Dr. Fish & Silent Disco

Dr. Fish is something I heard about not long after I got to Korea and was very intrigued by this experience so it immediately went on my "When in Korea" bucket list.  With the cold weather hitting it has lead us to finding more indoor activities instead of lounging in Olympic Park, which brought us to Dr. Fish.  Dr. Fish is in a coffee shop in Gangnam.  You have to order a drink at the coffee shop and then can pay an additional $2.00 for the Dr. Fish experience.  





Dr. Fish is considered a spa treatment, but I would say it was far from any spa I have been to.  It is 2 different fish tanks with sucker fish that eat the dead skin cells off of your feet. After Alyssa, Molly & I enjoyed our teas and coffees it was time to go get our feet eaten by fish.  We washed our feet and then decided we start with the little fish.  These fish were a little bigger than minnows so I was not too scared of this tank.  It was a very strange feeling, but it was manageable.  If I could try to describe it for you I would say it is like having your feet in a pool and then someone squirting them with a hose under water up close.  If you were the only one with your feet in they literally all attacked you but if there were more than one person it was much more manageable.   cracking up and probably disturbing the whole coffee shop we decided we would move on to the big fish tank.  Now these big boys were about the size of your middle finger and would all gather together and eagerly await your feet going into the tank.  Now these fish were NOT manageable for me.  I managed to keep my feet in for about 5 seconds before I had to pull them out.  These fish were quite aggressive.  This feeling was between the worst tickle you could imagine and someone scratching you.  The only thing I could do in this tank was stick my heal at the top of the water.  They would literally be nearly jumping out to try to be by my foot.  This was a crazy experience and well worth the 2 bucks! 

 

Silent Disco was also something that was on my "When in Korea" bucket list.  I guess it is becoming increasingly more popular now but I had not heard of it before coming here.  Silent Disco is usually held out in the open such as a park or in our case the sidewalk/streets of Gangnam.  Everyone has headphones on and there is a DJ.  To onlookers you just see a bunch of people dancing in silence, but to the silent disco partakers you feel like you are in the middle of club.



When we got to the Gangnam Silent Disco they had the DJ playing over the loud speakers and in the headphones but eventually solved the problem and just did everyones headphones.  This silent disco was quite different than others that I have heard of around here because little did we know when we signed up it would lead to a parade through the streets of Gangnam.  It was amazing!  Seeing as we don't understand Korean all the sudden the pack of people just start running toward the street so naturally we followed the crowd.  They had a mobile DJ that played music as we were running through the streets of Gangnam.  We of course ended our parade rocking out to "Gangnam Style" at this huge light-up sign in Gangnam.  If you watch the video on my facebook it really sounds like there is a live DJ at this point but it was just the crowd of people singing.  Silent Disco is amazing and I really hope I can find one when I get home because I thoroughly enjoyed this event!

The Continuance of the Holiday Season: Thanksgiving Edition

I was a little nervous as to what we would do for Thanksgiving here in Korea since it is one of my favorite holidays because of the family time and food.  I also knew we had to work on Thanksgiving day until 7:30 since they do not celebrate this day as a holiday.  I started by making my children partake in my crafting hobby.  We made turkeys to decorate the room or so this was my excuse to use them to make my thanksgiving cards.  On Thanksgiving day we made kimchi in class.  Kimchi is a side dish that Koreans eat at every meal.  If you hear that it is fermented cabbage you might get grossed out but it is actually quite tasty.  A few months ago we went on a field trip to plant cabbages at a farm and then we went and picked them.  Then in class we rubbed all the cabbage with this red paste.  This was definitely something I was not used to doing on Thanksgiving, but I guess "when in Korea".   We knew we could not just settle for making cabbage for this wonderful holiday so some friends and I decided we needed to devise a plan so that we could make it feel like we were home for the holiday.  We decided to plan a progressive Thanksgiving meal on the following Saturday.  We found out the US military base sold cooked turkeys and we have a friend at work that has access to the base so we could check turkey off the list.  Now the rest was going to be interesting due to the lack of ovens in our apartment and lack of American cooking ingredients in this country.  All the foreign staff (yes we are the foreigners) signed up to make dishes to take to the massive meal that we planned.  We started the night with appetizers at Alison's house.  We had a wide variety of appetizers including deviled eggs, veggie trays, fruit platters, chips & dip and cheese and crackers.  After we stuffed our faces there we moved onto Amie's house for dinner.  Amie is a fantastic cook and really helped with pulling off her own versions of our favorite dishes. For dinner we had turkey, stuffing, veggies, rolls, mashed potatoes , gravy and cranberry sauce.  We even watched an American football game while eating dinner.  We then moved on to my house for desserts.  Here we had quite the variety of desserts including apple pie, pumpkin pie, pumpkin bread, banana cream pie and chocolate peanut butter pie.  We even had festive cocktails of hot buttered rum and well plenty of wine.  After we were all in our food comas we played a game of movie charades and had our photo booth, which is a necessity at each party.  It was a tight squeeze in our Korean apartments but we managed to house 25-30 people for the progressive dinner.  It was so wonderful to have such a great group of friends to act as family during this holiday.  I am very thankful for the friends I have made here to make my experience that much better.  I am also very thankful for the family and friends back home for all their love and support.  This Thanksgiving is definitely one I will never forget and so glad we could once again bring American tradition to Korea!

