Korea Day 28

last full teaching day - busy, crazy, bad guy butting in line with students - 45minute lunch line wait

beer at second

wander around olympic park and pretzel and smoothy

many drunk men on subway - do not make eye contact

Korea Day 27

Myeong-dong for the Chinese visas, more skin food, jimdak for dinner, wandered around Gwangwhamun - sculpture, fountains with children playing, design display for 2010

Korea Day 26

Tuesday

Indian food and drinks at 2nd

bad day, Katy and I were annoyed

Korea Day 25

It's the start of our final week and we are feeling that the end is coming quickly and we haven't seen enough of Seoul yet.

I actually stopped for a Starbuck's coffee on the way to work. The day went smoothly and we were actually given a period off to write the comments for the final report. I was able to finish all but one of mine in this hour.

We went to see the auditorium where the final day presentations will be done and the place is quite massive. We are a bit worried that the students will be really intimidated. At least they get to do a rehearsal there in the next few days.

Joann and I stopped for ice cream on the way home and then did a bit of work, comments and reports and schedules. I then created a few handouts for my classes while Joann got caught up on her journal.

It was late by the time I was finished so we had a bagel and drink and had a short walk before going home for the night.

Korea Day 24 - the last day off

Joann and I were up just after 10am and had breakfast in our kitchen. We left home at 11:30am and headed back to Insadong. We are getting to know this area and continue to love it. We looked in a few jewellry stores but nothing caught our eyes.

We ventured into Tapgol Park (Pagoda Park) as the gates were open. We had wanted to go in before but the gates were closed. It is a lovely little park in Insadong. The park is where the Korean Independence movement of 1919 started.

Here is the pagoda for which the park is named. It is very old (1400's) and it is contained in a glass room - we speculated that it was to prevent further erosion of the engraving on it.

This reminded me a bit of Central Park, a lovely park with skyscrapers in the background.

I love these pinky red flowering trees. I am holding my bag of "Skin Food" products. This is the Korean body shop and the products are great. They are very clever. When you enter the store, they give you a sample of their products. When you buy something, they give you a few more products. This seems so generous - the problem is the products are fabulous and whenever we try one of the samples, we want to go back and buy the product.

Joann is conspicuously also sporting a "Skin Food" bag.

Here is the lady who sold us our pottery. She didn't notice me taking her picture as she is busy watching her TV.

I wanted to go to a traditional tea house and Joann humoured me. This is actually the Tea Museum! There must have been 100 different teas on the menu. Each one had different flavours and promised to heal different things. Joann ordered a persimmon tea. She was given the instructions to let her tea steep for 2 minutes. Joann's tea had a nice mild flavour.

I ordered lotus leaf tea ($7). This is not to be confused with the lotus tea ($50) that contains an actual lotus flower that opens when the hot water is poured over it. My tea needed only 1 minute of steeping. My tea was quite mild but very good.

It was 3:30pm and we hadn't had lunch so we decided to order this green tea waffle with bananas and blueberry jam. It was accompanied by real Canadian maple syrup! Yes, the waffle is great and it was delicious.

Here is the man who makes designs out of clothepin wires!

Joann and I thought this place looked so nice. We were very thirsty and dropped in for a drink. We were desperate for a cold beer. They wouldn't serve us if we didn't order food and we were still full from the waffle so we left. Later, we were told that it is common here to refuse service without food - Joann and I had not experienced this. We went across the road to a nice bar and had a cold beer!

I find the streets here very interesting. There will be some stores, a few restaurants, and then there will be a small door with a small garage-like setting that must be someone's private space. This is very intriguing to me.

Joann and I saw these sculptures in a small green space as we were walking. I have seen some wonderful sculptures that I would love to bring home. Joann suggested that we could probably buy big hunks of rock back home and make something like this ourselves. I will keep you posted on our progress.

