never come across slugs late at night on your soap dispenser and in your garbage! haha. Hopefully there will not be a sequel to this story.

Slug killer,
Megan

South Koreas got Seoul!

2008-09-30T23:24:00.000-05:00

Hey everyone. I have a few minutes before I leave for the hagwon, so I thought I'd let everyone know what we have been up to. Last weekend we went out with our Korean co-teachers for a beer, and then went to Ellui, the foreigner hangout in Yeochon. There were quite a few people there and it was a lot of fun. As usually, everyone stayed out way too late (since the bars do not close) and we ended up getting home quite late.

The next morning we were up bright and early to go babysit the best nieces, Hana and Sara. They behaved perfectly all day and did not fight one time in 12 hours! We made brownies, went to the playground, and played all day. At the playground, one young Korean boy said "Hi" and started talking to us. Soon we had a throng of 30 kids surrounding us asking us questions in English and Korean. It was quite an event. They thought Megan and I were Hana and Sara's parents, and that Hana and Sara didn't speak Korean, only English, because they were American. FINALLY Hana stopped being shy long enough to tell the kids (in Korean) that we were babysitting them. It was pretty crazy...!

Sunday was a lazy day highlighted be Megan and I cutting our hair. We have some pics that we will put up later.

This week is a short week for teaching. We have Friday off for Foundation Day. Korean flags are popping up in the neighborhood left and right. We are taking advantage of the off day with a trip to Seoul, Itaewon to be specfic. The foreigner part of Seoul. Expect a recap soon! We are going by train because the train station in only two blocks from our house, pretty nice!

Here are the latest pictures. The first few pictures are of Megan's students, then from Friday night, and then a few pictures from babysitting. Hopefully we can get some pics up from the haircut soon too...

Check out the pictures on facebook!!

Weekend update!

2008-09-24T10:17:00.000-05:00

Hello again, I’m back! Here is the biggest update, Dave and I purchased a car! It is a ’96 Hyundai Elantra with awesome seat covers, working windows, and of course the essential air con (air con is Konglish for air conditioner since Koreans think the word is too long to pronounce). Last week on Wednesday, Dave and I test drove 2 cars. One of them started, the other needed to be jumped. Based on that, and some other minor details, we decided to go with the one that started. Now that we knew what car we wanted it was time to figure out how to get car insurance. Our boss kindly helped us out with the insurance before school. He took us down one floor to talk to car insurance people, pretty convenient eh? Even though we are 23 years old and have 7 years driving experience back in the states, Koreans must be 20 years old to drive. This means that we essentially have only 3 years of driving experience. This “lack of” experience made our insurance rate higher than what we thought. Luckily while we were figuring out the insurance, one of the other car salesmen, who worked at the car dealership we went to , happened to come in and he undercut his coworker by giving us 100,000 wan off of the car. A 700,000 wan car ($600, booo to U.S. economy) was exactly what we wanted after hearing how much insurance would be. We accepted on the spot and by the next day were driving our way around town. All together the car/insurance cost us about 1,600,000 wan ($1600) which was lovely.

On Saturday we went to the open market in Yeochan, near our house. It is about 2 blocks of vendors selling vegetables, fruit, seafood (alive and dead), and side dishes. The seafood is so crazy to see. Next time we will have to take pictures! There are live octopus, crabs, eels swimming in tanks and/or buckets everywhere you look. There are old Agima’s ( old women) squatting down cutting up fresh fish as you walk past. It is quite the sight to see. Seeing as we have no idea how to cook half of the things we say at the market we opted for the essentials: fruits and vegetables. We bought peaches, apples, carrots, potatoes, onions, green/red peppers, and curry for about $25. Then I took Dave to a whole foods place that my co-worker Liz showed me. This place was great! We were able to get boneless chicken breasts along with many other frozen foods that are easy to cook.

After shopping we decided to take advantage of our newly found independence. We took a scenic drive to the beach and around the very country part of Yeosu. Even though it was raining and gloomy outside it was great to be able to go wherever we pleased, and listen to music! The only thing stressful about driving here are Korean drivers.
The sign says "Yeosu" in hangul.

They are very aggressive drivers who do not stay in their lanes or watch for other traffic. Dave did an excellent job driving. He basically has to be aware of all possible cars which even means pretending that parked cars are moving.

That night we made stir fry as a picnic and drove to Dolsan Park to see the bridge lights. It was very beautiful and a perfect spot for a date. Our first REAL cooked meal tasted wonderful, and the view was spectacular. That night, since it was still rainy and humid, we stayed in and drank our fair share of wine and soju while playing Super Mario brothers 3, haha.