Halloween in Korea

Wow! It's been awhile so I will be adding a few blogs to try to catch you up! Halloween is a holiday that is not really done up here in Korea, but with all us foreigners we could not let this holiday slip us by.  At our school all the kids were able to dress in costumes and we had a day full of activities, candy and picture taking (mostly picture taking) for the kiddos!  My class had 3 spidermen, 2 witches, 2 snow whites, 2 random princesses and 1 power ranger.... real creative I know... but I was a chicken on the other hand.




The kids thought it was hilarious to see their teacher dressed as a chicken for the day and really enjoyed watching me do the chicken dance and pulling my tail as I would walk by.  We started the morning by carving pumpkins.  Korean pumpkins are not quite like pumpkins back home.  They are very short and wide, which can make it a bit difficult to put a face on be we (and by we I mean I) managed.  The kids had never carved a pumpkin before so they really loved feeling the goop in the middle.  One of my favorite parts of carving pumpkins is keeping the seeds to roast so I mentioned wanting to keep the seeds to my Korean supervisor.  After the strange looks she then brought be a bag full of about 4 pumpkin insides for me to go through to get the seeds.  While this was a bit more than I anticipated I was quite pleased when I still had pumpkin seeds well into November.  Anyway enough about pumpkin seeds... this was supposed to be about the kids right! After pumpkin carving we then played some games and then went to a Halloween fashion show.  This definitely was a first for me.  All the preschoolers gathered in the gym to show off their costumes to their friends.  There was a catwalk and everything.  All the teachers were the MC's to introduce their class.  After all the picture taking was done we moved on to trick-or-treating.  All the children came with their class to each teacher's classroom with their handmade candy jars.  This was also a first for most of them since this is not a big holiday here.  This concluded our wonderful Halloween festivities and then we sent the children home with their sugar high.  As for the big kids/teachers on Halloween we could not just settle for the kid's festivities.  My friend Katie had a costume house party and we had a photo booth (of course).  We then headed out to some bars in a nearby area.  I was very excited that we could bring Halloween to Korea and celebrate in true American fashion.

While the parents were here & Chuseok

 
Chuseok is a Korean holiday very similar to our Thanksgiving.  We celebrated at school with various  traditional games and crafting.  All the kids dressed in Hanboks (the traditional Korean dress), which gave me reason to wear mine as well.  The kids were amazed that I had a Hanbok and loved seeing me in it.  It was a great day with the kids, but I just had something else on my mind.... my parents coming.  I had been looking forward to their visit since I got here.  I was so excited to show my parents my home away from home.  They got in on a Friday night and after 16 hours of traveling they were exhausted so I took them to dinner and then they were ready to crash.  The next morning we headed to Olympic Park, one of my favorite places in Seoul.  We walked around for hours just enjoying the scenery.  With the beautiful day we decided not to waste any time.  







