Winter Vacation time

We had a pretty lazy weekend around home for the most part this weekend.  We both agree that it doesn't really seem like Christmas should have come and gone already so we have opted to leave what few decorations we have up for a bit longer and we may have even watched a Christmas movie or two this weekend.

Eric has a week of vacation time now that he plans to spend some of doing nothing at home and the rest playing computer games at the PC bang (computer room).  Friday was the unofficial last day of the semester for me.  The students will come back for two weeks of regular classes in February but I'm not sure those will really count for much.  On Monday I will start teaching English camp in the mornings.  I'll have two classes for 80 minutes each and then be allowed to leave work at noon everyday.  So other than the fact I still have to get up early everyday, it's almost like a break for me too.  I'll take my remaining ten days of vacation time during the last two weeks of February when it is the spring vacation between school years.  I have no idea what I will do with all those free hours in the afternoon that I don't have to spend desk warming for a change, but I'm sure I'll find something.  In the coming weeks I know I will need to start going through stuff for us to figure out what can be thrown away, given away, sold or sent home.  But that sounds like a very big project I'm not ready to think much about quite yet!

Right now we don't have any plans for New Years Eve this week so it may likely be a quiet evening in.  Last year we missed New Years since we were on a plane and crossed the International Date Line after New Years had already begun on this side of the world.  I think pretty much every other year in recent history we've watched the ball drop in Times Square on TV but that won't really be an option this year since we'll be one of the first time zones in the world to ring in 2014!

Christmas in Korea!

Merry Christmas from Korea!!  We have had a wonderful Christmas here in Korea.  Although it would have been great to be spending it at home with our families, our time in Korea in coming to an end and being able to spend Christmas here was very special.  The decorations were small and Christmas season activities were limited, but our Christmas Eve and Christmas day together were wonderful.  After work on Christmas Eve we went to dinner and then to see The Hobbit before coming home to eat our Christmas cake.  (Eating Christmas cake is one of the few things a lot of people do on Christmas here, but since we don’t like Korean cake I made one at home for us instead.)  On Christmas morning we wanted to have McDonald’s breakfast since that is something we have done each Christmas we’ve been married.  However, being in Korea meant we could order it online and have it delivered to us, so, of course, we took advantage of that option this year and ate it in bed!  We spent time opening our presents and watching some Christmas shows before a couple of our friends came over to hang out and watch Christmas movies.  We all watched movies and ate tons of food into the evening.

This was the third Christmas we have had together since getting married and each one has been very different, something we have realized is such a fun tradition to have.  During our first Christmas we were living with Eric’s dad, who let us go cut down our own tree to use as our first Christmas tree (though after the abnormally large tree we brought home I don’t think he would make that mistake again).  We also spent Christmas Eve with both of our families and Christmas day with both of our families, now known as our four Christmases.  A few days before Christmas last year we flew over 5000 miles so that we could spend it at home with our families whom we hadn’t seen in nearly ten months.  This Christmas we spent in Korea, just the two of us for the most part, and it was a really great, almost-ending to our wonderful experience here.  Next year will definitely be different once again and we are excited to see what it will bring! 

Merry Christmas to all of our family and friends!  We miss you all and are thinking about you on this blessed Christmas day!

Isaiah 9:6  For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given.  And the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. 

The Nutcracker Ballet and Christmas Baking

On Saturday Eric and I went to see The Nutcracker Ballet.  We enjoyed it and were excited to be able to see a Christmas show in Seoul.  Christmas is very anticlimatic in Korea so we have been having to search for ways to feel Christmasy but I think we've done a pretty good job!  We decided to get all dressed up and then went to one of our favorite restaurants afterwards.  I also got into my Christmas baking this weekend.  I tried three new recipes from Pinterest- lemon crinkle cookies, fudge, and snickerdoodle bars, that we are going to give away to coworkers and friends this week.  I'm also making a small two-layer cake (both from scratch obviously) for just the two of us to enjoy on Christmas Eve so I made one chocolate and one vanilla cake layer this weekend as well.  Tomorrow after work I will whip up the frosting and decide how exactly we plan to store it once it's assembled since I haven't quite figured that out yet! 

This coming week my co-teacher and I decided to take it easy at work since it's the last week before the month long winter vacation and the students are so ready for it.  We decided we will show the movie Elf with Korean subtitles.  Well I showed the first 40 minutes of it to my last class on Friday and it did not go over well at all.  I thought that one would be the best of the Christmas movie options to show considering how our versions of humor are drastically different, but I forgot to take into account that the kids have no concept of Santa Claus or Elves or any of that.  So it wasn't quite as funny as I had hoped for but I'm hoping maybe some of the other classes will get into it a little more maybe.

