Rainy Saturday

Well the rains have arrived.  For now anyway...  Shortly after we got off work last night it began pouring down rain and hasn't stopped since.  We won't be going out much, if at all today but it makes for a nice relaxing Saturday at home, for reading, napping and of course seeing who gets the bragging rights for the day by being the fastest at Mario Kart.  It also gives us time to do some cleaning.  I am still amazed at how dusty and dirty the hardwood floor can get even when we sweep a few times a week and never wear shoes on it. 

We saw something that we found quite hilarious when we were out after work last night.  Koreans are very into their little dogs.  They carry them around like babies and often times they have clothes on too (their are dog clothes stores and stands all over).  Sometimes it's even hard to tell if a woman is carrying a dog or a baby in a front back or stroller.  The owner of our school has a little chihuahua that she brings to work once in a while dressed in a bumble bee outfit complete with wings on the back.  Sometimes the dog barks a lot at my kindergarten students and I don't think they like it very much!  Anyway, last night we were on the subway when a girl got on holding a small white dog with ears that had been dyed purple.  We thought that was a bit strange but funny at the same time.  Later, we saw a man holding a dog carefully in front of him because the dog had curlers in its hair!  Little, tiny curlers on top of her head and under her ears.  We thought that was pretty funny too.  You don't see too many big dogs around and when you do it is probably a foreigner.  They sure love dressing up and pampering their little dogs though!

 The school got a new "robot computer" that I get to let my kids play with.

 Elizabeth and Kate LOVE playing with Eric Teacher during lunch time everyday.  

 

I was so excited to hear most of my kids start "reading" books all in English this week!

A Flat Tire and the Museum

A flat bike tire and a visit to the museum pretty much sums up our weekend.  Both things allowed us time to play with the new camera lens we bought last weekend so we were happy!  Last week Eric realized that one of his bike tires wasn't holding air and wasn't ridable anymore.  Not knowing anything about bike tires we assumed the whole tire would have to be replaced and were hopeful it wouldn't cost more than 50,000 won.  On the way to wheeling his bike to a small bike tent we had seen in the past, he took the opportunity to play around with the camera.  When we got to the bike tent, where three elderly Korean men were working, he showed the man his tire.  The man quickly figured out that the small metal piece where the air goes in was broken and told us he would "change-ie 1000 won."  One of the other workers noticed his back brake was only working on one side of the tire so fixed it with a screw driver (at least we think that's what he said since none of them spoke English).  Anyway, Eric was so excited to have his bike fixed and for so cheap that we ended up biking around for several kilometers in the heat and humidity and even went all the way to McDonald's for our first Korean McDonald's dinner! 

Today we went to the National Museum of Korea.  This was basically a history museum along with an art gallery and donations gallery.  One man had devoted his entire life to studying roofing tiles and donated his entire collection of almost 2000 roofing tiles that were all on display to see.  I understand that the intricate designs on roofing tiles in Asia is quite interesting but I'm not sure I would want to devote my entire life to collecting them and studying them.  There wasn't a whole lot of interesting stuff to see at the museum but some of the Korean history was interesting to learn about and we got to see test out the camera lens inside with low lighting! 

As it continues to get hotter we are starting to be content with hanging out in our air conditioned apartment more.  There is still much to see and do but a lot of it might wait until after summer.  As July gets closer we anxiously await the monsoons to arrive to find out what they are really like...

 Stopped by Cheonggyecheon Stream just for a couple minutes when testing out the new lens.  We will go back to walk it and take many more pictures sometime soon.

 On the way to get Eric's bike fixed we saw a group of electric wheelchair riders on the bike path

Eric by the reflecting pond at the National Museum of Korea

Movies and Cameras

Today we decided to take in a cheap movie and see Madagascar 3.  As with the other few movies we have seen here, since it was made in America we automatically assumed it would be in English with Korean subtitles.  Although since it's a children's movie that doesn't make much sense since most of the young kids there wouldn't be able to read the subtitles right?  Yeah we didn't think of that before we went.  So needless to say we watched the whole movie dubbed over in Korean.  However, even though we could only understand a very limited amount of the words and phrases the characters were actually saying, we were able to understand what was happening throughout the entire movie.  It's pretty amazing when you realize that a spoken language is really only a small form of the many ways people, and even cartoon animals, can communicate.  Between the few spoken things we understood, their tone, body language and other actions we were able to get the gist of the movie and still found it pretty funny too (though I bet it would be even funnier in English so now we have to see if we can find it somewhere). 