We then geared up for hiking Namhansan, which I had never done before. I got to introduce them to hiking in Korea.  It is completely different then any hiking I have done at home.  These trails are very steep, but when you see little kids and older people doing it you always know you can do it.  We hiked to the top of the mountain where there was a temple and fortress.  While walking around at the top searching for beer we met a Korean guy that was in love with my dad.  He directed us to and bought us beer to celebrate our hike.  We then ran into him again on the way down and he hiked the rest of the mountain with us.  At the bottom there was a restaurant, which he then decided that we must introduce my parents to Makeli (rice wine).  We sat around and ate a bunch of food and drank a bunch of makeli.  He was a very nice guy and he was even able convince my mom to perform a cheer leading dance with him.  Later that night we walked around the outdoor fish market in my neighborhood and met with my friend Allison and her parents for some drinks.  The next morning I took my parents on a bike ride along the Han River to Itaewon.  We had a great time minus the butt pain on the way back.  Later that night we went to Galmekisal.  I tricked my parents into eating pig diaphragm because it is my favorite here.  They thought they were eating beef, which is what I knew they would think, but little did they know what they were actually eating.  I had worn my parents out with all the exercising from the past two days we just decided to crash.  The next day we went to Gyeongbok Palace, Insadong and Cheonggyechon Stream.   to the Chuseok holiday there were many festivals and shows that we got to enjoy that I did not anticipate, which made it great.  The next day my sweet friend Ara had planned a traditional Korean lunch at a restaurant in my neighborhood.  A traditional Korean meal is just a WHOLE bunch of side dishes in my opinion.  Don't get me wrong you still walk out overly stuffed but it is different than any meal we would eat at home.  We then decided to walk off our meal with some shopping in Namdaemun Market.  The next morning we decided to going hiking at Bugaksan, which my mom had read about on the Internet.  Since I had never been here before my parents got to experience how the language barrier can be frustrating at times.  What should have at $20 cab turned into a $40 cab and many turn arounds.  This hike was 1600 steps (believe me my mom counted), but the view from the top was worth the hike.   that night we went to a baseball game.  Of course I wanted them to see the Twins play and I got lucky that they were playing while they were here.  I have been telling them how funny Korean baseball is and they enjoyed it just as much as I have.  They compared it to being in the student section of a college football game, which completely makes sense.  The next day I unfortunately had to go back to work after a 5 day weekend so my parents set out to see Seoul Tower.  On the following day I was lucky enough to have my parents come visit my school.  My kids had been looking forward to meeting my parents for quite some time and I was so excited for my parents to see my school and meet my little ones.   little girls LOVED my dad, but then again who doesn't.  After work we went on a Han River boat cruise.  It is so beautiful being on the water and seeing the city lights for miles on both sides of you.  We also caught the boat cruise that had a lighted water show from one of the bridges.  The next day we had to wake up bright an early to head to the DMZ.  This is something I had not done before and was pretty pumped about.  The DMZ is the border of North & South Korea.  This place has a very tense feeling and I'm not gonna lie it was a little scary, but it was well worth it.  We got to walk into a conference room that is split on the border where meetings are held between the 2 countries.  As we were staring and taking pictures into North Korea they were also video tapping and taking pictures of us as well.  There are guards staffed 24 hours a day in a martial arts stance.  
ROK (Republic of Korea) guards names are quite fitting in that they look like statues.  We were there for the morning tour and later we found out a few hours after we left a North Korean defected to South Korea by killing the 2 guards with him and running across live mine fields to reach South Korea.  All I can say is I'm glad we were not there when that happened because I would have been very scared.  Later that night we went to the international firework show.  I had heard about it from work and for those of you that know how much I love fireworks I knew this was a must.  There were fireworks from all over the world that lasted 2 hours long.  We were exhausted from a long day so we only made it one hour and we wanted to beat the MILLIONS (no joke) of people heading home after the show.  The next day was their final full day so I wanted to fill it with as much as I could before I sent them home.  We went to the war memorial museum, which was a HUGE free museum that had a lot of war memorabilia, history lessons and military equipment.  We then walked around Seodaemun Prison which is a former prison that the Japanese held many Korean freedom activist.  It was very sad and quite disturbing to see all the forms of torture they used on these people but also gave me more insight as to why all my kids HATE the Japanese.  On my parents last night I wanted them to meet all my friends so we all met up for dinner.  I decided my parents needed to go out on a bang so following dinner a few of us made it out for drinks and then noraebong.  You can't come to Korea and not noraebong.  It was so great to have my parents here and have them see exactly why I love it so much here.  it was also interesting to see what strikes them as strange that I have grown accustomed to over here, such as the cable lines, cars, and many more.  I wish I had the opportunity to show more people around Korea because it is such a beautiful place that I think more people should be able to experience.  My Korean friend at school said I had quite the agenda for my parents and I was able to show them a lot of Seoul including food, arts, culture, nature, history and others.  If anyone is willing to make the 12 hour flight here I would be more than happy to be your tour guide!  Sorry for ranting, but yet again I have waited too long and had too much to share with you all! I hope you enjoyed!

