Annnd Now They're Singing....

Happy weekend everyone! It is time to update you on my trip yesterday to the Wine and Traditional Music Festival in Yeongdong in north Chungcheong Provence. The strange school week ended (only a three day week broken up by various holidays), and after being reminded that "my voice sounds funny" by all of my students multiple times because of a cold, it was time to have a relaxing wine tasting adventure! Wine cures colds right? It's fruit...

Shanna, Katrina, her mum (Kandi) and I met at 5:00am, yes it was still dark, and hopped in a taxi to Hongdae Station. When we arrived there were two "Adventure Korea" buses waiting to pick up travelers heading out on two separate trips. One bus was going farming...and the other was our bus! We set off on our way, stopping twice to pick up more wine-tasters from various stations around Seoul. Driving to Yeongdong allowed me to see a completely different part of Korea. There were trees and mountains EVERYWHERE, which I definitely do not get to see everyday in the city. It was beautiful! The festival itself was set up in different areas around this town. Our first stop, naturally, was the wine tasting tent. 

Kandi spending her last day with her daughter :)

Walking into this ginormous tent we were greeted with about 20 wine tasting booths each pouring their selection of dry red, sweet red, and white wines. Some booths even had liquor (like a cognac booth that we were pulled to by our event guide, Max). Anyways, we made our ways down the booths each one, finding some we loved and some we...didn't love too much.

Not only could you drink the wine but you could also soak your feet in it! Apparently if you soak your feet in wine mixed with hot water three times a week, you will get a "smokin' french bikini body" according to Max. While I am a tad skeptical of the results, it felt really good!

We were wandering from table to table when we heard music and looked down to the end of the tent where there was a wedding! Hey, perfect wedding venue right? Wine for your guests no matter what type of wine they like! Some people were obviously feeling the effects of the wine after a while...

Over indulged a bit

 Along with weddings, the wine tasting tent also offered a way for us to win prizes! We were listening to a very excited man on a microphone yelling something when suddenly a group of Korean audience members ran up on stage. Not ones to be left out of something like this, Shanna and I also ran up with them. Who knows what we had just agreed to join by doing so. We saw a huge blow up orb with about 40 small foam balls being blown around the inside. The purpose of the game we had just joined was to grab as many of the the small foam balls inside the large one and throw them on the ground by our feet. The one who ended up with the most, wins. Pretty simple right? Well I made it through a few rounds but it was much more difficult than I thought! I did get a bag of grape juice as a consolation prize- score! While I sad back down, Shanna kept going through the rounds until she made it to the final! And after a valiant effort on her part she ended up with second place, which got her a free bottle of wine and some grape jam! Not too shabby right? We were so proud of her :)

After going through the wine tent we ventured off to see other parts of the festival. There were several tents with food, trinkets, and other items for sale. We also watched a few rounds of a traditional Korean wrestling match between two young boys. The spectators got really into the match, cheering for their favorite wrestler. We left the fight and kept wandering to find the strangest rickshaw-like carts pulling people around. At first we thought they were being pulled by little kids, but then we realized that they were machines attached to the carts that walked when you pushed or pulled the lever in front of the seat! It was a bit creepy the way these carts were stumbling around the square. 

The group was then taken to another area of the festival which was all about traditional music called Samulnori (사물놀이) as well as the Korean folk song Arirang (아 리랑). We could play the drums and string instruments as well as win a wooden flute (sogeum), which I did! Granted I won because I beat the guy giving them out in a game of rock-scissors-paper, but who says that doesn't take some skill? 

Nearing the end of our day, we walked around the traditional music area of the festival on our own looking at the way they made their janggu (or traditional two sided drum) and other instruments. Then we got to see a female drumming group, which was incredible! The precision and choreography of their drumming was amazing to watch and hear. 

Around 4:30 we were told to meet back on the bus. This is when the real adventure started. As this was a wine-tasting trip, several members of our group were feeling the effects of the alcohol, resulting in loud conversations about god-knows-what, and impromptu karaoke sessions (explanation of the title of this post). These girls were not exactly American Idol worthy and the entire bus was quiet except for their attempts to sing bohemian rhapsody and backstreet boys. After a while of trying to block out the sound, I realized it had gone eerily quiet. Shanna tapped me and pointed back to their seat...I have photograph evidence of this but for their privacy I will not post it. Basically one girl had curled up in the fetal position while the other used her wine-bottle-box as a head rest and was holding it like a teddy bear. We had a quiet rest of the journey...or so we thought...