At about 7:30pm, we decided to come back to our place and eat and do laundry. We went to the neighbourhood chicken place. We had spicy chicken. We had eaten here before and I found the chicken to be quite spicy then. Today it didn't seem very spicy and we speculated as to whether the chicken was less spicy or I was getting used to the spicy food here.

We came back and put in two loads of laundry. We then used some skin food products including facial masks - I will spare you the photos! Once our faces were clean and feeling fabulous, we went to check the laundry. We are not sure what happened, one load was still dry and the other load had washed but not spun dry so it was sopping wet. Not being able to read the dirctions on the machine (in Korean only), we decided to start the machines over again. The wash cycle takes 125 minutes so we set the alarms to get up at midnight to get the laundry and went to bed. All went well at midnight and we have clean clothes.

Korea Day 23

It's the last work day of the week!! We went skating again today but it wasn't as much fun. The rink here has a free skate at the same time as practices for speed skating and figure skating. The ice surface gets broken up into areas for different events. The practices get the ends of the rinks and the centre. The free skate gets to make circles around the centre but not in the ends. Because it was Saturday, there were tons of free skaters, many people taking lessons and our group. It was almost impossible to get around the rink without hitting someone and if you did, you were constantly worrying about hitting someone. Joann and I did a few laps and stopped to watch.

Joann, looking fine in her skating attire.

This is Joann's CC, Paul and a few students.

Here is Joann's little monkey, Chris (wearing the green hat over his skating helmet) and another student (whose name escapes me, maybe Dark).

At the end of the day, we found out that we had to write final reports for our classes. Joann was especially annoyed. I suggested ice cream on the way home and this did help. Joann was upset that she would have to work on Sunday. I suggested that she use my computer and get her test and other work done that night before dinner. I offered to help but she said it wasn't necessary. She sat and got all caught up and I took a nap.

She did feel better afterwards and we met most of the gang for Korean barbeque. Joann also thoroughly enjoyed it this time. I had loved it the first time and this time was just as good. It is great, we each paid $8, had a large beer each, rice, all the meat we could BBQ and all the garnishes we could eat (kimchi, lettuce, cucumbers, radish, sauce). It is healthy, cheap and delicious - what a combo!!

After dinner, some of the group wanted to drink, do karaoke and then go clubbing. Surprisingly, Joann and I were not part of this group. We went to Itaewon with Molly, Hailey and Bailey for a few drinks. At that time, is was 1am and the subways had stopped running. We came back to Anam ($10 for a taxi and that was split 5 ways) and Molly enticed us to go for one more drink at a little place she and Hailey knew about in our neighbourhood. I'm so glad that we went. It is amazing here, there are places that look scary to enter and then you find out that they are really great. This bar is one of these places - you sit on the floor on cushions with cushions behind your back. You are in a small place that is partitioned from the rest of the room by curtains that are just pieces of coloured string hanging down. It had mellow music and it was a great place to sit and chat.

Bailey (our boss), Molly and Hailey at the local bar.

We were in bed by 2:30am, unbelievably late for us, having agreed to relax until 10am.

Korea Day 22 - Friday, August 7

Today at work we took the kids skating. There has been a typhoon warning so the staff organized buses to take the kids as torrential rains were possible. The rink was on campus but it was quite a hike from our building so the bus was great. There were a few small delays but we eventually arrived at the rink. The skate rental place was unbelievable efficient and the kids were on the ice in record time.

Here are some shots of my class. Michelle is in white and Christina is in pink. They are beginner skaters so they are in a class.



Here is Christina again and to her left is Sally.



Here is my CC, Ashley, and one of my students, Isabell.



Here is most of my class. From left to right, Tim, Isabell, Brian, Ashley, Richard, Justin, Tom, Batista, me, Michael. The students always call me teacher in class but, today, at the ice rink, they called me Ginger. I think it was too hard to take me seriously with the helmet!



Here I am with Isabell.