Six months in... so many changes

Well I have made it to my half way point! I can't believe how fast the time has gone.  It has been a great experience thus far and I can't wait for the fun to continue for 6 more months.  To try to catch everyone up on my life since summer vacation (once again sorry for the huge time gap between postings) the past 2 months have added a lot of change in my life and job!  I became an aunt on August 2nd. Emma Chase is the most beautiful baby and I can't believe how in love I am with her without even getting to hold her.  I know I will be FULL of emotion the day I actually get to hold my sweet niece.  It has not been easy being away for this milestone in my life, but I am just so thankful for skype.  On the same day my niece was born I also found out my best friend Lauren is pregnant! I am so excited for her to start her own family and move into the next chapter of her life, but once again very upset that I will be missing another birth.  At work the semester came to an end and I am excited for the new challenges and experiences this change will bring.  I got 2 new preschool classes and 3 new elementary classes.  I was asked to teach a class of below level students and I feel privileged to get to work with this group. I know it will be a challenge at times, but I am excited to get the opportunity to grow personally and professionally.  In the afternoon I have 1 first grade class, 1 2nd grade class and 1 third grade class.  I absolutely love each of my classes but have particularly enjoyed getting to know my 2nd graders.  They are so full of energy and a hilarious bunch.  I have been able to joke with them and they even throw some sarcasm back at me, which most Koreans don't seem to pick up on.  Aside from the children I feel like I am getting much closer with people from my work.  I love the sense of community that we have at our school.  It makes being away from home much easier when you have a great group of friends with you.  Two girls from school created a scavenger hunt around our neighborhood and got a good crowd from school to participate.  It was so much fun and we are planning on making this a bimonthly thing to get all the teachers together on the weekend.  There have been quite a few people leave since I have gotten here considering we all sign 1-year contracts and I have found it getting  increasingly harder to say goodbye to people.  I can't imagine how hard that will be for me one day down the road.  As I mentioned in my last post I started taking taekwondo, which I am in love with.  I recently moved up to my yellow belt.  We showed up on testing night not knowing what to expect and we walked in to a room with a table at the front and a banner hanging.  It made me so nervous that they were putting on this big production for our testing.  We then had to perform in front of our master and all the black belts sitting watching us.  It was a bit nerve racking, but needless to say I passed.  Now we will move up a belt each month.  I am sad that I didn't get started with taekwondo right away because you can earn your black belt in a year at our studio so I will be just shy of a black belt when it is time to leave.  I will definitely be looking into starting back up when I get home.  My parents are coming in 2 weeks and I am beyond ecstatic to see them.  It has been almost 4 months since I have seen them and I am really looking forward to not only seeing them, but also showing them around what I call home.  It is really hard for anyone to grasp how my life is here without experiencing themselves so I am so excited for my parents to have this opportunity.  Well I think this about sums up all the recent changes in my life and I hope you enjoyed reading!  I will definitely be updating after my parents come because I am sure I will have plenty to share! 

Love and peace from the far east!