It took us about an hour and a half to reach the rest stop around 6:00pm, then another 40 minutes to reach the first drop off point (6:40pm). That's when traffic started to get really bad. We did not get to the Express Bus Terminal (the second drop off point) until around 7:45 and then still had to go to our stop at Hongnae station. After about an hour and a half of lurching, stopping, and getting no where, the driver began to speak to us in Korean. The 10 of us left in the bus looked around and realized that both our guides had gotten off a the last stop, meaning there was no translator with us. One girl tried the best she could and told us the bus driver thought it would be best to get off at the stop wherever we were at that time because of traffic. We all would rather do anything than sit on that bus for any longer so we hopped off. 

We then realized that this was going to be a bit more complicated than expected. We were off a different stop than usual so we wandered around trying to look for the right stop then just decided to work the subway systems to weave our way back home. For some reason, this particular night, every resident of Seoul and their mothers were in the subway stations going our direction. The subway started off as a bit crowded then gradually became a human sardine can where I couldn't move without pushing someone over and starting a domino effect. Each stop, when we thought we could not possible fit anyone else in the train car, more people squeezed on causing a combination of moans/screams/and grunts from member already inside. Here is your photo evidence!

After about 6 stops it was our turn to push ourselves off. Squeezing through we FINALLY made it back to our bus stop around 10:00pm. That is a 7 and a half hour trip back home from a place that was really only about 2 and a half hours away. Yikes Seoul traffic! So besides the trip home, the day was lovely! Got to taste some delicious wine, learn about traditional Korean music, and spend it all with good friends. We also got to see the Seoul Fireworks Festival from the bus which was a nice added bonus of the evening. Here are some extra random photos for you to enjoy :)

Now it is time to head into a full 5 day week at school. No more crazy excursions for me for a few weeks, so I get to rest and relax. Hopefully I will get over this cold/cough so I sound like my old self again! Teaching my kindergarteners a Halloween song while sounding like a pubescent boy does not bode well for our performance at the end of the month!

Korean phrase of the post: 아이고 내 발이야! "ah-e-ko nae bal-e-ya"- Ouch! That's my foot!

xoxo

Dancing For the Mayor

What a fun last few days! Chuseok festivities are winding down and now we are back to business at school. The past few days have been quite eventful so I thought I would fill you in on some of the details. Firstly, Saturday and Sunday I did not do anything blog worthy. Stayed outside enjoying the weather as much as possible, but most of Bucheon was shut down because of the holidays. Monday, Shanna and I ventured to Bupyeong underground market which is only a couple subway stops from us. She made me lead the way through the buses and subway so that I could learn how to do it on my own (what a good teacher!). We made it there safely, and began to navigate our way through this huge maze of endless clothing, make up, phone, shoes, and accessories stores that line the halls. I wish we had a map of the entire place because it must look like a bowl of spaghetti based on the way I felt as we wandered through. If you saw my last photo update on Facebook you would have seen some great t-shirts and sweatshirts I found with slightly-incorrect English on them (people call is "hanglish" here. A mix of hangul, the korean alpaabet, and English). If you aren't on Facebook, here is a little taste of what I saw...

I completely understand if you are as excited as I was about these shirts. These as well as the rest of them we found were like little nuggets of gold in a sea of faux brand name, knock-offs, and polyester! Found a few things to add to my wardrobe though...one may or may not be a sweatshirt with a pocket that has a mustache and top hat...its fine...moving on...

So that was Monday! Tuesday we were back at school for an awkward day full of classes with only 1 or 2 students in them (aka game day) and that brings us to Wednesday. As I think I've mentioned before, this Wednesday I signed up to go on an organized trip through a program called Adventure Korea. This program comes up with fun things to go, places to go, and people to meet for groups of foreigners in the area. They have a whole website that is constantly updated with new, for the lack of a better word, "adventures" for you to sign up for. I decided to use my second day off this week to go to Gongju which is an ancient capital city of Seoul. The day began with me taking a taxi at 5:30 in the morning to the Hongdae station located right near the Hongik University campus. My taxi driver dropped me off on a corner of a street, unable to tell me exactly where the subway was...so I began wandering around the side streets running into young Korean students who were just ending their festivities from the evening (this observation was based on the number of people being carried and those who decided to fall asleep on the side of the street). After walking around without finding signs for the subway station I needed, I ran into a convenience store to scare a poor little Korean man behind the counter by speaking English so early in the morning. He pointed the complete opposite direction of where I had been walking. After following his guidance I found the station (yay!) and staked out a spot to wait for the Adventure Korea bus.