Today we were told that we did not have to do final reports so that was a relief. Joann and I came home from work and booked everything for China!! We are flying to Beijing on Saturday, August 15 and will spend 5 days there. We have what looks like a nice hotel within 1 kilometre of the Forbidden City. We will then fly to Xian on August 20 (I'll be thinking of you, Leah) and spend two days there to see the Terracotta soldiers. We fly back to Beijing the night of August 22 and spend the night in a airport hotel. We fly to Seoul at noon and fly back to Canada at about 9:30pm. There is a sauna and bath house in the airport (really) so we plan to spend the nine hours in the airport relaxing. We arrive back home at about the same time that we leave, due to the time change. We were both very excited.

We decided to go out to celebrate and I suggested the Olympic park. My guidebook gave us instructions so we were off to the subway. When we arrived at City Hall station, we coulfn't find the Olympic park and a police officer told us that we were very far away. He showed us the subway station that we should have gone to and it was no where near the city hall. We decided to wander around this neighbourhood and stumbled on a free outdoor concert in Seoul Plaza, a nice green park area surrounded by busy roads. There were three performing groups, a set of 5 flautists and then 5 women who played interesting modern music on traditional Korean instruments. We both loved them. The final act was, according to me, the Korean answer to Frank Sinatra. He even sang "My Way". It was a great show and it felt wonderful to be sitting outside watching it.

Unfortunately, some drunk older Korean man harrassed me a bit when we passed him to go to the park. He was still there after the concert and followed us for a bit. Joann actually got rid of him. It was not enjoyable as he was persistent. He wanted to go for a drink with him.

There do seem to be some pretty drunk Korean men out later in the evening. It was not a big deal and we got home safely.

Korea Day 21

Joann and I had reserved today to get our Chinese visas. Fortunately, I had an extra picture from home as we needed one for our Korean visas and the photo place gave us two. I had left mine in my Korean papers that I brought with me so I had the required photo. I found the application form on line and Joann and I filled them in. We were planning to go the the Chinese embassy after work to get the visas processed. Thankfully, I checked the website again (this is difficult as it is all in Chinese) and found a file that said foreigners in Korea now had to go to Chinese travel agencies instead of the embassy. Joann and Isis (one of the camp directors) call and got the information. We headed back to Myeong-Dong as this is where the travel agency was. We had to stop and ask directions a few times and still couldn't find the place. Thankfully, a lady took pity on us, called the agency on her cell phone and then walked us to the place. We never would have found it as it was on the second floor of an inconspicuous building with no sign in English!

The process was short and sweet, cost $55 and we should have our visas on Tuesday!!

I was happy to be in Myeon-Dong and reminded Joann that this was the location of the great chicken place. We wandered around and were able to find the place. I was very happy, as was Joann, so we had our chicken dish and shared a beer. I am now on a mission to get the recipe. Here I am, looking very satisfied, when the meal arrived!

Korea Day 20

After work, Joann and I decided to head back to Insadong to do some shopping. This is my favourite area and I think it is also Joann's. I am not sure why, it is also a busy neighbourhood but it is an older part and a bit more traditional, according to the guidebooks. We got off the subway and were making our way to the shopping street that we like when we saw a guy with two little, adorable puppies. He was trying to sell them. I picked one up and wanted to keep it. Of course, I didn't. He is adorable, though!

We made our way to the shops and Joann was on a mission. We went in the first shop and I bought something small and Joann bought a few lovely things. I can't be specific as we were buying gifts! We went into the next store and, again, Joann was buying. The lady in the shop was soooo happy. She kept taking Joann's purchases and giving her a new bin for her next items and also showing her all kinds of items that she thought Joann might like. I also bought a few items. We then went to our favourite shop, the Korean Cultural Centre. I bought myself several sets of chopsticks and spoons, the staple cutlery here. We bought a few other things, I'm not even sure what at the moment but it was great fun.

We then found a little pottery place. I loved the pottery and could have bought just about everything in the shop. The shop was run by a little old Korean woman who had herself set up in the corner of her shop with a little stool, a kettle and tea and a small TV. The prices were great so Joann and I both bought a few pieces. She only took cash so I was limited and even ended up borrowing some cash from Joann.