Lisa

Summer vacation to Jeju Island

I had 3 days off of work for Summer vacation and Molly, Ara & I decided to go to Jeju to enjoy a week in the sun.  Molly & I enjoyed the sun a little too much and got some pretty awesome sunburns but it was a great time none the less!  To give you a little background on Jeju it is an island off the coast of South Korea.  In the center of the island there is a dormant volcano (Mt. Halla) so the island is covered with volcanic rock, which makes it quite beautiful and different than any island I have ever been to.  It was only an hour flight there, which got us in early Saturday morning.  We started the trip by getting some lunch and walking on the nearest beach for a bit.  We then went to a maze of bushes that we had to find our way through.  It was "a-maze-ing" and took us 30 minutes to get through.  After this little adventure we went to the lava tubes.  This is where magma flowed at one time but now it is just a cave with amazing sites.  My camera did not work well in there, which was a bummer but it was beautiful.  It was 65 degrees down in the cave, which was a nice escape from the 93 & humid day.  After the lava tubes we went to Yongduam, which is dragon head rock.  In case you didn't get it from the name it is a rock that looks like a dragon head.  We were there around sunset, which made for beautiful pictures with the sun coming down on the rock.  We then ventured out to Loveland.  I will not be explaining this place in my blog but if you want to know about it google it!  It was an interesting experience to say the least.  We then went to our pension after a very busy day of touring the island.  The next morning we did not waste anytime and headed out to catch a ferry to take us to Udo Island, which is an island off the main island.  We rented scooters and rode along the coast around the whole island.  It was beautiful and we were constantly stopping for photo opps., but pictures just didn't do this place justice.  We then got on a boat and did a water tour of the island in which the guide drove us through little caves and tunnels from the huge mountain.  This concluded out Udo adventure and we caught the ferry back to Jeju.  We then decided to hit up the beach for a bit and caught the most amazing view I have ever seen.  On one side there was the beach with everyone swimming and on the other there was the ocean with Sunrise peak, which we went to later, covered in clouds in the background and then a horse just grazing on some grass right on the coastline.  It was definitely something you would see on a postcard.  After hanging on the beach for a bit we decided we wanted to go to Sunrise peak.  Sunrise peak is a volcanic cone that was formed by hydro volcanic eruptions about 5,000 years ago, but enough about the science/history lesson, it was BEAUTIFUL.  When we were down in the parking lot I asked myself why I was about to hike to to the top of this, but once I got to the top I was so thankful that I did.  It was quite the hike up with just stairs for 45 minutes but the views along the way made it seem easy.  At the top we were literally in the clouds.  It was much cooler up at the top and you could see clouds floating by you.  There is a crater at the top of this mountain, but it was hard to get pictures of because of the clouds blocking the way.  It was beautiful to look out and be able to see all of Jeju.  By the time we got home we were exhausted and sun burnt.  I didn't think to put sunblock on my legs but from being on a scooter for a few hours my legs were fried, which makes for some pretty sweet tan lines not to mention my pretty awesome tank top sunburn.  Although Molly and I were in some pain from our sunburn we did not let this stop us. 

 The next morning we were off to hike Mt. Halla, which is the highest peak in South Korea.  We didn't get their early enough to hike to the top, which I was secretly excited that we did not since it is known to be a 9 hour hike.  We opted for the 4 hour hike, which still took us pretty high with gorgeous views.  The 2 hour hike up was mostly stairs up, which was very tiring but the sites were well worth it.  After our hike we went to check out Cheonjiyeon waterfall.  We then went to the sea cliffs on the coast.  They were pillar shaped volcanic rocks that jet out of the coast. This concluded our 3rd jam packed day of tourist attractions.  The last day of our trip we just enjoyed relaxing on Hyeopjae beach and cooking out Korean barbecue at our hostile.  This trip was an amazing one to say the least and definitely one I will remember forever.  Jeju is a beautiful place and I would recommend this place to anyone that finds their way to South Korea!

Taekwondo, White Water Rafting & Bungee Jumping

Well monsoon season has hit here.  I am told that it should last about 4 weeks.  Monsoon season consists of days on end of downpours and sideways rain.  Thanks to my sweet mother I have a rain jacket and rain pants to help for the walk to school and I found some rain boots here.  Although I can say that I am prepared physically I am not too excited about all the rain!  We actually got a nice weekend this weekend after 2 days straight of rain so I am taking full advantage of it.  Last week some friends and I signed up for Taekwondo classes.  I took it back in middle school and have been wanting to get back into it and I figured why not start back up in the country it originated in.  The classes are kicking my butt but I am enjoying it very much! It feels great to get back in the swing of things and gives me something to do on these rainy nights.  The master speaks very little English so he tries to tell us what to do in class but a lot of the class goes by visual clues.  They have taught foreigners before, but you could tell they were shocked to have 5 of us in the class.  Today Molly, Tyler, Matt & I went with Adventure Korea to go white water rafting and bungee jumping on the Hantan River.  We got an awesome guide for white water rafting that spoke pretty good English so he was cracking jokes the whole time.  On the first rapid of the river our boat flipped and we all went overboard.  You could tell he did not mean to do that but it was fun.  On the calm part of the river he had has playing team games where we try to push each other overboard.  He then was constantly messing with me by dunking me under and splashing me as I would try to get back in the boat.  Needless to say I spent a good portion of the rafting trip in the water.  There was also a rock that we could jump off of into the water.  It was about 15 feet but I considered it my warm-up before bungee jumping.  After the white water rafting portion of the day we had lunch on the river and then headed for the bungee jumping site.  Matt & I were the only brave ones of the 4 of us to do the bungee jumping.  There were about 15 people total from our large group that did it.  We jumped off of a bridge over the Hantan River that was 170 feet high.  It was by far the scariest thing I have ever done.  The worst part was standing with your toes over the edge about to jump and getting a glance of what you are about to do.  The guide kept telling me don't look down.. look at the mountain.  Then I heard the countdown and knew I had no other option but jump.  I had a piercing scream on the initial jump, which makes it sound like I did not enjoy it but it was so awesome! It gave me a huge adrenaline rush and did not hurt at all.  The video of me is on facebook if you want to check it out.  I now can cross off bungee jumping from my bucket list and what a cool place to say I did it. Tomorrow is supposed to be another nice day so there is a group of us going to a baseball game.  This will be my 3rd game.  I am so glad we got a nice weekend and I was able to enjoy awesome adventures with my friends!

