Goodbye Sunday

Today is our last Sunday in Korea.

We spent it cleaning (so that Thursday will be a cinch) and then we met Ben and Amy at Mr. Pizza for one last western restaurant dinner.  After gorging on pizza and crappy "American" salad, we went back their place, watched Wall-E and drank gin and tonics (because we're classy grown ups).

Our meeting was bittersweet, since we know we'll say goodbye soon (we're staying with them on Thursday).  Meeting Ben and Amy has definitely been one of the best things about coming here.  I really hope that they decide that Portland is a good fit for them (they're seriously considering it) because I don't think I'm ready to give them up quite yet.

Tomorrow is our last Monday at Yoon's.  I'm am so happy that it's almost over and that we'll soon be going on our trip.  But, I'm terrified of going home and starting a new life.  Again.

But, change is what makes the world go 'round.

Good night!

East Sea

Today was a blast, but difficult as I didn't get enough sleep last night and we actually spent the majority of the day in the car.

The weather here (Jecheon) sucks right now, but it was partly sunny and much less humid in Gangneung-si, where we went to Gyeongpo Beach.  The day was much more laid back than our usual sight-seeing tours with them.  I wish we would have had more time to spend at the actual beach, but it took about three hours to get there, so the short stay was understandable.

On the way, we stopped by Yi I's (the scholar who is on the Korean 5000 won bill) birthplace.  His mother (Korea's premier female artist) is on the 50000 won bill.

Black bamboo.

Yi I.

Pomegranate tree.

Shin Saimdang, Yi I's mother.

Gyeongpo Beach.  It was a bit gray, but the air was wonderful.

Spicy fish soup delivered to the beach!  It's called 매운탕 (maeuntang) or, simply, "spicy soup."  Of course, Ian and I did not partake.  We had packed a picnic lunch of onigiri (rice balls) for ourselves.

매운탕 sees you coming to eat it.

 

Ian is a pirate.

I'm not so talented when it comes to drawing with my foot.

Bathing suits (or, at least, exposed bathing suits) are not common place in Korea yet.  Instead, people go to the beach, and into the water, fully or mostly clothed.

Four girls had Superman shirts (the dark blue).

Since 99% of people were fully dressed, the lifeguards really stood out.

See the Speedo?  There were five or six lifeguards all in Speedos.  They were terrible swimmers, too, I don't think they would have been very effective if someone needed them.

Rain on the beach.  Luckily, it was clear while we were actually hanging out.

On the way back, we stopped at the Morae Shigae (Hourglass) Park.  It's the largest hourglass in the world and it counts one year at a time.  They rotate it at midnight every January 1st.

They took us out to dinner back in Jecheon at an acorn themed restaurant.  All the food had something to do with acorns.  Who knew they were so versatile?

This salad was made with acorn noodles, veggies, pears, and a spicy sauce.

We mixed them by hand.  It was delicious.  It, and the acorn flour pa jeon (veggie pancake) were my favorites.

Now it's time for bed as we've got to scrub down our apartment tomorrow morning!  Oh, joy!

Good night!

A New (and Sadly Short-lived) Tradition

Though we didn't go running in the park today because the weather was too unpredictable, we still met Ben and Amy for dinner over at their place, as we've done for the past few weeks.  I never remember to take pictures of our get-togethers because we have too good a time.

Amy cooked cubed potatoes for a DIY potato salad (a fabulous idea which I am totally stealing).  Ian and I brought greens (spinach and baby bok choy) and parmesan crusted eggplant.  It was great.  After dinner, we went to a new gelato place that opened down the block, went for a walk to the airstrip and then came back to their apartment and watched Leatherheads.

We will be very sad to leave Ben and Amy behind.  Their friendship has been one of the few positives about our time here in Korea.  They are looking in to Portland as a possibility for when they come back to the states (at the end of December).  I think we've convinced them to come visit shortly after their return even if they choose not to move to the city.