Only 3 days till Christmas!!! :)

 All dressed up next to our little tree before the show

Outside the theater

Wednesday Night Thoughts: English Education in Korea

Some thoughts and questions on English education in Korea, based solely on my own opinions, observations, and wonderings…

Lately I have been finding myself feeling rather frustrated with the English education system in Korea.  Working at a public school for the last nine and a half months has taught me a bit about the government funded English education system here.  During this time I have also begun to feel like my job is increasingly pointless and useless.  

For comparison purposes, when I was working at a private academy (hagwon) last year, we had an English only rule.  During class time all of the students, kindergarten through middle school, were allowed to speak only English.  Even the Korean teachers only spoke English (with the exception of some higher level grammar classes).  As a result, the students were basically forced to just “figure it out” in a sense.  Their grammar wasn’t usually ever perfect but they were forced to try to tell me things in English and have a conversation with me.  So many of them did have conversations with me because they simply kept trying and trying, practicing and practicing their English every day.  Several of my kindergartners were able to go from not knowing a single word in English to speaking in full sentences and reading and writing more than just phonetic words in one year’s time.  

Then I found out what it was like in a public school.  There are no expectations for them to speak English whatsoever, thus they don’t even have a reason to try.  I am the only native English teacher (NET) at my school but I only teach third and fourth grade, the first two years of English education in public school.  I have a Korean co-teacher with me at all times who may speak a sentence or two of English during the 40 minute class period.  Everything I say in English is translated into Korean almost immediately after I say it.  This, of course, means the students have no need to listen to what I am saying in English because they will hear it in a language they understand in five seconds.  So my question is, what is really the purpose of my job as a “native English teacher?”  Yes, I have the students listen and repeat the key language we are learning over and over and practice with games and activities, but overall they are not at all motivated to learn from me when they have someone else who will speak in a language they don't have to think to understand.  Not to mention when they hear it and say it for less than 80 minutes a week it doesn’t take long for it to be gone from their minds for good.

The government is in the process of drastically reducing and, I think, eliminating just about all of the NET jobs and replacing them with all Korean English teachers.  For the 2014 school year the budget for NET funding will be cut by 50%.  The official budget will be released this Friday to know exactly which schools will still have their NETs funded by either City Hall or the Government Provincial Office of Education and which won’t.  I realize that NETs are very expensive to fund and there are plenty of Korean teachers out there who can speak English well enough to teach it.  But unless something changes, I don’t see this increasing the country’s English ability at all.  At my school, two out of the three English teachers can have only a very simple conversation with me.  Their “English” classes are conducted all in Korean.  Even my classes are conducted mostly in Korean since the only thing the students learn from me is pronunciation of the two or three key sentences from each lesson, which as I said before, they will quickly forget.  

If the country is serious about having their people continue to be competitive in the global world they need to drastically step up their public English education.  I don’t see how it’s at all possible for a student to be successful in English with only a public school education.  Right now it seems to involve spending thousands of dollars on a private academy for most students to become successful in reading and writing and maybe speaking.  The huge push for native English speakers to come teach English in Korea has been going on for a good fifteen years or so but from what I’ve seen, it hasn’t done nearly as much as one would think, in my opinion.  Maybe it’s that people aren’t confident enough to use the skills they really do have.  Maybe it’s because not everyone can afford to send their child to a private academy from age three through high school.  Maybe it’s because the curriculum used in public schools is totally useless or because such little English is actually spoken in English class in these public schools.  Whatever the reason, will getting rid of the native English speakers and replacing them with Korean teachers who may or may not speak English well make a difference?  I guess in time we will find out.

First Snow and a Christmas Display

This week we had our first snowfall of the winter.  Actually the first three snowfalls of winter.  We woke up Wednesday morning to find a dusting of snow, most of which was gone by the end of the day.  Thursday it snowed heavily during our work day but we came to realize that there was much more snow at the places we work in than near our home in Seoul.  The place where Eric works, Hopyeong, Namyangju, especially got a lot of snow on Thursday.  All of the snow and slush from Thursday quickly turned to ice that night as it was very, very cold on Friday.  Then on Saturday we got another dusting of snow at our house and there is still a lot of ice on the sidewalks and back alleys so we have learned to be very careful while walking, and also a little ice skating too.