Children's Grand Park & other odds and ends

 

So this week was amazing! On Monday we had a field trip with our preschoolers.  We took them to Children's Grand Park.  This park was not so grand.  In fact this park was quite depressing.  We did not go on any of the rides or other attractions so I can not be the judge of that part of the park but the other part is what they would like to call a zoo, which was the depressing part.  There were elephants, lions, tigers, leopards, monkeys, birds and a few other animals.  All the animals had VERY small enclosures and looked a little rough.  I felt very bad for all these animals and found it hard to even look at them.  

On Wednesday I had the day off from work because it was Memorial day.  I decided I would make the most of the day since it was beautiful outside.  I walked to the Han River and laid on a mat overlooking the river for the day reading and listening to music.  On my way back I stopped in at Olympic Park to walk around and take some pictures.  Friday I had my first meeting with Jaewon, a friend of a friend, for our first language exchange meeting.  He wants to practice his English conversation skills and I want to learn survival Korean so we were set up by a friend for a language exchange.  We went to Lotte World, which is a mall/amusement park/ice skating rink and sat at a coffee shop for about three hours and just talked.  I was a little disappointed that I did not have my camera with me, but I didn't realize we were meeting at such a cool place.  He taught me directions for a taxi, money/counting system, greetings and a few other random phrases.  I really enjoyed learning some of my survival Korean and I even got myself home in a taxi by myself without having to use the piece of paper that has my address written on it.  I was pretty impressed with myself.  We will be meeting once a week so I am excited to see what else I will learn throughout the year. 

 

Girls day in Seoul

 
Yesterday was by far the best day I have had in Seoul thus far.  It started by meeting Ara and Molly to go to Gyeongbok palace.  This palace was created in 1395.  It was only $3.00 to get in and well worth every penny.  The palace has beautiful mountains in the background and has a pond and many beautiful buildings throughout.  Ara gave us mini history lessons throughout our tour.  This palace was nearly destroyed by the Japanese government but has been built back up throughout the years.  All the buildings have such intricate  paintings on the walls and ceilings.  I don't even know how else to describe this place besides beautiful.  The pictures just don't do it justice!  After walking the palace grounds for a few hours we crossed the street and walked through Insadong.  Insadong is known as the artsy area of Seoul.  There are many boutiques and stores that sell antiques, jewlery and other various souvenirs.  One of the stores we went in was a sugar craft store.  There were many cakes, flowers, and other pieces of art made out of sugar.  There was even a dress made out of sugar.  This store blew my mind with the things they created out of sugar.  After Insadong we met up with 2 more friends in Samcheong-dong to continue our girls day.  Katie took us to a beautiful rooftop coffee shop that overlooked all the streets and had an amazing mountainous view.  We then went back to Insadong for dinner and some shopping in the boutiques.  After Insadong we then walked back to Gyeongbok Palace to look at it when it was all lit up at night.  After many photo opps we moved onward on our adventure to the Cheonggyecheon Stream.  This stream is set below the busy highway, but by the looks of it you would never guess there is a highway above you.  There were a few waterfalls, and most of the stream was lit up by neon lights.  There was even a laser light show on the river as we were walking by.  It is listed as one of the top 10 things to do in Seoul. As beautiful as it was I dont think I would rank it top ten, but still worth the visit.  We then went to Dongdaemun for some night shopping.  Night time is the most popular time to do your shopping in this area.  It is most crowded between the hours of 12:00am -2:00 am, but the shopping malls stay open until 4:30 am.  This night shopping experience was not for me.  I was not a big fan of all the crowds and was a little overwhelmed by the size of the shopping malls and the endless amount of tents that all sell the same thing.  During night hours bargaining is very common, which I am also not good at so I didn't buy too much stuff on this outting.  By 12:30 I was ready to crash from our long day of adventures so this ended our girl's day!  There will be many more to come though!