We also bought a new lens for our camera today!!  It's something we had been contemplating over for a while and finally decided on the one we would both be happy with.  Now instead of carrying two lenses  around with the camera bag and switching back and forth depending on how wide or far we want the shot, we only have to carry one lens that can do it all!  We of course needed to play with the new lens right away so started to head towards a park.  Of course we didn't get too many pictures taken before the battery died...  And that whole thing about not having to carry the camera bag with two lenses anymore meant that we had no extra battery.  However we did have a good opportunity to test out the new lens when we got home.  Apparently there is a fire on one of the mountains near our apartment.  We had seen the large amount of smoke and helicopters dropping water from a distance when we were out earlier.  When we got home we noticed how the helicopters would drop the water and then fly close to the river right outside our apartment window, fill up with the river water and head back towards the mountain.  There is definitely less black smoke coming from the mountain now but we are still watching many helicopters fill up in the Han River from our apartment window.

 This was a view we saw from a park earlier this evening

 

Eric took these pictures from the roof of our apartment building.

Birthday Weekend/Majang Meat Market

Since Friday was my birthday Eric took me out to a cute little Italian restaurant after work.  It was set up and decorated to look like an authentic Italian restaurant and the food tasted quite good too!  We also explored Dongdaemun, a very large, nighttime street market.  It is similar to many of the markets here and somewhat like Portland's Saturday market back home, but on a much larger scale.  Many of the street vendors do not start setting up their tents of stuff until 8:00 or 9:00 at night, hence the reason it is a nighttime market.  It's largely the black market area where you can buy very cheap, but very fake, brand name clothes, wallets, sunglasses, handbags, etc. Even though it is a nighttime market it was packed with people when we were there until almost midnight last night.

Today we went on a mission to find a particular meat market we had heard about.  We are always looking for good deals on our meat so decided to check it out.  This particular market, the Majang Meat Market (selling only beef and pork, we checked before we went!), supplies seventy percent of the meat in Seoul.  When you see the way Koreans eat their meat you realize this is a HUGE amount.  It is largely a whole sale market where restaurants and supermarkets go to buy their large quantities early in the morning, but they are also willing to sell small quantities.   Though I will say the lady we bought from laughed quite a bit when we told her we only wanted one kilogram.  The market was pretty big and very different from anything you will find in America.  In Asia, and really in most of the world, NO part of the animal goes uneaten so they had ALL parts of the cow and pig on display and for sale.  How you go about eating somethings, like the whole head, I'm not sure but there were many available to choose from.  One thing that we found interesting were the many old women sitting on a bench next to meat that was out in the open with their fly swatters.  Anytime a fly would come close to their meat they would shoo it away with the fly swatter.  We were hoping to find some ground beef, but that is apparently nonexistent in Korea so we settled for some beef slices (from a closed refrigerated case) which Eric did his best to turn into homemade ground beef for some homemade burgers tonight.  Very tasty!! (especially since we had some Burgerville spread recently sent to us!)

An interesting note on beef in Korea-- As with many things here, anything that is made in Korea is going to have the highest demand, as well as the largest price tag.  Many Koreans will not eat beef that is from the US or Australia, only Korean beef.  Korean beef often means a cow was purchased elsewhere but lived and was fed on Korean soil for about six months before being sold as beef.  Since the demand for Korean beef is so high it is outrageously more expensive than any beef imported from the US or Australia.  We were assured by the lady we brought from today that we were buying Korean beef.  We are smart enough to know otherwise since we know we did not pay anywhere close to the price of Korean beef (one man was selling it for roughly the equivalent of $35/lb!!) and have read many places they will try to tell people (especially foreigners) they are buying Korean beef for a very good price when it is really Australian or American beef.  At $35/lb. you can see why we are completely okay with our beef being made in America!

My Korean co-teacher bought me a birthday cake to share with my kindergartners.  Tommy enjoyed it on his face, shirt and the table in addition to in his mouth.

 All of the yellow tents were vendors selling different things at Dongdeamun.  There were many, many long streets of yellow tents.

Entrance to Majang Meat Market.  We didn't take pictures of the meat for sale because we didn't particularly want to look at all the different types of meat they had there many times!

A Lazy Weekend

We had more of a lazy weekend the last two days so not much to report this time.  It felt good to sit in our air conditioned apartment with our books, some Super Mario time, and crocheting for me and online camera lens searching for Eric while we relaxed.  We have also been busy enjoying our box of birthday treats from home that arrived on Friday!  On Saturday Eric went to his first 4D movie (which he reports was pretty neat) and I went to Namsangol Hanok Village, a village of different traditional Korean houses from the late Joseon Dynasty.  All of the houses there were recovered from different parts of the city and then moved and restored or reconstructed in one area to create a village.  The houses reflect the different classes of people at that time from the middle class to the aristocrats.  They have many different opportunities for you to experience the history through things such as archery practice, wearing the traditional clothes, learning calligraphy and seeing traditional performances. I was able to see part of a traditional music performance in which they were using a variety of different percussion instruments.

