Typhoon Season

Well after being told to prepare for what could be a very nasty typhoon yesterday, all we got was some wind.  The government had canceled school for the whole city so we had no students yesterday.  It is still common for teachers to report to work unless the storm is really bad so we went into work, straightened up our classrooms for about thirty minutes, and then did basically nothing the rest of the day.  They let us go home early, but there was still no storm.  The wind picked up quite a bit last night.  We could hear it beating pretty hard again the window, but still not much rain.  Maybe half an inch instead of the ten inches they said we could possibly get.  The wind has not blown in Seoul the entire six months we have been here so seeing a lot of tree debris was different.  We saw one fallen tree but the rest was just small branches and leaves.  Eric says he was rather disappointed by his first typhoon!

 Raining at work but not windy enough to break his umbrella!

On the way home from work we saw a guy sweeping up leaves that were in the street.  I guess he didn't get the message that it was only going to stay windy for another several hours!

Hot, Humid, Wet

I know that every single time I have posted for about the last two months it has been about the weather, but because of "it" there is not much else to talk about.  The heat and humidity or the humidity and the rain don't give us much desire to do much sightseeing or even taking a walk through one of the many parks.  Typhoon Bolaven will likely hit us on Tuesday bringing us even more rain.  We are hopeful that the first weekend of September will finally bring fall! Our excitement for the week this time was actually getting cable television!  We get several English channels including History, Discovery, National Geographic Travel, a few movie channels and some others.  It's even interesting to watch the news after only being able to read about it for the last six months, AND we don't even have to sit through the political ads (most of the commercials are in Korean even on the English channels).

So since cable is not that interesting to talk about and neither is walking around the mall just for something to do like we did Saturday and Sunday, let me tell you about how we do some grocery shopping in Korea.  In addition to going to the store just like home, we also do some of our grocery shopping online (especially for meat).  Since our freezer is very small we are not able to order very much meat at a time so if we go to a meat store to buy it we would have to go frequently.  Instead, we are able to pick what we want online (as frequently as we want), pay for it through a wire transfer at the bank (with a fee of less than 50 cents), and within one or two days a styrofoam cooler box with a lot of ice packs is waiting for us when we get home, meat still frozen.  It looks like this: 

 

The delivery with cooler fee is about $1.  So between that and the wire transfer fee it costs less money to have our food delivered than it would for just one of us to take the subway to a meat market and back, not to mention the time!

Another Hot Weekend

Not much to report from this weekend.  Once again it was just too hot and sticky to enjoy being outside much.  However, the video games on our new TV got quite a bit of use this weekend!  We did enjoy a big meat filled dinner at a Korean BBQ restaurant and made a trip to Costco so that two other teachers could get their new apartments stocked with some goods.  We attempted to go to the park after Costco Saturday night but it was short lived due to the rain starting and the uncomfortable humidity.  After checking out Starbucks in Korea for the first time to grade my monthly tests on Sunday, I headed to Insadong (which is mostly a souvenir shopping area) and checked out some of the cute little shops in the area.  It's different than some of the markets in that everyone selling things is mostly inside an actual store.  Eric decided to stick with the air con and went to see a movie.  It has been cooling down a bit (closer to 85-90 instead of 100-105) but the humidity seems to always want to stay right about 70-80%.  We keep hoping one day soon though!

Story:  On Wednesday Eric went to lunch with a couple Korean friends.  They told him it was dog meat so he didn't eat any.  Then they told him they were just kidding it was really beef.  He only ate a little, still unsure what it really was.  Last night he kept trying to get one of them to tell him what it really was but they won't give him a straight answer so I guess he will never know for sure if he has eaten dog or not!  FYI... he says it tasted like it could have been beef but it looked different, thus leaving him very confused as to what it really was.

We are both glad to go back to our regular work schedules tomorrow.  The elementary kids go back to school tomorrow so we won't have to teach them in the mornings anymore.  It is almost time for the second semester to start.  Hard to believe we have been here almost six months already.  Oh and my cell phone is working again!  I let it dry out for a couple days and thankfully that worked!  Learn from my lesson: Never take your cell phone with you during a monsoon!

 Samgyupsal on the grill

 All of the people selling things in Insadong have an actual store but most people like to have things set up outside too

 Large puppets dancing to the Gangnam Style song down Insadong Street

Cat Cafe on Independence Day

Happy Independence Day!  Today marks 67 years since Korea declared their independence from Japan.  And the animosity between the two countries still runs quite high, just look at the Olympic soccer game last week.  But it also means today was a mid-week day off!

Unfortunately the monsoon arrived last night and still has not left.  Within minutes of stepping outside this morning the wind and rain had me drenched.  The thunder and lightning were quite impressive too.  In addition to soaking me, it also caused my cell phone to stop working since it got so wet in my pocket, hopefully this is a momentary thing! 