I looked up the Oregon Humane Society today and I'm very excited about the volunteer opportunities they have.  There's a group of people who take some of the dogs running on Friday, Saturday and Sunday mornings.  I can't wait to get back into that.  There's been a big hole in my life for the last year.

Good night!

A Quiet Night

Today was more like any other Sunday than the 4th of July.  We met Ben and Amy for a run in the park, it was completely packed today and some of the kids were a bit obnoxious.  After we went home and showered we met later for dinner in (at their place) and a movie.  We watched Greenburg which was alright, but I think the film was trying very hard to be something specific instead of just letting the writing and acting speak for themselves.

It's always great to hand out with the Nanneys and tonight was no exception.

But, I'm not feeling all that great (I think it's too much dairy from the two slices of pizza I had for dinner), so I will keep this short.

Good night!

Coworkers

This will be brief, as I am absolutely exhausted.  

Chun wha invited us out with the teachers from Haso tonight.  We briefly walked around Uirimji and then headed to a hof (tavern/ bar) for dinner and a couple of beers.  It was amazing to relax and hang out with coworkers.  I will sincerely miss them when we leave.  We even talked a little about our firing and found that most of the other teachers feel the same way we do.  David (the teacher who replaced Eun wha at Haso) told us that he worked one day at Goam and quit because it was too stressful and he didn't like the students or the boss.  I think Yoon's may find it even more difficult to hire and keep employees on its next round.

Chun wha and Chang su have invited us to the East Sea (or a trip somewhere else if they decide another place is better) on the 17th.  I'm excited.

Good night!

Runners' High

Nothing looks quite as bad after a good run.

Even if I'm in a terrible mood, a good run turns it 180 degrees.  But, today I was already in a good mood, so our trip to the park just made it even better.

Ben and Amy met us at our apartment at 5 o'clock and we all walked to the park that's just a few blocks away.  It was pretty packed today, lots of kids and parents and also many elderly folks getting some fresh air.  It used to make me nervous to have such an audience, but I've gained a lot of confidence in my running, so it doesn't bother me anymore.  And most of the little kids that run after you are more cute than obnoxious, so it just makes the run more interesting.  A treadmill can be very mind numbing.

We guess that it's roughly 6 laps to a mile (the track is about 3/4 the size of your average school track, we think).  I easily ran 18 laps, pushing it to a sprint for the last one.  But, Ben is hands down the fastest runner out of all of us.  We're no competition for him; he ran 21 in the time that it took me to run 17 of mine.

We decided to make this a weekly event.  Every Sunday (unless it's pouring) we'll head over to the little track and put on a waegookin (foreigner) show for all the people there.  I'm really excited it.

I am not, however, excited for tomorrow's meeting.  We know our rights and options.  If Julia fires us outright or threatens to without putting down a four to six week time line, we will take action.  The tricky part will be not losing our cool and not "threatening" her by telling her that we're prepared to go to the Labor Board.  We actually emailed the Ministry of Labor today.  We didn't name our hagwon or Julia, since we're just hoping to get some advice.

Here's hoping it turns out we don't need it.  Good night!

Dinner and a Show

Ben and Amy came over for dinner last night.  We made stuffed pepper, spicy sweet potatoes and glazed steamed carrots.  Amy brought pa jun (veggie pancakes) and peanut butter cookies.  We stuffed ourselves.  Then we stuffed ourselves again with popcorn and mini snickers while we watched Lovely Bones.  

Just as the movie ended, around midnight, a thunderstorm picked up outside.  It was really active with high lightening and thunder every few seconds.  So, being the silly people that we are, we ran outside to get a better view.  We ended up underneath the covered entrance to Sinback elementary.  We watched the storm and talked for another three and a half hours.  We didn't get in until after 4am, which is why this post is late.  My apologies.

There aren't any pictures because we were having too much fun.  I promise I'll get better at getting photographic evidence of such events.

Ben and Amy are considering Portland for when they return to the states.  Ian and I couldn't be more excited about that.  We try not to be pushy (well, I try, Ian's pretty open with his peer pressure), but it would be fabulous to have them there.  I think they would fit very well with the other great people who already live in that area.