Once the bus came I met a few of the others who signed up for the trip. There was a small group who had all met through their public school orientation the year before (again, I was the bambi in the group). There were girls from Scotland, Ireland, England, and Canada, and then a guy from Minnesota. The whole bus was eventually filled with more people whose nationalities ranged from American to Italian. Our guide provided by Adventure Korea, Max, was a hilarious little Korean man who just said cliche English phrases in a super excited voice to get us "pumped up". He was great! Our first stop was the Gongju National Museum which had artifacts excavated from the region. It was here we found out that we would have a full out camera crew following us around all day...weird...more about that later.

The poor interpreter, Mrs. Kim, really tried her best to keep 40 something English speakers engaged and focused on looking at old pottery...it was difficult. I stuck with her as others in the group began to wander the museum, and she actually had a lot of insight into the artifacts, but just had trouble communicating it exactly how she wanted to. Very little was translated into English, so I had her explain a lot of the signs and purposes of things. We all felt that we got the speed-tour of the museum. There was not much time to slowly walk around and see each item, not that we could read the explanations anyways. One highlight of the museum was actually the informational video explaining the museum and history of the Baekje empire. At one point during the film the word "onry" was used. As the English teachers cringed and shook their heads, the Koreans in watching the video did not seem to notice the "hangrish" that had just occurred in an official museum video!

We then got taken to the ancient Songsan-ri tombs and the Royal Tomb of King Muryeong. While the tombs were actually just recreations, they were still cool to walk into and see what they might have looked like. In one area that showed relics and jewels found in the tombs we saw a bright neon eraser...which after some debate, we decided was not found in the ancient tomb. 

ancient eraser found in a tomb

One of the coolest pieces in the museum! The Buddha is made out of string and gold beads!

After the museum legs kicked in it was lunch time! We headed to the Baekje festival area and were let loose for an hour to find food! We found 파전 (pa-jeon) which is basically a Korean pancake with veggies and seafood usually (Ours had octopus tentacles- only in Korea!) We were then scooped up on the bus again to go chestnut picking! It was around this time that I began to feel a bit under the weather. With body aches and an intense headache, I was not feeling up to any intense chestnut adventure (as they tend to be, you know). I sucked it up and tricked myself into thinking that I felt 100% which semi-worked! 

Anyways, for chestnut picking we were given a small bag...and that's it. Hiking up the side of a mountain, we found lots of porcupine-spiked-extremely-painful-when-you-touch-them chestnut shells. After getting a quick lesson of how exactly to extract the chestnuts (flash to Harry Potter trying to replant a mandrake...sorry to the non-potter fans out there) we were released on the mountain side to get picking! I got kind of good at it eventually. As I gathered I wondered what in the world I was going to do with a bag full of chestnuts when I got home... 

 The camera crew walked around the photographed/video taped us attempting to not get spiked to death by chestnuts. I decided to give them a taste of their own medicine and turned my camera on one of them- he played along haha

After chestnut picking it was back to the Baekje festival but in a new part with traditional costumes, crafts, and food making areas. The entire group was given hanbok shirts to wear throughout the day. These only increased the stares from Koreans who were also attending the festival, which we all loved of course...We were given about an hour of free time, during which a group of us who felt like we had been awake for 5 days straight found some seats at the Jindallae hwajeon (진달래 화전), or yummy pancake, station and rested there until it was time to meet up again as a group.

The final event for the day was actually being a part of the Baekje festival parade! We were given a banner to hold and everything! A tad embarrassing, but when will I ever get this experience again right? Anyways, after waiting for a while for the parade to get going we begin walking down the main street of the town, waving to the parade-watchers on the sidewalks. Feeling like celebrities, cheered and waved all the way to the main stage. That's when we got the news...