Next we saw a little street booth where an elderly Korean man was making little metal bikes and airplanes from the wires that hold together clothes pins. His designs were great and the bike pedals moved and the propellers spun. He even had some of them hooked up to batteries with little motors so that the propellers spun and the pedals turned continuously. He even had a cyclist on a bike whose legs turned the pedals! We loved his stuff but were both out of cash and decided that we would have to go back.

We went to a pub, the Cass House, and had a cold beer before heading back to Anam and bed.

Korea Day 19

Today at work, they told us that we had to give the students a final test next week and each of us had to make up a different one for our class. It is weird how disorganized things are here. The camp has run before but they keep adding things that we are supposed to do. They gave us a sample test out of 50 marks to use as a guide. When someone asked if all the teachers with the same level of students could write the same test, the answer was no, a different test for each class! As you might have imagined, we were not too happy.

I had found a bookstore that has a good selection of English books and Joann and I went to see if we could find a guidebook for China. It was easy to find as we didn't even have to get out of the subway. There was an entrance from inside the subway into the store. It was massive and all on one level. There was a huge separate room of just foreign books. We wandered around and found some guidebooks. There was a tiny book on Beijing so Joann bought it. It was funny to see many books that we can buy at home but most of them had differently designed covers.

Inside the bookstore was a Korean fast food place. Joann and I had dinner - a small salad and curry over rice. It was the quality of fast food at home but filling.

We headed to Lotte Mart to get some groceries as we had nothing left for breakfasts. We bought yogurt, bread, fruit, peanut butter and jam. I also bought some veggies and beer.

The company, Lotte, seems to own a lot of stuff here. I am not sure what it does but there are Lotte Marts (department stores and grocery stores), Lotte World (the inside amusement park mall) a Lotte Hotel...

We were done for the night and went home. I actually wrote my final test before going to bed.

Korea Day 18

We went back to work after a great Sunday off. The days are starting to meld into one and I haven't been blogging every day so it's hard to remember if anything really interesting happened at work today.

I do feel that I am into the swing of things and preparation is a bit easier. It is hectic as we have to send our schedule and daily comments to our C.C. so they can be entered into a daily report that goes home with each student.

After work, most of the girls (Katy, Erin, Jackie, Joann and I) found another place that has a Dr. Fish. We went there (Lotte World - a big indoor mall with amusement park rides, a bit like West Edmonton mall) only to find that our source had been wrong - no Dr. Fish. The girl at the information booth did tell us how to find one so off we went.

We finally had success! Dr. Fish is a cafe with pedicures. We had to buy a drink (about $5) and the pedicure was $2. The pedicure is done by meat eating fish! There are two tanks of fish, one with fish the size of minnows and a second one with fish that are about 3 inches long. They are constantly moving around and they are always opening and closing their mouthes. You wash off your feet and put them in a tank. The fish swarm around your feet and eat all the dead skin off of them. It sounds gross, bizarre...but we felt we should try it.

Here are Jackie and Erin at the table while we wait for our turn.

Here is Katy, also waiting, while the anticipation builds.

The place is a cafe with nice little tables and chairs. Off to one side is a raised area with the fish tanks.

I went in first as I seemed most willing to try it. The girl there said that you would feel the bigger fish more but they would do a better job. Having a fair bit of dry, dead skin on my feet, I plunged in!

Being the only meat in the tank, the fish swarmed my feet and started munching. It felt like little spikes of water were hitting my feet. It took a minute or two to get over the tickling sensation and then I was fine.

Katy was next and joined me in the 'big fish' tank.

Here is a view of the big fish tank before any of us got in.



Here is Joann. She stuck her feet in the big fish tank, squealed and pulled her feet out.

The other threesome, Joann, Jackie and Erin decided to use the smaller fish tank. Joann eventually got used to it but Erin had a really hard time. She put her feet in for a moment or two a few times but that was it.

I'm not even sure whose legs these are and it is hard to see the fish around them.