On Saturday evening we went to the Seoul Hilton hotel to see their large Christmas tree and and village display they have set up in their lobby.  The tree was huge and very beautiful!  It was a real tree, not just strings of lights strung together to look like a tree like we saw at Seoul Plaza last year.  They had a little village with several trains running through it and a display of Santa dolls from around the world.  There was also a Santa you could take a picture with but trust me, he was NOT Santa!  After we saw the display we decided to try a Vietnamese restaurant we had never been to before for some Pho and Gui Cuon.  It was very delicious and we are really beginning to realize how much we will miss all the different Asian foods we have come to love when we leave Korea.  We will definitely be busy exploring new restaurants and Asian food markets when we get back! 

On Sunday one of Eric's coworkers got married very close to our house and after the wedding two of his coworkers came over to our house for dinner and to visit for a while.

Tomorrow it's back to work but Eric only has a week and two days left before he gets a week of vacation and I only have two full weeks (minus Christmas day) before I get to work shorter days teaching English camp for the month of January.

Christmas Movie Weekend

This weekend was filled with Christmas movies!  We seem to be the only ones among our friends who have just about all the Christmas movies out there so we have been inviting them over to watch with us.  On Saturday one of my friends came over and we watched The Grinch before meeting up with some other friends later in the afternoon, and on Sunday two of our other friends came over for dinner and we watched Elf and The Santa Clause.  I love Christmas movies :) There are still many more to watch too!
 
While everyone back home was getting frigid temperatures, snow, and ice, last week, we continued to have pretty mild weather.  Today it felt just like home, rainy, cloudy and around 40 degrees.  Will we be lucky enough to avoid the bitter cold and all the snow and ice we walked in for so long last year??  One can hope!  Though I certainly wouldn't mind a little dusting of snow on Christmas...
 
After our Thanksgiving party last weekend we got out the few Christmas decorations we bought last year.  It's not much but it makes home feel a bit more festive anyway, especially with only the Christmas lights on and a Christmas movie on the TV!

 Our sad and pathetic, yet better than nothing, tree

Thanksgiving Dinner

We had a wonderful time celebrating Thanksgiving and having a traditional Thanksgiving dinner with several of our friends tonight!!  As we were preparing by cleaning and setting up the food, we were quite concerned about whether or not our house would be big enough or if we would have enough food.  Fortunately, everything seemed to work out perfectly!  The dinner we ordered from a foreign market in Seoul came with a turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy, stuffing, green beans, cranberry sauce, and cheesecake (we opted for that over the pumpkin pie).  We also had rolls and I baked peanut butter cream cheese brownies and apple pie bars for some extra dessert.  Our friends brought drinks, sweet potato pie and a lot of fried chicken.  We had Americans and Koreans, adults and kids, and way more than enough food!  It was just like a real Thanksgiving with some great friends!!  Everything in our meal came precooked so we just used our oven, microwave, and crockpot to reheat everything back up.  We were worried at first when we saw the small size of the turkey but once Eric started carving it we realized we had A LOT of turkey meat.  Everything was delicious and the company was great too.  We are so thankful we had the opportunity to celebrate the holiday with some of our friends and continue to add to our memories of our time here!

 Our prepackaged dinner in a box

 It only took him over an hour to carve that little bird.  He said no bone would be uncarved and he was right!!

Our dinner table

Dessert: the most important part of any holiday dinner

Happy Thanksgiving!!

It’s America’s Thanksgiving Day and for the second year in a row we are spending it in Korea (working!) Although we are very sad to miss celebrating (and eating) with our families, we are very thankful we have the chance to be in Korea today.   The opportunity we have had to spend two years in Korea together has been priceless and something we would never change for anything.  We have learned so much, experienced so much, and grown so much and for that we are beyond thankful for the time we have spent here, not just on Thanksgiving, but forever.  

It’s not a white Thanksgiving here but we have been getting snow flurries off and on the past couple of days.  Yesterday it snowed quite hard but only for a short time so it didn’t stick long.  It is definitely cold enough now though.  I think my eyeballs froze on the way to and from work today…

We will officially celebrate American Thanksgiving this weekend when we have several friends come over to our house to eat a lot of food.  We have ordered a turkey dinner that comes with all of the essentials and our friends will be bringing things to share as well.  I'm also going to bake some extra desserts because it is very, very important we don't run out of dessert!  When we decided we wanted to have a real Thanksgiving dinner this year we knew we would need to invite everyone we knew in order to not be eating leftovers for the next three months.  However, once we started inviting people and counted how many were coming, we realized our small our house is and that a 12 pound turkey may not go quite that far…  So now all we can do is hope we can squeeze everyone in our little home, they don’t mind sitting on the floor, and there is enough food to feed us all!  One of my friends told me not to worry because it will be just like a regular Thanksgiving when the whole family is together.  Hopefully she’s right!  As our season in Korea is going to quickly come to an end in only three months, we are very thankful we have the chance to celebrate a special day with some of the wonderful people we have met during our time here.