This upcoming weekend we are babysitting Hana and Sara while Jeff and Hye-gyong go out of town for a wedding, so expect to hear about the kids in our next blog post. Hopefully we will also be planning some fun trips outside of Yeosu soon such as Seoul.

We miss you and hope you are all doing great! Please please pleas keep writing, e-mailing, facebooking us whenever possible because we really look forward to hearing about updates back at home. Anyounghaseyo!

LINK TO THE LATEST PHOTO ALBUM

Weekend Update - Chuseok Edition

2008-09-14T22:43:00.000-05:00

Today is the fourth day of a four day weekend. We were afforded this opportunity because of the Korean holiday Chuseok 추석. This is a holiday based on the lunar calendar, instead of the solar calendar we are all used to, so it lands on different days each year.

On our day off Friday we caught a bus to Yeosu Shinae (Downtown) and set up our bank accounts at "Friendly Bank". It was soooooooo nice to finally get paid... Later that day we finally got out and hiked the mountain closest to us. It takes about 45 minutes each way, and is a nice workout. The both of us decided that we need to make this a regular thing. It is an awesome cardio workout. Our goal is to be able to hike the mountain without taking a break until reaching the top. We have some pictures from the hike posted on Facebook.

For lunch I had the bright idea to go see what was open in downtown Yeochon... Nothing... We finally found a Korean/Western fusion restaurant. The food ended up being good. We went over to Won's on Saturday and had a dinner. It was a traditional Korean style dinner, which is starting to taste good to us. There are pictures of the meal on the blog. Megan and I tried Octopus for the first time, and fish head soup broth. We also made a traditional Korean dish called Songpyong. It was fun to make, you roll some smashed up rice in a ball, flatten it, and then put some walnut in the middle and roll it, like a dumpling. There are pictures of the process.

Sunday we relaxed for most of the day, since basically EVERYTHING was closed for Chuseok day. In the early evening we walked over to the mountain we hiked a few weeks back and hit up the "gym" to do a few exercises. It was quite crowded with Koreans. People were in great moods for the holiday, so many of the Koreans were saying "Hello" or "Anyoung Haseyo" as we walked by. We even were given a deep bow from a elementary aged kid. Working out felt pretty good, hopefully it can become a regular thing. We decided to go drink some beer in the city park for the evening, and then check out Downtown. There were TONS of Koreans hanging out, but only two Wayguks, so we went back to the park with some Heinies. To close the night we checked out some random outdoor restaurant on the park. We sat and tried to read the sign in Hangul but after a few beers it gets difficult. 오아시스 was the word, and it was writing in a fancy script, which makes it more difficult to read. We finally figured out phonetically "O-ah-si-suh", combined with the pictures of palm trees in a desert... OASIS! We ordered a delicious chicken meal by accident, since we finally read a item that said "something something Chicken" and then said the the server (in Korean) "Here - Good?"... He said yes.

HERE IS A LINK TO THE PHOTOS ASSOCIATED WITH THIS POST!!

Today we are relaxing, hoping to stock up on the big items from Lotte Mart, and get some veggies and maybe some other stuff from the Open Market down the road. We also hope to check out some beater cars... Hope everyone is having a good time, remember to keep emailing or commenting!

The F***ing Way She Goes

2008-09-08T08:35:00.000-05:00

**WARNING - Offensive language referenced again **

There are certain times in Korea, when dealing with business, that you feel really left out in the dark. Korean culture deals with non-Koreans in a certain way. Everyone is called a "way-guk" - foreinger - and is always treated as such. This occasionally comes across in dealing with school.

For example - a new student was just added to Megan's class today. The problem with this is that this class is in "review mode". They are taking one month to review the material and stories they've read for the the past six months. How many of these stories has this girl read? None. How often does she understand whats going on, or is able to keep up with the rest of class. Never. What does the boss say when this is revealed - "That's Ok - she'll figure it out.

Example two. I have a kindergarten level class. These kids can identify letters, but mostly speak Korean. They think I speak Korean. They have decent sized English vocabularies, but are really hard to maintain. A new student was added to the class. She cannot even identify a letter. I explain this to management. "That's OK - she can just follow along and copy the others".

Example three. Today it was known that the foreign teachers will start collecting homework for the Korean students. Though this has not been the case for as long as the hagwon has been running. Of course this was told with virtually no explanation - accompanied by the "Understand?"... Of course we don't understand!! You told us this in 5 minutes!