We're currently doing more research on the labor laws in Korea.  So far, we've discovered that if Julia does fire us or threaten to, we must walk a very fine line.  If we tell her outright that we will go to the Labor Board, it could be taken as a threat and (because of archaic libel and other laws here) she could have a civil case against us.  So, we have to inform her that we know what we are owed without alarming her or coming out and saying what we will do.  Stay tuned.

A Plethora of Pizza

The word plethora is most commonly misused to mean "a huge amount of something" instead of "an excess of something above what is wanted or useful."  I know I'm guilty of weakly using it to mean the former.

But, in this case, I mean its true definition.  Just plain too much.  An excess to the point of comedy.

Ben, Amy, Ian and I met at Mr. Pizza for a late lunch.  We always order two pizzas because we are vegetarians and they are not.  So, Ian and I ordered out usual Korean pizza (potatoes, spicy chili and corn with cheese crust) and the salad bar.  The salad bar is my favorite.  It's not very good by American standards, but I like it better than the pizza, so it holds my focus.  After they take our order and Ian and I are munching on our iceberg mixed salads, the waitress comes over and explains that they've mixed up our order (when we have two pizzas, they always manage to mess it up somehow) and Ben and Amy's pizza ended up with the cheese crust.  Amy doesn't like the cheese crust and Ian's tired of our incorrect pizza orders, so he asked them to remake it.  We figured they'd toss (or let the staff eat) the backwards pizzas, so we would be waiting a little longer for new ones.  No problem.  But then, out come our pizzas, the cheese crust on Ben and Amy's and not on ours.  The waitress explains that new pizzas will come after we eat these ones.  We try to tell her that this is fine and we'll just deal with it.  After all, two more pizzas would mean one whole pie for each person.  But, she didn't understand us and about twenty minutes later, two more pies come, the crusts correct.

 Our table.  You can see that both of us still had two pieces left from the original pizzas.  So, that's thirty-two slices of pizza that were available to four people.  Ian and I put down one pizza.  For the record, I had one slice and Ian ate seven.  As I mentioned, I'm more a fan of offerings at the salad bar.  We sent the second pizza home with Ben, figuring his metabolism could handle it better.

That's a plethora.

Good night!

The End

Today was my last day at Sinback.  It was my last day in my routine with my students and my materials.  As of Monday, I'll be starting over.  From scratch with students I don't know and lessons I'm not familiar with teaching.  Swapping teachers from campus to campus is not unusual at hagwons, but they are normally all running on the same system, not completely different ones.

So, I intend to fully enjoy this weekend.  Tomorrow we are meeting several of the other foreign teachers for a picnic in a park near Uirimji to say goodbye to Kate, Pete (a couple from Australia) and Hayley(a girl from the UK).  The weather forecast keeps changing, but it should be very warm, so I'm excited.  Maybe I'll get a little tan.  We're making onigiri, chopped veggies and a simple fruit salad.  Ben and Amy are bringing snacks and homemade cookies and we're all going to share.  I have no idea how the other folks are doing things for the picnic, but they are hitting the bars afterward.  To keep the calorie binging to a minimum, Ian and I invited Ben and Amy to a movie instead.  It should be a great day.

We don't have any truly concrete plans for Sunday.  But, I want to get my haircut and Skype with my mom.  We picked up some boxes from the post office today, so we might start packing away our winter clothes and unnecessary items.  We're going to send them home the cheap way, on the slow boat.  It takes anywhere from one to three months, so we'll be sending stuff home next week.  It will feel good to start that process.

Ian brought home my lesson plans for Monday, so I'll have those to look over, too.  Though, I'm not looking forward to that.  I have all of my worksheets from the past two months on a jump drive; if I can reuse some of them it would save me a lot of work.

I'll be sure to take photos of our fun day tomorrow to share with you all.  Hopefully it will be gorgeous out!

Good night!