Apparently we had been given the "opportunity" to perform Gangnam Style in front of the mayor of the town, other officials, and hundreds of Koreans watching the parade. Now I know what you're thinking, "there is no way you did that", "you're making this up to make your blog become famous and make millions of dollars", "you've got to be pulling on my leg"- Well foreseeing this lack of belief from my adoring friends and family I've captured the entire experience on video. Here you have it! The brave souls of the Adventure Korea group giving an unrehearsed, impromptu performance of Gangnam Style to the town of Gongju!

One of the most surreal yet simultaneously embarrassing moments of my life. We all were in complete disbelief that it actually happened! Apparently it will be on the news? I am still looking through various Korean news sights to find the footage for you all. I will keep you updated! After that life-changing Gangnam Style experience, we headed back to the bus to return home after a long and exhausting day. When we finished the parade it was only 7:30pm but we all agreed it felt more like 1 in the morning. The last obstacle for me was navigating the subway and bus systems to get back to my apartment on my own! With some help from another "Adventurer" I made it back to the subway near my apartment, then found the correct bus and bus stop to get back around 11:30! By the time I got back my whole body hurt and I felt like I had been hit over the head with a bag full of...chestnuts...After taking some nyquil I immediately passed out hoping to feel better then next day!

Overall, my first solo journey was a complete success! I got a bag full of chestnuts, a free bottle of Makkoli (rice wine..which I gave to my program director this morning at school...he then asked if I wanted to have any right then...rain check Solomon! haha), AND we were given the hanbok shirts as souvenirs! Met a lot of new friends who I hope to meet up with on more trips throughout my year here!

I brought my chestnuts to school today as well, because honestly...what was I going to do with a pound an a half of chestnuts...and the school cook boiled them for the teachers' afternoon snack! They are absolutely delicious! I took the rest home with me so now I have snacks to last me for a few weeks :) For now I am going to try to rest, get my voice back (as I currently sound like a 12 year old boy going through puberty) and recover from this cold asap. Saturday some of the other teachers and I are headed on a trip to a wine festival, for which I obviously need to be a the top of my game mentally and physically to enjoy some delicious wine! As you know, a blog update and pictures will obviously follow along soon after.

Miss you all! xoxo

Korean word of the post: 놀라움! (nor-ra-oom) "surprise!"

xoxo

One Month!?

Milestone time! I've officially been here for (a little over) a month. It does not feel that way at all! It feels like I just got off the plane and experienced Solomon's driving for the first time. Overall I am still loving every minute of it :) The other teachers are awesome (both the western and Korean teachers), my students are sweet (with very very few exceptions), and the area has been a blast to explore! This past week was super fast. Preparing for the song contest took up most of our time and energy for Kindergarten, and looking forward to movie day on Friday kept elementary classes moving quickly. I thought I'd begin by finally showing you my journey to work everyday in a slightly motion-sickness-inducing film where I try to pretend I'm not video taping as I walk by people...Enjoy!

Hope you enjoyed that and did not need a doggy bag!

On Thursday this week, the kindergarteners had a cooking class. We made "songpyun" which is a small rice cake made out of a rice flour dough and filled with sesame seeds, beans, or chestnuts. It is a traditional food made for Chuseok (which if you have been paying attention to my lectures is the Korean Thanksgiving...there will be a cumulative final everyone!). We filled ours with a sweet black bean. The students learned how to make the dough into a little bowl shape and fill with the beans, and then mold the songpyun into that traditional moon shape. The teachers got fancy by putting little flower shapes to decorate the students' handiwork.

So after cooking class Thursday, all that was left was singing our song on Friday! I realize this is a long awaited video for you all so I won't delay any longer. First though I do have a funny story. I've been playing the CD with all of the monthy songs on it for the kids while they do other work in the classroom and one girl, Kelly, has already memorized all of the songs! I captured a short video of her singing our January Song (This will be our year-Ok Go).

Friday I also had to teach my kindergarteners fractions...which was somewhat daunting because my 5th graders last year had difficulty understanding fractions. Anywhoo I printed out a bunch of pictures of pizza and dove in head first. Some of the students actually grasped the concept pretty quickly! Or they seemed to at least. Maybe they just thought I was going to give them pizza.