This all ties back to the "wayguk" issue in Korean culture, plus another issue of Koreans waiting until the last minute to decide things. These are examples from the last week, so you can only imagine what may happen in a years time. However, I just thought back to an episode of Trailer Park Boys (a Candian comedy) to help me understand how to cope with this. "The F***ing Way She Goes..." I realize it is just the "f***ing way she goes" sometimes :-D (if you watch this with speakers on, realize two f-bombs are dropped, so cover the kids ears)

New Classrooms + A Rainy Visit to Hyangiram

2008-09-06T21:58:00.000-05:00

Hello everybody. It is Sunday Noon here as I speak. I caught the 4th quarter of Gopher victory number two on an internet radio stream from Bowling Green, so that was pretty cool. Megan and I are going strong during our second month here. We have a few new pictures from this weekend at Hyangiram temple, which is an absolutely beautiful temple, on a mountain, facing the sea, on Dolsan Island. It was a rainy day, but a decent temperature made the hike pretty fun. We were with Jeff and the girls.

Here are the latest pictures!

I received my International Drivers Permit this week, so I am looking to get a car after my first paycheck. A decent enough used car can be had for under 1,000,000 won. In the month since we've been here, the won has plummeted compared to the dollar. It was 1,000 -> $1, now it is about 1,200 -> $1. So, this makes the car cheaper, but getting paid... not so cool. Basically we earned $200 less in the 10 days since we earned our money... Weon, Hye-gyong's brother will be helping us out on the car front. I am pretty excited to do some exploring. We also are hoping to make a trip us to Seoul in one of the coming weekends. We only live two blocks from the train station, so rail trips are easy.

This week was the first week in our own classrooms. Hopefully we can get some pictures up one we finish up getting the rooms decorated. We can also get some pictures of the students then too. The week was quite interesting for me. I don't know if the students saw a new movie or what happened, but I had three separate "F*** you" incidents. The kids don't know what it means, or how strong of a swear it is in English language. I was pretty shocked. I explained that it is NEVER ok to do in class. I can only imagine on of the 6th graders walking up to someone on vacation and say - "Hi... F(@# YOU!" - and then getting punched into oblivion. There were some other behavior issues, but I am finding some weeks are going to go like that. I did get a nice treat last Tuesday when my adult students no-showed, so I got to leave 1.5 hours early.

The coming week is Chusok, Korean Thanksgiving. Thanks to an non-optimal lunar calendar, we only get one of a potential three days off, but what can ya do? We will be having the big meal with the Kim family, so expect more pictures. I hope everyone is doing well back home! Please send more emails, IMs, anything!!

We're Not In Minneapolis Anymore...

2008-08-27T09:52:00.001-05:00

I found inspiration for my first post regarding some of the differences that have been presented by life in Yeosu. These posts may consist of zany English on a t-shirt, a short story about a ridiculous cultural misunderstanding, a tell-all about some signs of a conservative culture, a step-by-step comparison of how much more difficult (or easy) something is here (like taking a shower), any other slightly impersonal tales that may be interesting to our more casual readers (mostly Sue's friends for now :-D - ha ha). That about sums up what you'll see under the title "We're Not In Minneapolis Anymore..." - but I'm sure a few other random stories will find their way in... Finally - to the story.

Today I walked over to the closest mart, "GS". . This company is owned by LG, for those who follow Korean corporations. If you live in a big city, this might be the equivalent of corner store - like Harvard Market for those who went to the U. At these marts you see many American brands. Heinz, Spam, McDonalds, etc. This time, I wanted to get a pop, and was searching for the cheapest available. Low and behold, for W550 ($0.55)... it was... Mountain Dew!!

The words are literally translated into the Hangul, so this can is read "Ma-un-tin dyu"! The other side says "Mountain Dew" in English. Right at the top says "Original, American Style Taste." Mountain Dew used to be less sweet, because the Korean diet was not adept to sweet flavors. Now, five years later, the Korean demand for the real "Dew" has been met, much to my benefit.

Weekend Update

2008-08-24T02:58:00.001-05:00

Hello everyone! Dave here... I will start off this post with a news flash!! I am an Uncle again... .and this time I have a nephew!! My sister, Laura, delivered a health baby boy, Nolan, this week. We are so happy for her over here and cannot wait to meet the little guy!

Moving on... We have been here for one month! That is unbelievable!! I am almost settled in to my role of teaching, and Megan has been thriving (of course)! I have leaned on her for a lot of help and ideas, it has been invaluable. I hope we can get a few school specific posts going, and let you get to know a few of the kids, as well as a bit more about some of the nuances in Korean culture. We are starting to adjust to these, but I think it'd be something really interesting to write home about. For now, I'll just post an update.