After making it through the monsoon I met up with two other foreign teachers and we went to check out a cat cafe.  No, this is not a restaurant where you eat cat!  A cat cafe is like any cafe where you buy a drink, but you also get to play with all the pet cats you want.  The place had about 20 cats just wandering around for you to pet and play with.  The cats were all very friendly and mellow.  You weren't supposed to pick up the cats but they would just wander into your lap whether you were sitting on the floor or in a chair.  Personally I think this is a genius concept.  For anyone that needs a cat fix but doesn't want to or can't have their own cat, this is the perfect place to come.  The three of us spent a good two hours playing with all the little cats.  I didn't realize how much I missed being around pets for the last five and a half months until I had a cat curl up and fall asleep in my lap.  I bet you could do it with other animals too, like maybe turtles (I don't think Gary would mind being part of a turtle cafe!)  You would think a place with twenty cats would be pretty dirty but actually the entire place was incredibly clean.  They had several robot vacuum cleaners roaming the floor, the workers were always cleaning things or brushing the cats, the cats were all litter box trained and there was no cat smell whatsoever.  Definitely going back to play with the cats again!

Ice Gallery

Today we went on an adventure to the "Ice Gallery."  It was an art gallery but all of the art was made up of ice sculptures.  They had a lot of rooms and buildings carved out of ice.  The best part, according to Eric, is that the whole place is kept at -5 degrees Celsius.  They had coats you could put on before going in, which I gladly did (Eric took his off part of the way through).  Then you just walked around and looked at the art and we took pictures of course. It was actually pretty neat (and refreshing from the heat we have had lately)!

The miserable heat wave we have had seems to be over for the most part.  Seoul experienced the most consecutive days of 35 degrees Celsius (or more) temperatures since 1994 over the past two weeks or so.  Between the heat, the humidity, and the stagnate air it was pretty awful.  People were dying and being hospitalized so the news was telling people to not go out if you didn't have to.  Fortunately it seems like it will be a bit cooler this week and hopefully for the rest of the time we are here!  It was very rainy (and humid) today.

Also a few other things happened this week:  We had our first wedding anniversary so we went out to dinner at a nice Italian place at the Walkerhill Hotel, Pizza Hill, and it was even on top of a hill with a pretty nice view.  Walkerhill is also where the largest casino in Korea is, so we stopped to check that out too (no we didn't win anything).  We tried out some of the "100 won" (about one cent) slot machines where you could actually pull the handle to make it work.  It didn't spit out coins if you won though so it wasn't all that cool.  Eric tried his hand at Roulette too.  It was pretty amazing to see the kind of money people were spending (and losing) on a game that seemed to be 100% luck!  Eric looked kind of funny with his four chips worth about $10 while the other two guys at his table had at least hundreds of dollars worth of chips.  I will say every single person in the casino was dressed very nice and it seemed to be a pretty upscale place, a bit different than what I have seen of La Center!

I also got another student in my kindergarten class, Johnny.  Now I have nine students and eight chairs in my classroom.  It is starting to feel a bit crowded and I am hoping I will either get a different classroom or another teacher to split the class soon.   

On Saturday we went to the western-food-only restaurant Travelers with the two new teachers that are currently working at our school's other campus.  We also got ourselves a water filter pitcher so now we can finally have water that is not only clean but also tastes good!  No more buying bottled water all the time or drinking the bad tasting water from the tap!

 Pronounced a little differently but pretty much the same name in Korean

 Notice the shorts and flip flops and no coat...

 Pororo is that penguin on top of the igloo.  I'm going to show this to my kindergartners tomorrow and tell them I went to Pororo's house.  They are obsessed with Pororo!

Thailand Elephant Tricks

I almost forgot we got a few videos of the elephants doing some tricks during our safari in Thailand.  They are not very good quality but still kind of fun!

A Trip to Thailand

Wow.  I don’t think we could have picked a more perfect spot to spend our summer vacation.  Everything was so perfect.  The resort was perfect, the weather was perfect, the food was amazing.  We had the most amazing and relaxing time in Phuket, Thailand this past week.  Here is a glimpse of our daily highlights (I will warn you now this is going to be a pretty long post!)…

Sunday: We were scheduled to leave Sunday morning and gave ourselves plenty of time to get to and navigate the airport, we thought.  For some reason the subway seemed to move slower that morning… Between a long subway ride and a VERY busy and large airport we made it to our gate less than five minutes before boarding started.  Yeah I was a little nervous!  But after that everything went smoothly.  We had a layover in Bangkok (not an impressive airport) and then headed to Phuket.  Even from the plane we could tell that Phuket was a gorgeous place.  The islands and the water just looked amazing.  Since we had done customs at Bangkok we were able to grab our suitcase and go once we landed.  Taking a taxi was interesting.  We have been in taxis and friends’ cars in Korea so we know how the drivers on this side of the world can do some crazy stuff.  But in Thailand, this two lane road we were own seemed barely wide enough to be a one lane road.  They also drive on the left side with the driver’s side on the right.  Anyway, once we got to the resort we were greeted with a flower necklace (I don’t know if they call them lei’s in Thailand), some ice tea, and a cold face towel (which we came to love whenever the staff walked around offering them).  As we walked around the resort that night we knew it was going to be an awesome place.  Oh and our room was bigger than our whole apartment too!