We hope all of our family and friends have a wonderful Thanksgiving spending time with each other, remembering to be thankful for each day we can spend together!!  We miss you all!

Yongsan Garrison and Seoul Lantern Festival

This weekend was a busier one!  On Saturday morning one of my former kindergarten students stopped by our house because his mom had prepared some Korean meat, bulgogi and daeji kalbi, to give us along with some rice and fruit.  It is so nice that they still think about us and I'm really looking forward to meeting them for dinner another time or two before we leave.

I also met a friend for lunch on Saturday at the U.S. Army Yongsan Garrison base.  Eric and I have always wanted to go on the base to see what's it like but, of course, you have to have someone with those privileges sign you in as a guest.  A friend I met through some other friends a couple months ago works on the base so she and her family took me to a restaurant on the base.  I was excited to eat American food for American prices!  The base was really interesting to see also.  It's so huge that I only saw a very small part of it driving around with them.  There's no skyscrapers or high rise apartment buildings and it's so quiet.  The schools are huge as the elementary school has 1100 students.  There's very little traffic and few pedestrians.  It was fun to see!  I wish I could have gone to the commissary too but no guests are allowed in there...

Saturday evening Eric and I met up near the Seoul City Hall area to go to the Seoul Lantern Festival.  I went to this same festival last year with a friend.  It's a really nice festival with lanterns along Cheonggycheon, a stream that runs through the middle of the city.  I think almost all ten million Seoul residents were there walking along the stream, which is below the main street, so we decided to walk above it and look down.  This way we could take much better pictures and take our time with our space.  We had some dalkgalbi (spicy chicken and vegetables) for dinner which was very yummy.

On Sunday I had to spend part of the day completing the last big assignment I have to do for my online graduate class and for dinner Eric BBQ'd some of that meat we were given.  It was very good!!  The weather is getting cold but not unbearable yet.  It gets below freezing at night and in the morning but our house is still comfortable, though Eric did pull the space heater out of the dusty corner last weekend.  But we've only used it for ourselves once or twice and Friday night I used to help dry the clothes that still weren't dry after 24 hours.  Soon we will be taking a Costco bag full of wet clothes to the laundromat dryer every weekend since the clothes just won't dry in our house with the windows closed.

A nice view from our roof while BBQ-ing tonight

SAT Day

Thursday was the day all of the high school seniors in Korea took the college entrance exam, what they call the CSAT.  It is the equivalent of the SAT test in America except much longer, much more difficult and carries much, much more weight.  It is only offered one time a year so when that day comes its a big deal.  We didn't know anything about it last year but since I work at a public school this year I learned a few things.  First of all, I got to sleep in an extra hour (to make up for missing that extra hour everyone back home got with daylight savings time last weekend) because all government offices and organizations cannot start work until 10:00.  This is to prevent too many traffic jams that prevent students from getting to their test site on time.  Extra buses and subways run and the police department has a hotline students can call if they are desperate for a quick ride (not sure how quick it really is since no one pulls over for police cars anyway).   Also, no planes took off or landed anywhere in Korea from 1:00 to 1:40 because that was when the listening part of the English section took place and there were no military drills during the entire testing time.

Many believe this is the biggest day of a person's life.  In Korea there are three universities that are the best.  By best I mean companies like Samsung, Hyundai and Daewoo (everyone's dream job) only hire people from these universities.  They are known as the SKY schools: Seoul National University, Korea University, and Yonsei University.  In order to have any kind of chance of getting into one of these schools you have to score very, very high on the CSAT.  The pressure to do well and get into one of these schools is enormous.  And when some students simply can't live up to the expectations or succumb to the pressure it proves disastrous.  Suicide is the leading cause of death in people between the ages of 15-24 in Korea.  For those who do get into a SKY school and land a job with a company like Samsung or Hyundai, they can expect to make very good money as they work eighty to a hundred hour weeks.  The statistics don't change much after age 24, unfortunately.

Here's a story Eric heard from a parent he tutors for about the CSAT:  Apparently there was a student who was in a car accident on the way to the testing site.  Somehow his mom convinced someone in charge to let him take the test at the same time as the rest of the country while in the hospital.  I don't know if this shows their dedication to education or just the insanity of the pressure and expectations from society.

If only there could be a nice balance between the extreme dedication of Korean culture to education and the seemingly zero stress / laid back-ness of American education...

Plane Tickets are Booked!