Tomorrow marks the final week of "Summer English Camp" aka babysit the poor kids and make them go to school during summer vacation while their parents work, or sit at home and drink 소주(soju, he he). That means that Megan and I will be going on the same schedule, starting Friday. It will also mark the departure of our co-worker Christy. We are sad to see her leave as we've gotten to know her over the past month :-(.

Hopefully the change will allow us to do a few more things during the week, instead of simply punching the clock. We have some plans to begin a morning hike / work out routine at a nearby outdoor workout center. The gym would be W150,000 a month ($150), so it is not an option just yet.

Last Thursday, our co-worker (who also found the job for us) was SOOO kind and took my classes over from 7-9:30PM, which allowed me to go out to dinner with a Korean woman named Silvia, along with Megan, Christy and her boyfriend Marc. It was a delicious Korean BBQ style meal of smoked duck. MMMMM. It was much better then dealing with 2.5 hrs of teaching to say the least! Silvia was REALLY kind, and I think we hope to hang out with her when we are able to. She had excellent English, and loved to get a bit of practice. Her husband and two young children were also with. We went for a quick walk around the park afterward, and then Silvia was gracious enough to give us a ride home after taking us out to dinner! This is something that just wouldn't happen back at home. The kindness is just something else in Korean culture, something Western culture could take a lesson from.

Friday marked the arrival of Jeff, Hyegyong, Hana and Sara. I was so lucky in that I had a few hours left before I had to work, so I was able to get picked up and head over to Weon's house for lunch mere minutes after they returned to 여수 (Yeosu, hehe). It was refreshing to see their faces. The familiarity of someone you know brings an indescribable feeling after a month abroad. Weon also gave us a carpet for our living room, which absolutely rocks. We can sit on the floor now, which is quite nasty w/o it. Weon has been SO kind to us since we've arrived, he has been absolutely great. He is one of the many motivating factors for which I'd like to improve my Korean beyond... "Hello - beer please! Thank you!" (and a few other phrases). We also got a new camera... Thanks Mom, Dad and Jeff for getting that here!!!

On Saturday, we took advantage of our free time and took advantage of a nice, sunny day to get some reading in on our roof top. I finished up Deception Point, recommend it if you are looking for a thriller. I also got a horrible sun burn... Afterwards, we hooked up with Marc and Christy to go for a hike up the big mountain nearby. We walked to the trail, which was probably a mistake, and then went up. Half way up we found (hopefully) our future gym, which you can see in the pictures. We reached the top in maybe an hour, and were afforded AWESOME views of Yeosu. I also ran into one of the guys who went sailing with us at the top of the mountain...kinda crazy! It was exhausting, but a lot of fun. After we were done, we took some time to get ready for the night, and headed to Jeff's for some dinner (Thanks Jeff!). We caught the 4x400 victory for the US Women. It was the first clip of the Olympics either Megan or I had seen (besides Korean archery or ping-pong).

We went out to Ellui at about 10 for the big going away party for most of the public school employees. It was fun to see many foreingers, and to be able to speak English at a reasonable pace, instead of the normal, slow, and deliberate manner... The bar show was excellent and we have some more pictures. You can also see pics of our co-workers Gwen and Christy.

HERE IS A LINK TO THE PICTURES!!

That's it for now, I plan on spicing the blog up with a few more interesting pieces, besides just the standard journal format... That could also go the way of most "internet plans" (down the toilet), but I hope not. If anything, the journal format will definitely continue. We have more stories coming, getting an international license (and maybe a car!! *gasp*), Korean culture gaffs, etc, so keep reading!!

I hope all is well for everyone in the US... Please keep emailing, facebooking, commenting, skyping, calling, writing letters, and anything else. It feels great every time, no matter how long or short the message is.

a three hour tour . . .

2008-08-17T01:40:00.000-05:00

So far this holiday weekend has been very adventurous. Friday was the Korean Independence Day and luckily we got off of work for it. We had absolutely no plans besides watching some movies that Dave had recently downloaded (including Harold and Kumar escape from Guantanamo Bay). At about 2PM our co-worker Liz called me up and asked if we had plans. She told us to be at the yacht club by 3PM because her friends were going sailing. When we arrived at the yacht club we were kindly greeted by her friends, the old mayor of Yeochon called “captain” and with an international public relations retiree named “John.” They told us we would ONLY be sailing on the 20 meter yacht today; tomorrow would be the other boat. Liz could not sail with us, but set this nice sailing adventure up and was very kind about seeing us off and introducing us. Walking down to the bay we saw two boats. They were amazing, and I have never been on a boat this big that one single person owned!