We know that summer is getting closer all the time as the humidity has slowly arrived and on Friday we got our first look at a summer rain shower.  The sun hasn't been out much the last couple days but it is still plenty warm.  At work they have been good about turning the air conditioning on in the classrooms but stepping out of a classroom and into the hallway is like stepping into a sauna.  Many times we would rather be outside than in the hallway or teacher's room.  It's kind of different being somewhere that has very distinct seasons.  In three months it seems like we have already seen three seasons!  That's quite different than the one or sometimes two seasons we are used to having in twelve months back home!

Here are a couple pictures of the Hanok Village.  Many more on Shutterfly.

 The village is located at the base of Mt. Namsan, the location of the N Seoul Tower

A performance using traditional percussion instruments

Memorial Day

Every June 6th Memorial Day is celebrated in South Korea.  It is basically the same as Memorial Day back home (minus the store sales because unlike America, Korea does not turn every national holiday into a national shopping sale day).  It became an official holiday in 1956 as a way to honor those who had served in the military, particularly during the Korean War and against the Japanese occupation in the early 1900s.  There is a special ceremony at Seoul National Cemetery and many people take the time to lay flowers at the grave sites of their military family members.  Military service is required for all South Korean, male citizens for two years.  (Just for a side note comparison: Males AND females in North Korea are required to serve ten years in the military)  They are allowed to choose when they want to spend their two years in the military whenever they are between the ages of 18 and 30.  There are of course some that do not serve due to health, disability or criminal past, but usually when the government says ALL males must serve two years they mean it.  In 2002 a Korean singer and celebrity was deported and told to not come back after he became a naturalized American citizen to avoid his military service.  Just last year another celebrity was sentenced to jail, probation and community service for trying to avoid serving.  Military service is considered a high and serious honor in South Korea and the people make sure they honor those who have served and are serving especially on this day.

Since June 6th landed on a weekday this year we also got to have the day off of work!  We took advantage of the nice (though also a bit hot and sticky) weather to take a picnic lunch and our baseball mitts to Olympic Park.  It was a relaxing way to enjoy our day off walking around the park and people watching.  Tomorrow it's back to work but only for two days before another weekend!

A Field Trip, A Hike and Olympic Park

On Friday we took our kindergartners on a field trip to Children's Grand Park.  Everyone took a lunch and we were able to spend the whole morning and early afternoon at the park.  Eric and I have been to this park ourselves before and it is a very beautiful park.  A great place to sit in the sun or shade and people watch or walk around and see the different attractions.  It's also a very large park and there was quite a bit of walking in the hot weather involved on the field trip.  For my preschool class this was not very easy but aside from our many water, rest and bathroom breaks we were able to see part of the zoo and then play on the playground after lunch. 

 It was a quite exhausting trip for some of my youngest ones

 This is my newest student, Kate, enjoying her kimbap lunch

Eric's class

This morning I decided to try out another hike.  Achasan Mountain is pretty close to our apartment and short so I went there, did a little bit of hiking and walked around Achasan Ecological Park that was also on the mountain.  Koreans are very serious about their hiking.  It doesn't matter what the weather is like they are wearing their long, specialty hiking pants, long sleeved bright colored hiking jacket, carrying their hiking sticks that look like ski poles with their specialty gloves.  Even on a 27 degree day (we are trying to learn the metric system, that's right about 80 degrees Fahrenheit) like today they were out in their long pants and long sleeves and gloves hiking up Achasan.  I'm sure I looked completely ridiculous to them in my athletic shorts, tank top and tennis shoes but even then I was still sweating.  I can only imagine how much hotter and sweatier I would have been in their clothes!  Side note: They also don't wear deodorant in Korea so I bet none of them smelled very good either!

 Hiking in Seoul can be very refreshing when you see all green!  Very different than the middle of the city!

  Achasan Ecological Park

This afternoon and evening we decided to check out a different park along the river and decided on Olympic Park.  It's a short subway ride from our apartment and it was a beautiful park.  Built for the 1988 summer Olympics that were held in Seoul, the grounds and buildings are still very well maintained and very spacious.  There was enough grassy area that we were even able to play catch with the baseball without worrying about hitting anyone.  There's a very nice path that goes all the way around the park as well as a museum about the 1988 Olympics (which we will have to go back and check out sometime).  The buildings that were built for the games have since been turned into different stadiums and concert halls for a variety of uses. 

 The Peace Gate Entrance.  It was started in December 1986 and finished in time for the Olympic Games in August 1988.

The flags from all 160 countries that participated in the 1988 Olympics (no the North Korea flag is not present).  The flags represent the countries exactly as they were in 1988, including the flags of East Germany, West Germany and the USSR.  There was a very strong message of peace and unity in the Peace Gate area of the park, specifically how some of the countries from these Olympics were now reunified (Germany) or had gained their own independence (countries of the former USSR).  Perhaps as a message of how much they long for reunification with North Korea.

As always many more pictures will be on our Shutterfly site soon!