Birthday weekend in Busan

 

 

 I'm not going to lie and say it was easy to spend my birthday away from home, but I did have a great birthday weekend thanks to great friends.  Me and Molly's birthday is 2 days apart and we got a day off of school for Buddha's birthday so we decided to make the best of it and go to Busan for our birthday weekend.  Busan is about a 3 hour train ride south and has many beautiful beaches.  My friend Tyler acted as our tour guide for the weekend since he had taught there before and knows the area well.  Sunday we went to Haeundae beach, which is one of the most popular beaches.  Since it was a holiday weekend it was very crowded.  It also had a beautiful beach.  I have never been to a beach that you can see beach, mountains and city all in one picture.  On Monday we went to Gwangalli Beach, which is another popular beach, but not nearly as crowded.  This beach offered a similar view of beach, mountains and city.  This area was beautiful and if I end up coming back from a year, this might just be the place I spend it.  All in all it was a great birthday weekend and I was very excited to escape the city life for a long relaxing weekend at the beach!

Korean Baseball Game

I had heard from many people that  Korean Baseball would be both an amazing and humorous experience, and it was definitely both of those to say the least.  We went to Jamsil Sports Stadium, which is home to both the Doosan Bears and the LG Twins.  All the baseball teams here are owned by major companies.  We were lucky enough to take part in a huge rivalry game of both the Bears and the Twins at their home field.  I was first surprised at the size of the field.  It seemed a lot smaller than Braves games, but maybe I just have not been to a game in awhile.  The whole outfield is first come first serve seating and only cost $8.00, which is nice if you get their early enough to claim seats.  I was also surprised at the fan support.  The field is divided in two and fans rarely sit on the opponents side.  Each fan also has a set of thunder sticks that are used the entire game.  I am used to the music turning off when it comes time for the batter to hit, but not here.  The fans have several chants for the team and also ones for individual players.  There are also cheerleaders.  We were not close enough for me to get their picture, but they also have chants and dances for the players.  Molly and I decided we would be Twins fans, although we were sitting in the Bears' section.  The game was quite humorous with all the chants and also the errors.  Some of the errors I saw would definitely not fly in American baseball, such as 2 men running for the ball and not calling each other off so the ball drops between the 2 of them.  I understand errors happen but they are quite frequent here.  We did however see 2 home runs in the game.  The Twins won the game 4-0, so we definitely picked the right team to cheer for.  This is something I will definitely do again because the experience was so enjoyable.  Next time I will definitely sit in the Twins section so I can learn some of their chants and I will also getter a closer seat to the cheer leaders.

China Town

 

 

Well my famous opening line... Sorry it has been awhile since I have undated my blog.  With going home for Lauren's wedding and celebrating my birthday weekend, I have been pretty busy.  I will start with my experience at China Town.  I have a friend here that was going to be leaving soon so she really wanted to go visit Korea's China Town.  It was about an hour and a half subway ride all the way to the other side of Seoul.  It was well worth the long ride though.  The first thing we did once getting to China Town was eat lunch.  We ate authentic Chinese cuisine that was delicious.  With our lunch we had some sort of seafood/noodle soup and there were many critters in there that I did not recognize as your standard seafood, but once again I do not ask questions here and just eat it anyway.  We followed lunch with a little shopping and browsing.  I was quite proud of myself because I only bought a fan to go with the Hanbok that I bought the previous night.  For those of you that don't know a Hanbok is the traditional Korean dress.  They usually wear it for special events such as weddings, and Chuseok (which is the equivalent of Thanksgiving).  I probably will never wear mine, but it was just a souvenir that I could not pass up.  Anyway back to China Town... We then just walked around China town for a few hours.  Surprisingly there were beautiful flowers and a lot of walking paths through wooded areas.  This kind of beautiful scenery doesn't come to mind when I think of China town, but I was so glad my perceptions were off.