We set sail and it was cloudy but perfect temperature. Three of the men on board spoke good English which was nice and we talked to Dr. Kahn for awhile an OB/GYN at the hospital near our house. We sailed to an island that the captain (ex mayor) OWNED! When we got there some of the men went swimming around the rocks near this island to catch seaweed. Dave was asked and jumped right in. He didn’t have his suit but in Korean culture it is perfectly acceptable to wear clothes when swimming so that is what he did. He dove for seaweed with the ex-mayor of Yeochon! (check out the link below for pictures)

The boat was wonderful, and even though it rained a little it was an exciting experience. You are treated very kindly, like family, in Korean culture when meeting new people. I felt as if these people were taking care of me and it felt good to know they genuinely liked taking two new foreigners out sailing with them. Dave and I were talking and even though they only knew some English we both felt extremely comfortable in this situation because with the lack of verbal communication you have to make up in smiles and other gestures which seems more intimate. We agreed that if we were to have this same experience in Minneapolis with an ex-mayor we would have been extremely nervous and scared.

a few pictures from sailing on the yacht . . .

We went out to eat Friday night which was nice because we could finally watch some of the Olympics. We have a TV at home but we are unable to find stations at the moment. At dinner we were trying to speak in Korean, but our server only spoke to us in English which was a nice gesutre, but dave and I really need more practice with Korean so it was frustrating. We then went out for a few drinks at Ellui and hung out with a few people we have met. It was an early night for us.

Saturday was another lazy day. We have been downloading many movies so while we were waiting for them to finish we watched "Fargo" to remind us of back home. This movie gets better with each viewing. We then walked to Lotte Mart (Similar to a target) to get weekly groceries. We didn't think we would be buying much so we only brought a little money. At the cashier we had to dig for extra money because we fell a little short but luckily we have mounds of change in our pockets that saved us.

For dinner Dave's Korean family took us out to eat at a seafood restaurant. We ate like kings. The meal was wonderful and there were too many courses to count. Communication is hard because our Korean is so limited, but we managed the best we could. There were some unusual dishes on the table, and some dishes were looking at us, eek! I had to do my best not to freak out, haha (I have a hard time with seafood when it's presented to me in the form it was caught). Overall it was delicious and was quite filling, I just wish I could speak more Korean to show how grateful I am to Dave's Korean family. Hopefully when Jeff, Hye Gyong, Hana, and Sara come back we will be able to learn more Korean from them.

Sunday we are relaxing, doing laundry, and possibly trying some different food at the restaurant called "Kimbap Nara" near our house. Next week will be very tiring for us because it is the last full week of summer camp. I cannot wait to not work overtime anymore and be on the same schedule as Dave!

School Daze

2008-08-13T08:20:00.000-05:00

We are approaching the end of our second week of teaching. So far it has been a very tiring, confusing, and frustrating 2 weeks. Dave and I have classes that range in size from 1 student to 10 students. The students know the routine which is helpful (while we are still learning) and sometimes annoying because they do not like to stray from the routine very much. Filling the dead time is another story. We are learning early on that we must come up with a repertoire or activities, games, and ideas to use to fill time after a shorter lesson. The students LOVE HANGMAN, but when you play this every day, even though they like it, it gets really old fast. Luckily there is a folder full of ideas at our school that we will take a look at and Jeff will kindly give us access to his long list of activities and games when he returns.

Another hard cultural difference is the fact that the students will not tell a teacher “no” if they do not want to do something or do not understand. This makes it extremely difficult to know whether or not they are understanding what you’re saying and the materials you are teaching. What we have learned is to read the reaction on students’ faces as to whether they understand, usually this works but it is still very hard sometimes.

Like back in the states when you take a language class you get to choose your name in that language. It is the same over here which means that some students have very interesting names. We have heard of students named Dolphin, Raptor, and Bright (who is in Dave’s class). At our Hogwan we have put a stop to unconventional names, but since some students have had their names for many years they were able to keep them. I thought this was rather funny.

The people we work with are really nice and helpful. Dave, myself and Liz are the only foreigner teachers. There are two Korean teachers (in their 20’s) and our boss J.S. who teaches as well. Our dinners consist of a bowl of rice, Korean side dishes (mmmm kimchi) and soup. It is usually a hit or miss with me.