Now that November is upon us, it means that we only have four short months left in Korea before the contracts with our schools will end and we will be headed back home.   Before we get there though, we have decided to end the two years we spent in Asia by taking a "super vacation" (at least that's what we have decided to call it).  We have been scouting out flights for a little bit now and officially made the move this weekend and booked our plane tickets.  It's still hard to believe the time is close enough now for us to do that and that the tickets are actually booked and paid for.  So here are the destinations of our super vacation: 
March 1st we will leave Korea and fly to Koh Samui, Thailand to spend a week at a resort.
March 8th we will fly from Koh Samui to Siem Reap, Cambodia to explore Angkor Wat and the temples.
Around March 11th or 12th we will take a bus from Siem Reap to Phnom Penh, Cambodia where we may spend a night or two to see the killing fields of the Khmer Rouge regime. 
After spending a day in Phnom Penh (or not, we may just decide to pass through on the bus the same day) we will take the bus across the border into Vietnam and spend a couple of days in Ho Chi Minh City.
On March 16th we fly from Ho Chi Minh to Portland where we will arrive that afternoon and officially be home.

There's actually quite a few thoughts and emotions that come along with booking the tickets and realizing just how close it actually is!  On the one hand we are very excited to be going home to be closer to family and friends and starting that next chapter in our lives with careers and getting ourselves established and such.  But at the same time it won't be easy to leave Korea.  We've met a lot of great people and have made countless memories during our time here and it will be sad to see it come to an end.  Fortunately, the memories (and thousands of pictures!) will go with us into our next journey.

Halloween in Korea

Just like we talked about last year, nothing is done for Halloween in Korea.  Except at the English hagwons that is.  Last year the students at our hagwon dressed up and we had a party with them.  The same thing was done at Eric's hagwon this year.  He decided at the last minute (last night) that he wanted to at least have some form of a costume so he bought a mask and a play knife for his "costume" and a plastic pumpkin to hold the candy he would give out.  I felt a little left out when I saw pictures from everyone's Halloween parties with the kindergartners today!  As if I didn't miss teaching kindergarten enough... 

Being at a public school in Korea meant there was no mention of Halloween today.  Instead the classes took the midterm tests today.  Since I do have some freedom with the curriculum I use, I created a couple of Halloween lessons for all of my kids to teach them some Halloween vocabulary and adjectives which I've been teaching to all of my classes during the past week.  They seemed excited to be doing something besides the regular book, but only a few in each class seemed to know much about costumes and jack-o-lanterns from their English academies.  I only teach one class on Thursdays so they were the lucky ones who got candy from me (after they learned how to say trick or treat). 

Here are a few pictures from Eric's Halloween party..

Testing out his costume

Hwaseong Fortress

On Saturday I went to the Hwaseong Fortress in Suwon, a bit south of Seoul.  This fortress was built in the 1700s during the Joseon Dynasty.  It was built for King Jeongo as a place to bury the remains of his father and it is also suspected that he would have liked to move the capital from Seoul to Suwon and therefore needed a place to live when he was there. There is a wall, three and a half miles long, that circles the old fortress.  I walked along the wall for a while, hoping to find some colorful trees.  Unfortunately there were not many trees in the area, just a lot of roads and buildings which made the walk not as peaceful as I had been thinking but still nice and another piece of history to see. 

We are starting to realize that with only four months left (all of them in the dead of winter) our weekends for any last sightseeing are becoming more and more limited so it's time to make sure we've seen everything we can!  I think we've done pretty good on seeing everything we would have wanted to, at least within our area.  Here are a few pictures from the Hwaseong Fortress:

 Paldalmun Gate to Hwaseong Fortress

 The wall surrounding the fortress

Winter is Coming Closer

This weekend Eric took me to my first 4D movie!  He has been to a couple 4D movies here before but this was my first.  We went to see Gravity and the 4D made it quite fun I thought!  Before the movie we had a Korean BBQ dinner at one of the restaurants near our house.  We realized a couple weeks ago that we hadn't had a Korean BBQ meal in two months!  And now we are down to having less than five months left to enjoy them so we really need to be having it more than once every two months!!  Dinner was good, the movie was good, and it was a nice evening together since it had been a while since just the two of us went out.

Fall is officially in Korea.  I want to say winter is here but I know it's only going to get colder so I won't use that word yet (though I know it's coming soon!!!).  It is getting to the point where just a sweatshirt or a windbreaker isn't quite enough to keep me from feeling really cold while walking to the bus in the mornings.  It's also getting dark so early now, just shortly after 6:00, which also adds to the fall feeling.  We are almost to our last season in Korea....

