Happy Happy!

So I just got home from school, and I realized that the same thought crosses my mind almost every day on my walk home.

“Holy crap I almost got run over!”

Yep, cars don’t stop for pedestrians here; at least definitely not as often as they do back home. It can get pretty scary when you are trying to cross AT A CROSSWALK in the middle of the day. This isn’t really a complaint, it’s just more of an interesting observation.

Anywho, so I suppose I can update on the past week. School has started to become more of a routine so its getting easier for me to wake up and stay lively all day. The first couple days of school I was constantly yawning. Now I don’t even need a second cup of coffee until break time!

I had my birthday the other day! My actual birthday was on a Monday so some of our friends came to visit from a neighboring town called Yeongcheon over the weekend.

Back up to Friday first. One of the other foreign teachers Kristen got me an amazing cake from Baskin Robins! It was a coffee ice cream cake, BUT WAIT…. it was shaped like two coffee cups! Yep, BR is so much cooler here than it is back in the states.

Very impressive!

Very excited!

My amazing co-teachers!

Ok, back to my birthday weekend.

It was really great to see everyone. I took them to my favorite restaurant in the big Homeplus. They all agreed that it was really good food for the amount of money we spent, and despite the fact that it was in a “mall” food court. After lunch, we met up with Courtney and took a bus to “downtown”. We all walked around the stream street until we decided to get lost in the Jukdo Market. Its always really neat walking through the market because there are always really interesting creatures to look at! After the long confusing trek around the market, we made our way to the beach just so they could see our beach and walk around on it. It was really nice, and the ocean breeze was amazing! Dinner came after the beach, and then we walked Sandy and Coleen to the train station to see them off. Later that night we went to a local bar near Dan and Brandon’s house, and had a few drinks to continue celebrating my birthday. Everyone was tired from the long day, and Dan and Courtney were getting sick so we were all just planning on have one drink and heading home. But that is not at all what ended up happening. Half way into our pitcher a big table of Korean guys called us over one by one, until we were all sitting with them! It was defiantly a strange experience because most of them didn’t speak a word of English except for the one who wouldn’t stop calling Dan Harry Potter! It was a pretty bizarre way to end my birthday!

Beautiful flowers on the walk to my bus stop.

This thing was HUGE!!!

The beach was beautiful at this time of day.

Geoff and Sandy; awesome people!

When Monday (my actual birthday) rolled around it didn’t even really feel like my birthday because we had already celebrated it that weekend. After school, Courtney and I went to eat at our favorite samgyeopsal place, and got super stuffed. Courtney was carrying around a birthday cake in her purse and we were planning on eating it somewhere in a park but then Dan called me so we went over to his house and shared the cake with him and Brandon. It was really nice. Dan gave me his extra whistling tea pot for my birthday which was fantastic because I love the whistling tea pot. It reminds me of my parents’ house when I was younger. They always always always made tea and so the whistling tea pot sound became a real comfort for me over the years. Now it’s like I have a little piece of home here in Korea. I also got two plants from Sandy, Geoff and Melinde! I got a really nice tree looking plant and some colorful cacti! I had been saying how I wanted to get some living things in my house, so I was really pleased to see that so many people acted on that!

Not exactly samgyeopsal but it looks very similar to this set up.

Brandon photo bombed my cacti photo.

On Tuesday, I finally made it to see Courtney’s house. It is a bit of a ride away, but it was great seeing it. Her place is really nice! It’s bigger than mine, with a living room AND a bedroom. When I got to her place, we went for a walk around her town which was really nice. Courtney suggested we make dinner which was a fantastic idea, so we headed into a grocery store to grab a few things to cook.

A few foods Sam has fallen in love with:

- Dried squid

- Baskin Robins yogurt ice cream

- Enoki Mushrooms

- Tteok – Korean rice cake

- Kkul Tteok – sweet Korean rice cake

- Kyoho Grapes – the huge ones

- Bean Sprouts

- Seaweed sheets

- Udon noodles

So in the end we made some sort of rice concoction with enoki, bean sprouts, chicken, and soybean paste. We mixed everything together and then Courtney busted out her seaweed sheets and I used them to wrap a tiny bit of our rice thing in them! It was really yummy.