We haven’t done much sightseeing since we started school but I believe in a month when we are on the same teaching schedule we will be taking advantage of not only our free mornings, but the cooler (mid 70 degree) weather. Last Saturday we were able to go out with a couple of foreigners to a Korean barbecue dinner which was delicious. I tried Soju which is a hard alcoholic drink. It is not your typical drink because it is made just from chemicals. It didn’t taste too terrible, haha. It is so cheap that so many Koreans drink it regularly. A 750 ml bottle is $2 at the local mart . . .eeeek. After dinner we sat out on the deck of a newer “foreigner” bar called “Yellow Monkey.” This restaurant looks out at the bay, but it was hard to see the water because it was not lit up with lights (I think they will be adding some lights/attractions soon to this area). I had a $7 corona which I quickly switched to a $3 Cass beer. We were able to sit and talk to many other foreigners who we have not yet met which was really great. We met people from England, Ireland, Canada, New Zealand, and Texas which was really awesome. We were having such a good time that we stayed out until 4 AM which didn’t seem so great the next morning.

On Sunday our boss came over later in the evening to give us a microwave, exchange our washer, and bring over some de-bugging spray. Having a microwave is so awesome!!! We can quickly heat up things! A luxury we took for granted in the states, haha. Dave and I also were able to place our bed on a bed frame lifting it off the ground about 2 feet. This has made all the difference in the world! We no longer feel threatened by bugs when we sleep.

This Friday is Korean Independence day which means we get off of work! I think we really need this day off to just relax and not think of school. The sad part is that our funds are running out and we need to stretch the last of our money for a couple more weeks until we get paid. This means we are going to have to find cheap entertainment this weekend (no $7 coronas haha). My camera is also breaking down which is why there are not many pictures for this blog. Luckily for us we will have Jeff buy us a nice camera back in the states before he leaves. This is really helpful because if we bought a camera over here we would need to buy a converter for it when we moved back home.

A Day at the Beach + Hangin' with Minnie (formely Sun-miyo for those who met her :-D)

2008-08-02T22:43:00.000-05:00

Hello again! We are sitting in the apartment on Sunday afternoon. Tomorrow we will begin teaching!! It will be nice to actually have something to do and get in to the rhythm, but we are both nervous to met our students. Megan will have a summer camp from about 9-2 MWF and 9-12 T/TH and then classes from 2-6. The summer camp will go until the end of August since all of the students are currently on vacation. What fun for them, English camp! I will go 3-9 MTWTHF with one hour of prep, which will all be the normally scheduled classes.

Last Thursday, July 31st, Jeff's sister-in-law Gumpil was kind enough to take us out to the beach in Yeosu. The beach is called Mosageum. We were there from about 3PM until 6PM. It was really hot, and the water felt really good. At one point we were offered a "fish sausage" - our recommendation - DO NOT EAT IT!!!! We did have some other delicious snacks, which we proceeded to buy from Lotte mart the next day.

However, the beach and water here is REALLY littered compared to back in USA. We take much better care to keep these things clean. It is nice to know though we have some international image issues, Americans do a few things correctly. As an aside, our cities are also much cleaner, especially MPLS/STP, so way to go us! After we went to the beach, we headed out to dinner. We ate a boiling chicken soup. Literally the entire chicken was in this soup (skinned, cleaned and de-limbed though). It was hard to eat since you have to pick out bones and things. Gumpil had to help us, we felt a bit like children, ha ha!

Friday - Megan went out with the foreigner girls to eat chili and watch the Sex in the City movie. It was good for her to get to meet some of them. I went out with "Evil" Marc and had dinner and them some drinks.

Saturday we FINALLY got the meet up with Minnie. For those who met her in Minnesota, she went by Sun-mi-yo, but has since changed her name to "change her luck." Her English has improved so much and it was a lot of fun to get to hang out with her. We went to a temple, with many pictures in the link below. Afterward we went out to dinner on Minnie's dime. It is almost impossible to pay for things we you go out with Korean family, we offered since she took us out, but she absolutely refused! We had a Korean style meal at a restaurant that, thank Buddha, offered Western style seating in chairs, instead of on the floor. Sometime during dinner I mispronounced a Korean word, and apparently the word I said instead meant something like "F@@@ you"! Minnie laughed sooo much... The dinner was really good - but Korean food always leaves this strange after taste! We then went bowling somewhere around Yeocheon. Minnie and Megan teamed up against myself and Minnie's friend, the loser had to pay. Lucky I pulled out some strikes in the end leaving Megan with the tab! (although we share all money... but it's ok!! It's the principle!) Minnie and co them came back to our house for a rooftop drink in the evening, which is really pleasant. Unlike back home, the temperature at night only drops to maybe the high 70's or low 80's, so with a cool sea breeze nothing really beats it. Sometimes it is still too hot or humid.