Monday:  We spent the whole day at the resort on Monday.  We enjoyed the international breakfast buffet, a lot, every morning.  They had just about anything you could imagine: waffles, French toast, pancakes, cereal, fruit, omelets, rice, noodles, soup, breads, pastries.  It was delicious.  We also met the baby elephant that lives at the resort and she even gave Eric a kiss!  We ended up seeing her a lot during the week.  She would just walk around with her mahout, the elephant trainer, and let people take pictures with her or even let little kids ride on her.  We saw her almost stick her trunk in a guy’s drink by the pool and when she was hot she would turn on the shower by the pool with her trunk and take a bath.  The rest of Monday we spent either sitting by the pool or in the pool (one of three).  The staff continually brought cold water to anyone sitting by the pool and you could order food or drinks to be brought to your lounge chair also.  

Tuesday:  On Tuesday we got to go on a safari.  We were picked up from the resort and taken to an elephant camp.  While we were here we got to learn several different cultural things about Thailand.  We learned how to make Thai curry, coconut milk and oil, we tried Thai tea and coffee, rode in a wooden cart pulled by a water buffalo, learned how to tap a rubber tree and make rubber, and of course the highlight: riding on an elephant.  It was a bit of a bumpy ride as the mahout led the elephant on a trail with many ups and downs.  We saw some great views though from being up so high.  Some information we learned about the mahouts, or elephant trainers:  In Thailand the mahouts are from a certain tribe of people that live in northern Thailand where most of the elephants come from.  The mahout stays with the same elephant, day and night, for its entire life.  When an elephant camp wants to buy an elephant, the mahout comes with it to train it and care for it.  We also learned that when an elephant gets old it’s teeth give out and it can no longer eat the 500 pounds of food it needs each day so it dies.  After we were done riding on our elephant we got to feed her too.  It was a bit tricky when some of the other elephants were close by trying to reach their trunks in our basket of food!   We also got to have a Thai lunch on a Chinese junk boat that went around Phagna Bay which is gorgeous!!  We had dinner at a restaurant right outside the resort where they had live music and found an ice cream shop with the most delicious sundaes.

 

Wednesday:  On Wednesday we took a shuttle bus into Phuket Town to do some souvenir shopping.  When we got off the shuttle bus a guy greeted us with a map to show us where some of the highlights were.  Then he told us he would drive us to all of them and wait for us for about $6.00.  We quickly took him up on this offer.  He drove us to a few different shopping areas where we were able to pick up some souvenirs.  When we finished he was waiting for us to drive us to the next place.  We’re pretty sure the shopping areas paid him to bring us there but it was much better than wandering around Phuket Town ourselves!  He also took us to a tailor shop where Eric was able to bargain and get a pretty good deal on some custom made button up shirts.  Neither one of us liked the pushy guy selling them but we were able to talk him into a good deal so decided to give it a try.  They even delivered the shirts to our hotel room the next day and Eric was very happy with them. 

                                                A Buddhist Temple we saw in Phuket Town

 

Thursday:  Our last day :(  We enjoyed breakfast outside then spent our last day relaxing by the beach, by the pool and in the pool one more time.  This time we went to the pool with the swim up bar/snack shack so we could try that out.  We got ice cream at the delicious ice cream place one more time and watched the traditional fire lighting ceremony they do at sunset at the resort.  

 Our view sitting on a lounge couch right after sunset

Friday: We had a very early flight Friday morning but the resort was great about making sure a taxi was there early enough to take us to the airport.  We had a short layover in Bangkok and also made a stop in Hong Kong on the way home, though we continued on to Seoul on the same plane.   We made it home late Friday night.

We were super impressed (and surprised) at how well EVERYONE spoke great English in Thailand.  Everyone from the flight attendants to the hotel staff to shop owners to even the taxi drivers.  It’s rare that we find anyone willing to try much English with us in Korea where English education has been huge for the last 20+ years (I guess that just means we get more practice with our Korean!).  It was also very strange being at the resort and hearing an Asian family speaking English with just each other.  Of the English speaking vacationers at the resort we heard very few with an American accent.  Nearly everyone else had either a British or Australian accent.

The downside to having such an awesome vacation?  Today we are feeling a bit depressed about being back in Korea…  We will be back in our normal work routine on Monday which should help us get back to our regular schedule and wait until we can plan something like this last week again.  Yes there is already serious talk of going back in December or March! 

Be sure to check out our TONS of pictures on Shutterfly!