Other than working, homework for me and fall in the air not much has been happening with us.  We continue to plan out the final details of our vacation and trip home in March as we will be buying our tickets very soon.  It's hard to believe it's so close to that time already!

Fall Vacation

My school had a week off for a fall vacation in early October due to a couple of national holidays and school holidays falling so close together this time of year.  A whole week off when the weather was perfect... definitely a great time for someone to come visit!  We were so excited and thankful that my friend, Michelle, was able to come and stay with us from October 1st-10th.  I had seven whole days to show her Seoul and we had an awesome time!  We definitely stayed busy and saw about as much of Seoul as one possibly could in a week!  We went to Gyeongbokgung Palace, Cheonggycheon Stream, Seoul Zoo, the Korean Folk Village, Hyundai Department Store (she has officially bought more things from a Korean department store than I have!), North Korea (aka Panmunjom/Joint Security Area), Seoul Tower, Dongdaemun, Namdaemun, Olympic Park, the Korean War Memorial and museum.... that is all I can remember at the moment but obviously it was a very busy week!!  Not to mention I had to show her the Korean culture of coffee shops and noraebongs (karaoke rooms).  We had a great time together and I'm so thankful she was able to come!  The time went by much too fast and yesterday it was back to work for me and home for her, but it definitely added to my long list of lifetime Korean memories!

This weekend I will be spending a majority of my time doing homework since I somewhat neglected it over the past week or so (okay maybe ever since we went to China three weeks ago...) and it's that time in the semester where due dates for the big projects are starting to appear.  Surprisingly the weather has still stayed relatively warm so far into October (hot if you ask Michelle).  It gets quite chilly in the evenings but not as cold as we both seem to remember it being around this time last year.  I remember I had to break down and wear my winter coat before the 1st of November and that's already only a few weeks away.  It is cool enough that the mosquitoes are definitely making their way indoors everywhere! 

I don't have many pictures from our time exploring Seoul since I already have pictures from the places we visited. Here are a couple I did take...

 Night view from the top of Seoul Tower

Standing in North Korea with a South Korean soldier inside the conference room

Day 3 in Beijing

For our third day in Beijing we were on our own.  Our only regret of the trip is that we didn't book the tour for all three days, but we managed to get around and had a good time.  Before we went neither of us bothered to research what we would like to do on our free day.  We knew we were covering all the really major highlights with our two days of touring and figured we could just find something else to do when we got there.  We asked our guide what else he would recommend and he gave us a few good ideas.  We wanted to go to the museum he had suggested but due to a lack of Google and lack of English understanding by the hotel staff, we're not really sure if we ended up at the right museum or not.  We ended up taking the subway to the Military Museum.  Unfortunately it was closed for renovation but they did have some outdoor things to view like original military tanks, planes and cars most of which were left from the WWII and Cold War era.  They even had the wreckage of the United States' U2 spy plane that was shot down by the Soviet Union in 1960. 

After a short trip at the museum we took a taxi to Olympic Park.  This Park and the surrounding buildings were, of course, built for the 2008 Olympics in Beijing.  The stadium is called the "Bird's Nest" because it looks like one and we got to see the Water Cube where Michael Phelps won his eight gold medals.  We also took a lunch break at a McDonald's that is still located within the park.  The park is HUGE.  We started at one end and walked all the way down to the other end where there was a forest park area.  After walking so much for the previous two days and then walking the whole length of Olympic Park we decided to buy tickets for a golf cart trip around the forest park so we could see all of it while we took a little break before walking back to the other end again.  Although the size of the park was impressive, it honestly looked like there had been very little upkeep since the Games ended five years ago.  We both agreed that Olympic Park in Seoul, which is twenty years older, is kept up much nicer.

After taking a taxi back to our hotel late in the afternoon, we did a bit of souvenir shopping near the hotel and then had one more delicious Chinese meal before having to get up very early the next morning to get to the airport.  Our same driver picked up early Sunday morning and our plane left close to on time this time and we got back to Seoul earlier than scheduled.  It was a really great quick trip to get away and see some new things.  We are so glad we had the chance to see a small piece of China during our time in Asia!!

 U2 wreckage

 The Bird's Nest at Olympic Park

We tried to take this without being too conspicuous so it's kind of hard to see, but those are scorpion, cockroach and centipede skewers for sale in the snack tent at Olympic Park!  And we thought the larva they eat in Korea was bad!!