Oh look what I've done, I've delayed the song even more! I apologize I won't do it again. So the birthday celebration/song contest day follows a schedule. First, songs, Second, dance party (of course which song do you think they all want to dance to...hint: rhymes with shmangnam shtyle), and third, birthday kisses for those students with September birthdays. This month was Jane's birthday! This means that after dancing she got to choose 2 boys to get birthday kisses from (I still can't get over this tradition).

 Ok ok ok I'll get onto it haha here....in living color...is the moment you've all been waiting for...the one...the only....TEXAS CLASS SONG CONTEST!

*applause! Encore! Encore!* Weren't they wonderful? The shimmying was a bit lack-luster compared to previous rehearsals, however overall I am very proud of them completing this classic Broadway tune! Now it is on to our Halloween song...I found it on Youtube so it is nothing well known. Several of my students are afraid to hear it which should make learning it slightly challenging. Oh well- we're up for it! Halloween here is apparently very scary? The teachers stay late on the Thursday before the celebration day and decorate the whole school. We make the lobby into a haunted house and each room is decorated using the crafts that had been created over the past few weeks. The haunted house is the teachers' turns to scare the living daylights out of the students, who pretend to not be afraid as tears are pouring out of their eyes and their hands grasp each other so they are one giant blob of small Korean children. Should be exciting huh? We do the same for our Elementary students. One girl asked me if it is ok if she hits me during it...she says when she gets scared she gets violent haha (if anyone here knows Tairen you know exactly how this can happen. Lovvvee you Tttttt).

Back to the present. This weekend is what everyone? (you: "Chuseok") Very good. So pretty much all of the stores and markets are closed for today and tomorrow. I am going to head over to the park and enjoy the sunshine while the weather is still somewhat warm. Bringing my kindle and a lunch with me, I think I am going to reflect a bit on the past few weeks. I am missing everyone at home- Mum, Dad, Beth, Alex, Edward, Henry, (I'm putting Lucy's name anyways), Mike (shout out to GA), and all my friends from school. It has been amazingly easy to stay connected with people while I've been here which makes it a lot easier I think. If I had dropped off the face of the planet I'm sure I would feel a bit more isolated here without you all. Thank you for your love and support (and care package...which was AWESOME)! Oh ps- should be getting a Korean phone number in the next week, so no more texting via wifi I don't think! If anyone with a smart phone wants to download a messaging app (I will let you know which one I download as soon as I do it...) then we can stay in contact that way!

Next week we have Monday off for Chuseok, so Shanna and I are going to Bupyeong underground market in Incheon to do some shopping. Some clothes there are known to have some pretty terrible "Engrish" where words/phrases are completely bungled up. Pretty excited to find some of these gems (photos will happen). We then go to school Tuesday, but then have Wednesday off as well for "National Foundation Day". I will be spending this public holiday by traveling on my first solo trip through a program called Adventure Korea. They plan trips and excursions for expats and other western travelers over here. The trip I am headed on is to Gongju, which was the ancient capital during the Baekjae Dynasty. We are get to go to the local museum, visit the ancient fortress walls, and explore some tombs! The trip also includes chestnut picking (we get to bring these home with us!) and participating in a festival and parade. Should be a very long but very exciting day! Can't wait :) If you want to check out more info about the trip go to this website http://adventurekorea.com/ and look up the "Baekjae Dynasty and Chestnuts" trip! 

That's all for now--

Korean phrase of the post: 처음 (chaw-euhm) "for the first time"

xoxoxox

Be Respectful One's To Parents

ooOOoo two posts in two days- how did you all get so lucky? I'm spoiling you guys, but it's ok, you deserve it. I wanted to fill you in on the speech contest today! To begin, a little background about these speeches. Students at Little America are given the opportunity to compete in English speech competitions and win a trip to America. Sounds pretty fantastic, no? A few minor details however- firstly, for the most part, these students are told they are doing the contest even if they do not want to. This decision is made by the teachers, parents, and/or both. Secondly, the students work tirelessly on these speeches for months and months and months. They practice in front of their Korean teachers, American teachers, all of the students, and their families hundreds of times until you can tell all emotional connection to the speech has vanished. The speeches are also recorded on the computer, so the students can listen to the "proper" pronunciation of their speech and practice it properly. For the past month I have heard the 6 competing students' speeches countless times and could probably recite each one of them to you. I will save you from that though- you're welcome. The students chosen to do the speech have a lot of courage to stand up in front of a room of their peers and practice daily, sometimes two or three times, in Little America- but also in front of an audience of strangers at this competition. The third thing about the competition is that the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place winners get a trip to America...however it is not paid for. So they win...the idea of going to America? I couldn't wrap my mind around why students would participate in competition like this. I suppose it is an honor to tell people that they won an English speech competition? I'm not sure. Anyways- that is the background to what our day consisted of!

