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.