It was really a lot of fun because with Minnie we can have ACTUAL conversations instead of really simple, obvious conversations with lots of hand gestures. Her friend was also good at English, but was quite shy. They had studied together in Gwangju at the University. Both are elementary teachers, so Megan and them really hit if off. After that we had the standard fall asleep at about 10PM, big time party people!

Finally, here is a link to the latest round of pictures from the events I've discussed above, this time I made you read my boring stories first...

Click to check them out!

Megan wanted me to be sure and mention that Minnie thought Megan's Korean pronunciation was MUCH better then mine, :-P. Good bye for now. It is so good to hear from so many people, so keep it up.

Odong-do, Spaghetti, and the Movies

2008-07-30T22:25:00.000-05:00

We have a new photo album detailing our trip to Odong-do island, and our spaghetti dinner, plus a few shots of us at the Movie theatre. The first two trips are detailed pretty well in the photo comments so follow the link to check them out.

Click here to view the album...

We spent yesterday evening learning the consonants of the Korean alphabet. How to pronounce them that is, not the actually "name" of the letter. We got through all of the basic letters, there are four "advanced" letters that we are not sure on yet, but are waiting for our boss, JS Park, to help with, or another Korean. Anyways, we were SOOOO excited that we were finally beginning to read, so we can now, VERY SLOWLY, order off Korean menus, read signs, read bottles, cans, boxes, almost everything. The most fun is when the sounds of the letters correspond to an English word, like Ba-Na-Na, which is the same in Korean/English, since it is a borrowed word.

Now that we learned how to read, we decided that we would try our luck at the 8-plex movie theater down the street called "Cinus." We got in a cab and told the cab driver the wrong place ("Cirus"), but luckily he was a smart one and figured out where we wanted to go anyways. We got to the theater and immediately used our Korean reading skills to translate the title of "The Mummy Three" to "Me-E-La" Three. The clerk figured out what we wanted, and used his English skill to tell us the price (although he was a bit off, he end up say 14,000,000, which is $14,0000!). We then got some Nachos, Pop Corn and Drink with a little help from a wise clerk. It seems that the younger Koreans are much more handy with English then the older Koreans. We went to sit and wait for the movie the begin seating in 1/2 hour.

The time finally arrived for us to go to in to theater 2 and watch Me-e-La Shree. Assuming it to be just like American Theater, we went in and sat down. A few people were giving us funny looks. We noticed that people were being a bit more careful then we had when choosing a seat. We then looked at our tickets, and realized that the seats were assigned... This explained the looks we had got from the people sitting next to us, we must've been in their seats! I decided to ask the Korean girl sitting next to me if it was still OK to sit here, or if we should move. After some confusion, she finally said "Chogi (there) - OK", and it was settled.

The Mummy 3 was as horrible as expected. The Koreans love it so much it was released here before it was released in the US. After it was over we got headed home. Later that night I received terrible news that my God father, Uncle Jim, had passed away after a 1+ year battle with cancer. It was really hard to hear that news being out of the country, but Megan and my Mom (via Skype) really helped me. Rest in peace Jimmy, we will all miss you so much.

Have a great day, we miss everyone, especially in a time like this.

Update plus photos!!!

2008-07-29T00:51:00.000-05:00

Anyeong Haseyo! Welcome back to the blog. We have some more news plus.. pics! Today we went to JS Park's International Language School once again in the morning. He told Megan what she will be doing during the summer camps, gave me a bit more thorough explanation on how I will be interacting with my one class of advanced students, gave us some material to help with the Korean alphabet, and ended it with some delicious Korean peach.

Afterwards, we went out to the Yeochon Lotte mart (which is similar to a Target) and picked up some camping chairs for the roof, a new hair dryer for Megan, and some more bathroom sandals (since everything gets wet in the BR, these are a necessity). We took advantage of "charades" with one of the Lotte employees to try and find where the hair dryers were... it worked! The new hair dryer was needed because our Asian->US style electricity converter started smoking while the hair dryer was running today... Not cool!!!

We will be going to Odong-do (Odong island) later today, which is a beautiful tourist destination on the ocean, known for camellias. We will post more pictures from there.

FINALLY - we have the first few pictures (only a few - we are not good at taking pictures - yet) of the first few days as well as a "walking tour" of our home available via this link. It is a public link and should work from everyone - do not worry about being a facebook member.