Day 2 in Beijing

Our second day started out similar to our first with our guide and driver picking us up at the hotel after breakfast.  On this day we started out by going to Tiananmen Square which was actually within walking distance from our hotel.  The square was expanded in the late 1950s to be the largest outdoor square in the world at that time (now the third largest).  There really isn't much to see within the square but has been and continues to be used for many political events and contains many army guards standing very straight and tall around different parts of the square (it's a good idea to not take pictures of the guards as China is still very much a communist country and doesn't appreciate that much).  There is a building in the square that contains the body of Mao Zedong.  According to our guide people will stand in line for upwards of four hours in order to go inside for about ten minutes.  Apparently most of the body is covered by the Chinese national flag but the face and left shoulder are visible (though some people believe it's a wax figure and not his real embalmed body).  There's also a large television-like screen that was built in the middle of the square for the 2008 Olympics and hundreds of thousands of people would gather in the square to watch the games.

Across the street from Tiananmen Square is the Forbidden City which is where we went next.  The Forbidden City is huge, it has over 900 buildings and is close to 8 million square feet.  It's a UNESCO world heritage site and over 600 years old.  It's called Forbidden City because it was was forbidden for anyone other than the emperor, his family and his political staff to enter.  It was built in the early 1400s during the Ming Dynasty and was where the emperor, empress and his concubines (usually 3000 of them) lived.  It was also where all of the political things happened so the emperors advisers and staff were also allowed into the Forbidden City.  It was interesting to walk around and see just how big it really was (especially compared to the king's palaces in Korea).  The architecture and gardens were really neat to see.

After leaving the Forbidden City we had another delicious Chinese lunch.  This time we got to try Peking duck, which by the way should really be translated as Beijing duck since Peking means Beijing.  It was really good!  It reminded us a little bit of Vietnamese food in that it came with a steamed rice paper and different vegetables to add and roll up with the duck meat.  They serve the skin by itself specifically to be dipped in a blueberry sauce and sugar.  We tried it but thought the meat flavor with the sweet flavor was a bit strange.  The rest was really good though.  We also had lemon chicken which was delicious.  We had already prepaid for our lunches with our tour package so we figured we might as well try as many different things for the money we had already spent!  Once again we got very full though!

After lunch we quickly went to the Beijing zoo to see the panda bears.  We were supposed to go to the zoo and have more time there when we got in on Wednesday but since our flight was delayed we didn't have time for that.  Our guide was really great though in making sure we at least got to take a quick trip through the panda exhibit.  They are very cute to see up close and look so cuddly and friendly!  All of the pandas that live in zoos anywhere in the world, and any baby pandas born in any zoo, are really just on loan from China.

We had one more stop for the day at the Summer Palace.  It is also a UNESCO world heritage site.  It was built in the 1750s but a good portion of it was destroyed by the French and British in the 1800ss and later rebuilt by a very powerful empress.  Originally the Chinese emperors only went to the Summer palace once or twice a year and spent the rest of the time in the Forbidden City.  However, when the very powerful empress Cixi controlled China for almost 50 years, she lived there full time.  After parts of it were burned by the British and French she had it rebuilt and expanded using a whole lot of money that was designated for the Chinese navy.  There's a really beautiful lake (man made at the request of the Empress Cixi) and the longest outdoor corridor in the world on the grounds of the Summer Palace.  There's a really neat marble boat on the lake also.  The original one was made of wood but after it was burned the Empress Cixi wanted one made of marble so it couldn't burn.  That's where she ate breakfast.  Even though it's not as old as some of the other sights we had already visited, it was still very interesting to see how large it really is and all the detailed architecture as well.  The outdoor corridor has 14,000 paintings along it!

We are in the process of getting all of our pictures uploaded to Shutterfly.  It's kind of a slow process since it's been a bit of a busy week so far but they are coming!  

Standing in Tiananmen Square

Inside the Forbidden City, walking on the original brick foundation

Peking duck and lemon chicken

Walking down the longest corridor in the world at the Summer Palace

Day 1 in Beijing

We spent our first evening in Beijing walking around our hotel area on Wangfujing Street which is over 100 years old.  It's hard to tell that now with all the modern stores and buildings but there were a few areas that looked more traditional.  The street is closed to traffic and can get pretty busy but not nearly as busy as I was fearing Beijing might be! But then again we've been in Seoul long enough to be used to the Asian crowds I guess.  We ended up having dinner at an outdoor beer garden restaurant because we weren't really sure where else to go.  Beijing felt different from Seoul in the fact that it seemed like there was much less English writing around.  Menus and some signs were in both English and Mandarin but overall it seemed like less English than in Seoul.  Additionally, it was just weird not being able to read things.  We are so used to being able to read anything written in Korean, even when we can't understand the meaning, that it felt kind of weird not being able to read anything at times.