Wednesday has officially turned into EPIK teacher dinner night. After my classes I met other teachers and we all went to an amazing samgyeopsal place! Courtney couldn’t make it because she had a teachers meeting that night. The place we went was all you can eat meat and they had the awesome Enoki mushrooms I’ve recently fallen in love with. After many many servings, we all headed to a bar called Tilt. I had been there once before on the first EPIK night. It was a total blast! I didn’t drink anything because I had school the next day and I don’t handle hangovers well, but it was still a really good time. We played a couple fun games and sang karaoke. We even did some crazy dance moves. The night ended a lot later than I would have wanted it to, but it was worth it. I got home around 2:30 and pretty much passed out as soon as I hit my bed.

My great neighbor and fellow EPIK teacher Pipa.

Today has really been a relaxing kind of day. I had my 1^st graders today, which wasn’t relaxing at all actually, but my 5^th graders were really good. I really enjoy teaching the “Brilliant Kids” class. These kids are in 5^th grade and they are writing their own plays in my class. Lunch today was really great too. We had tteok (rice cakes) which I was really pleased to see, and we also had Chinese pears which taste exactly like star fruit surprisingly enough. Yummy! Oh and I had another first today. I got my first hug from a boy! He ran up to me and hugged me, and then got a bunch of snickers and giggles from the other boys around him. It was really cute.

After school I already made my decision to stay home tonight, so I made a trip to Lotte Mart (a 5 minute walk from my house) to get some things for dinner. I was looking forward to this trip all day because this was going to be my first real dinner made in my home. I ended up buying a lot of big heavy things so my trip home was not too pleasant. But I managed to get the essential cooking tools for really cheap at the Lotte Mart so I was happy. When I got home I made my dinner which turned out to be almost exactly like the one Courtney and I made on Tuesday. I had to plan something out specifically because I couldn’t get too many things on this trip, but I might go back tomorrow to get some tteok or udon noodles!

The "Brilliant Kids" 5th graders.

My masterpiece of a homemade meal!

I love how you can get this much seaweed at a time!

I know it might seem like I just took a silly photo of my favorite ice cream, but I was actually taking a picture of the "Mom and Ripe Persimmon" flavor.

More of my amazing co-teachers!

So this was interesting. A boy in my class had a birthday so his mom brought everyone one of these. What was it, I wondered. Did she bring me a soda?

Oh man look at that, she brought me chicken nuggets... with a straw?

Ohhhhh I get it now. She gave me a few nuggets and a small amount of soda, all in one intriguing cup. Hmmm very interesting. And tasty!

However, I don't quite understand the marketing strategy behind the slogan of this chicken place. I have my theories, but I'm open to suggestions.

I’m really excited for this weekend! A friend of ours, Chris is having his birthday on Saturday so he and I are sharing the celebrations! We are all going out and REALLY celebrating our birthdays. I think it will be really great.

Another thing I am looking forward to is Chusok, which is sort of like Korean thanksgiving. We have Tuesday through Friday off this next week so a couple of my friends and I are going to Seoul! I am really excited about going to Seoul, just because it is such a huge city and we have almost a week of exploring it! There is this huge house shaped like a Toilet in Suwon which is really close to Seoul. It would be really great to be able to go see that! Of course, Sam is the one who wants to see the big toilet shaped house.

The weather here is getting a lot nicer now. It reminds me of how the weather is in Florida around Halloween time. One of my teachers asked me what we do on Halloween and I told her all about the kids dressing up and trick or treating. It was really nice talking about it, but it made me a tad bit sad knowing I will be missing it this year. But luckily, I have another American teacher in my school, and I think we are planning a Halloween themed lesson so I’m pretty excited about that.

Alright well, I am done talking now so I will sign off for today. I hope everyone is having a good day, and I hope everyone had a great “Sam’s Birthday” on Monday. Courtney and I miss everyone a lot, but let it be known that we are staying strong and enjoying ourselves here very much!