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2524601&l=ac902&id=13900152

Bye bye!

Settling in...

2008-07-28T05:04:00.000-05:00

We have now been in Yeosu for almost three full days. We have our clothes unpacked and just need to fully clean the place and decorate, and it can be ours. Jeff, my brother, is leaving for America tomorrow, so we are taking care of a few final things while he is in town, and going to eat with his brother-in-law (Won) tonight. In Korea, if one family member joins a family, your entire family joins a family, so they treat Megan and I very, very kindly. They have been so helpful, I just wish I knew a bit more around here so I could return the favor..!

Yesterday we went to one of the beaches in town (the name escapes me) and swam around in the ocean for a bit. It was a lot of fun, and a great way to waste away an afternoon. I foresee it happening a few more times before summer ends. In Korea, people do not go to the beach after August, but the temperature is still in the 80s during the day, so foreigners can go swim to a virtually empty beach, though a Korean would see this as taboo. Afterwards Jeff's family took us out to eat for a traditional Korean style dinner near our home in Yeochon. It was really good, duck cooked right on the table while we sat cross-legged on the floor. We then proceeded to fall asleep at 8PM and sleep until 8AM... That felt REALLY good!

Saturday night Jeff put together a welcoming party and invited many of the foreigners in town to come meet both of us. We had a great time and met a lot of people. There are still many more in Yeosu to meet, including English speaking Koreans, and Koreans who grew up abroad. So many people with diverse backgrounds... some of whom even knew where Minneapolis is!

We have a few other interesting stories, the gas man, getting a scooter, going to school with JS, trying to learn Korean, awkward interactions, so check back - if anyone is even reading this so far!!! We will also figure out how we will be sharing our photos in the next few days and begin posting those, which makes the blog entries far more interesting!!

For now, anyong hasaeo!

I'm going going - back back - to Chicago

2008-07-22T22:02:00.000-05:00

Our E-2 visas are in hand. We are finally cleared to go to Korea! We drove to Chicago from Racine today at 10AM, arriving at noon, only to find out that our visas were not going to be ready until 3PM. We walked over to Michigan Ave on downtown and found a really cool local place to get lunch... TGI Fridays :-(... We went back at 3PM on the dot and got back on our way by 4PM. I got to experience driving through my first Chicago rush hour, and it went pretty smoothly.

Now we only have a few more loose ends to tie up tomorrow, finalizing cards, trying to get "prescription help" for the flight, canceling the gym contract. I think both Megan and I are ready to end the exit procession and finally get to Korea!

PS - sing the title of the post to "Going Back to Cali" by Biggy

Finalizing the Visa

2008-07-08T00:07:00.000-05:00

Finalizing a Visa. This would seem like a daunting task, but it would also seem like a task for which modern technology could be utilized. The Korean consulate began requiring an interview for new teachers as of December 15th, 2007. This means that we fall under the umbrella for requiring an interview to complete our process. The closest Korean consulate is in Chicago, a good 7 hr round trip from the Twin Cities. The interview process only occurs on Wednesday and Fridays. Going there in person would be quite an endeavor for one with limited time and money. Luckily, the Korean consulate has come up with a way of accommodating those who are not near Chicagoland by granting web cam interviews... but wait, that is only if you live as far away as the Dakotas! A 14+ hour round trip is deemed perfectly acceptable, and does not qualify as over doing it. Absolutely ridiculous. The Korean consulate needs to adjust this policy to accomodate special circumstances for those in the Twin Cities, and I would say anywhere beyond a three hour drive. As of right now, we am driving to Chicago and back on July 19th.

The kicker for today is, after doing some research for my flight, which will also be out of Chicago (I will return a mere two days after the "visa run") to pick up our final visa documents before our trip. We are flying Northwest Airlines, which of course has a regional hub in the Twin Cities. Could anyone guess where our first plane transfer will be? Seattle, LAX, San Fran you might ask? Nope, none other then good old MSP. That will make flying out of Chicago seem really efficent, eh? The nice thing here is, once we transfer in Tokyo, we will be going to Busan, a southern costal city, instead of the usual Seoul, and being picked up by our kind boss, JS Park, and brought back to Yeosu. Very kind accommodations for foreigners arriving in a slightly intimidating country to travel.

The first post

2008-07-08T00:05:00.001-05:00

Hello blogosphere. This a pilot post for a potential blog for Megan and Dave's year in Korea. We will potentially be journaling the goings on of our time in Korea.