We got up early to have breakfast at our hotel before our tour guide and driver came to pick us up and take us on our first day of sightseeing.  Our first stop was the Temple of Heaven.  Originally built in the 1400s, the Temple of Heaven is where the emperors of the Ming and Qing dynasties of ancient China would go to pray to the god of grain for a good harvest or the god of rain during a season of drought.  Many buildings and things on the temple grounds are original and over 600 years old.  It was interesting to see how the numbers 3 and 9 were built into many parts of the temple.  Three signified heaven, the world and the earth while nine was simply a lucky number in ancient China so there were places that had exactly nine steps or nine rows of nine nails in the doors.  There were also three paths leading to some of the different areas around the temple.  The middle path was only for God so no one ever walked on it.  The path on the right side was for the emperor and the path on the left side was for the impure family members.  The servants had to walk on the very outer edges.  It was kind of cool to actually be walking and seeing things that are really 600 years old.  In Seoul, the palaces have very few parts that are actually original due to the Japanese destroying as much as they could during their occupation of Korea in the 1900s. 

After we left the Temple of Heaven we had our first authentic Chinese meal.  We were a bit worried about the food because many of the Koreans whom we talked to said they didn't like the food in China much at all.  Well our opinion was a bit different.  We loved it!!!  Yes some of it was super greasy but it was delicious and there was SO many different things to choose from (very different from Korea!!).  We ordered two different pork dishes, fried rice and asparagus lettuce (whatever that is, it's good too).  It was all delicious and we got way too full right before it was time to go to the Great Wall.

After lunch came the part we had been waiting for... the Great Wall of China!  There are a few different places people can access the great wall.  We chose to go to the Mutianyu section because we had read it was much less busy than another section closer to Beijing.  We took a cable car up to the wall and started walking.  Our guide gave us a bit of history about the wall.  The wall is believed to be well over 8000 kilometers long.  Most of the wall was built during the Ming Dynasty in the 14th century, though some parts were started the BC era.  Many people died while working to build the wall and at that time people thought dead bodies made good building material so there are (or at least were) even dead bodies within the wall.  The Ming Dynasty built the wall mainly to protect against the Mongol invasions.  There are thousands of watchtowers along the wall where people would watch to make sure no invaders were coming.  If they saw something they would light a fire and when the smoke was seen from the person at the next watch tower, they would light a fire too and it would keep going in order to notify the Chinese troops of a possible invasion.  Today a lot of the wall is in ruins but there are still several areas the public can go to climb on the wall.  The day we went was a bit foggy so we probably didn't have the best views but we still thought they were amazing!  It was quite a hike at times.  The last bit we did was a hike up nearly 500 steps to a watchtower.  It was a bit brutal, especially going back down when our legs felt like jello, but we felt pretty accomplished!  There were very few people climbing the wall which was also nice.

The Great Wall was about 60 kilometers outside of Beijing and by the time we got back to our hotel we were completely exhausted from our hike and in desperate need of a shower.  But we had accomplished the one thing we never would have thought we would ever do by spending a few hours hiking the Great Wall of China!

 Spectacular views

Of course I had to haggle with a hawker on the way back down to get a shirt that says "I climbed the Great Wall."

Back from Beijing

We arrived back from Beijing, China this morning.  We had a really great time seeing some of the highlights the city has from its ancient history and of course our personal highlight: Walking on the Great Wall of China.  It was nice to get away for a few days and see some new things.  We were supposed to leave early Wednesday afternoon but our flight ended up being delayed by 2 and a half hours so we didn't arrive in Beijing until late Wednesday afternoon.  Fortunately it's a very quick trip, an hour and a half or less, and our tour guide was there waiting for us.  We decided a while back when we first booked the trip that we thought we would just go ahead and book a private tour with one of the tour companies in China.  That was the best thing we could have done.  Even though our plane was delayed our tour guide was there waiting for us right outside of customs along with our private driver.  Since our plane was so late we didn't have time to do any sightseeing on Wednesday but they took us to our hotel and got us checked in.  They picked us up early the next two mornings and took us out sightseeing for those days.  Definitely the best way to go and anyone planning a trip to anywhere in China we strongly recommend China Travel Guide.  We didn't have to spend any time looking up the major sights and how to get there etc.  That's a good thing too because there's not much Google access in China!  It was so easy and nice having our own private guide tell us about things and let us go at whatever pace we wanted.  I will post about the different things we saw in the next day or so and we will start uploading pictures tonight as well.  Here are a couple...

 At the Temple of Heaven

 The Great Wall of China.  And yeah we climbed to that high point!

Outside Tiananmen Square