Amanda Teacher and I met up with Patti, Liz, Jennifer, and Tina Teachers at the big shopping complex for brunch before leaving for the competition. We then hopped in the "Little America" bus with some of the students competing today and their families. There was a nervous energy in the air. You could tell the students were repeating their already perfectly memorized speeches over and over and over again during the entire trip there. Some family members tried to keep minds off of the event by playing games or taking pictures, but other student sat quietly the entire way there. The competition was held at Sangmyung University in Seoul. Firstly, getting to the University was an adventure of itself. It was at the top of one of the steepest roads I've seen since arriving here! I was actually semi-nervous about the bus being able to make it to the top of the hill without unloading some people first. But don't fret-we made it. The "campus" itself was a neat juxtaposition of concrete buildings and mountainous terrain which was actually quite breathtaking. 

Korean students from schools around the area came to compete today. I think there were around 400 based on their number cards pinned to the shirts and dresses of the competitors. Actually, Loyola Marymount University in California was one of the sponsors of the event! Kinda neat. The speeches were mainly about Korean traditions, culture, cuisine, and important geographical sights. The company that sponsors this event sends out speeches that students may use if they do not want to come up with their own...meaning many students did the exact. same. speech...I don't think I could know more about the traditional Korean folk song "Arirang" or how to make "jigae". Our students were some of the few that had original, and actually interesting speeches, which I think definitely helped their standings!

The judges sat at a long table on the side of the stage and wrote comments and scores down for each competitor. The speeches had to be under 2 minutes, and if they went over this time, a bell was rung and they had to stop mid-sentence and leave the stage. The awkward silence when a student completely blanks on his/her speech is one of the worst situations I've had to experience. Their face has a look of complete and utter fear while their Korean teacher/coach frantically tries to mouth the words to them from the audience- or in some cases yells the speech aloud with no concern for the possible effect on the student's score. The abilities of the students ranged from monotoned-robot-like voices with the emotions of an eggplant to those over-the-top, to-the-point-of-haunting-my-dreams, squeeky, please-for-the-love-of-all-things-beautiful-will-you-stop-talking voices. Some speeches and posters even had incorrect grammar which was surprising to Amanda and I who turned to each other during one speech and said, "Wait...does that poster say 'Be Respectful One's To Parents'?...yep". Tried to get photo evidence of that but the stage lighting was not conducive to photos unfortunately!

Anyways- our students really shined throughout each age group. We had 6 competitors in a wide range of age groups and 5 students placed in either 1st or 2nd! The sad thing is that the student who didn't place will not hear the end of if from his mother, who put a lot of pressure on him to win. He worked so hard and did the best he could! I will be sure to tell him how proud I am of him Monday at school. You could just see the weight lift off his and the other students' shoulders after putting months and months of time and effort into memorizing their speeches! Not that I have a bias or anything but honestly our students sounded the most natural and had interesting (and grammatically correct) speeches. We also had different displays for our speeches. Most other students had posters or no artistic display of information. Our students had shirts or apron-like picture displays that they could manipulate during their speech to give more information. Overall they did an excellent job and I am SO glad I went to support them! While it was a long day (left around 12, got back after dinner around 10), it was so worth it to see the relieved smiles of our kids after they were finished.



After we found out the last student's results we piled back in the bus and Amanda Teacher and I met up with Shanna for some Mexican food in Hongdae at a place called "Macho Mexican". We shared some Margaritas and surprisingly decent Mexican food to finish off a longgggg day. It was an excellent ending! I will have to visit Hongdae again for a night out. There were lots of cool shops and bars around- I'm sure the other teachers and I will make it out there soon enough.

Korean phrase of the post: 배부른 (beh-boo-reuhn) "I'm full".

xoxoxo