I have to say, the fish did a pretty good job. They had eaten away at most of the dead skin on my feet in 15 minutes, the time allotted for our $2. I needed another 15 minutes for a few parts of my feet but I was happy with the results. It was an interesting experience!

Korea Day 17 evening

After spending most of the afternoon at the palace, Molly, Joann and I went to Myeong-Dong to meet up with Hailey. We were going to climb up the Seoul tower. It is a tower up on a hill, a smaller version of the CN Tower with a great view of the city. We walked up to the start of the climb and then it was 1.2km of stairs straight up! It was quite a bit of exercise for yours truly as, I must admit, I am out of shape. I had to stop a few times and I was sweating but I did make the climb. Unfortunately, it was a hazy day and the view was not the best.

We did not pay to go up the tower, we just looked out the observation area at the base of the tower. It was funny, there are long chain link fences and couples buy a pair of locks and come and lock them on this fence. I guess it is a symbol that they will be together forever. Here is a section of the fence.

There is also a cable car that takes you up and down but the line-ups are quite long. I have to admit, I also felt a sense of accomplishment for making the climb!

I found a few pictures of the tower on the internet. Here is what the tower looks like. There are restaurants and observations decks at the bottom and at the top.

Here is a view of the hill that the tower is on - it is this hill that we climbed up!

Afterwards, we went into Myeong-Dong to wander around. This area is a MAJOR shopping area with lots of upscale stores, including most Western stores (Gap, Body Shop, Athlete's World, ...). It is unbelievable busy with people packing the streets beside street vendors who sell anything from hats to fresh pineapple to belts to shirts. It is a bit overwhelming but interesting as well. We wandered around and then Molly and Hailey took us to a little restaurant. We had my favourite food so far. The place only serves one dish and you just order small, medium or large. The medium fed all four of us. The Cass also tasted great after the climb. The dish consisted of chicken pieces, glass noodles, potatoes, carrots, onions, hot chili peppers and an amazing sauce. The meal was unbelievably tasty! I am trying to get a recipe so I can attempt to make it when I get home. It is really like a stew and I'm sure that it sat cooking all day to make the food tender and flavourful!

There were tons of street vendors selling snacks and everthing looked so good. I was so full from the meal that I couldn't eat anything else but it was very tempting! There were big chunks of pineapple an melon on sticks that they had sitting on huge blocks of ice, potatoes that they cut into a big swirl, put on a stick and deep fry so it is one long swirl of potato chip, and these unusual candies where they take some filling and wrap it with what looks like string, to name a few. Molly bought some of these stringlike candies and I tried one. When I first bit into it, it felt like I was biting into cotton batting but then I could taste the delicious nutty centre and then the 'string' melts like sugar. The dessert type foods here are tasty but not nearly as sweet as their counterparts back home.

Joann and I stayed and wandered for a bit and then went home. It was a great day!

More palace photos

These are more garden shots. These are small gardens up against the wall. This door is a gate into the 'secret garden'. During the royal family's reign, only the family was allowed to enter it. Now it is part of the tour. There are some photos below.

This is a door into the secret garden but we did not enter it through this gate.

Yes, this is another building, sorry I'm not more informative.

Here we are entering into a smaller palace that the last of the royal family lived in.

These buildings are very long and narrow. They consist of several rooms, all with doors into the inner courtyard.

This photo was taken through one of the two windows above. This is the back courtyard but we were not allowed to go in there.

Here is Joann sitting in front of the building from two shots above. The wood detail is quite amazing.

You guessed, me standing in front of a door!



This is Joann on the road into the secret garden.

The first shot of the garden. The pond has lotus flowers in it, they are not in bloom now, however.

This is the lotus building, as it is beside the lotus pond.

This is a gate that leads to the library which is also in the secret garden.

I think this gate has something to do with horses, maybe the horse gate. The teachers in the photo are Erin, Farah, Molly and Joann.

Here is Joann at the gate that is supposed to keep you from getting old.