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.

Korea Day 17

Joann and I got up pretty early (we were at a coffee shop by 9:00am) to try to formalize some plans for China. We looked at flights, hotels and tried to fit in the River cruise. We determined that we would have to have 5 internal flights in China in a week in order to see Beijing, Xi'an and do the cruise. The job has been pretty hectic and exhausting so we decided that this was too much. We will spend 5 days in Beijing and 2 days in Xi'an and that will be week in China. We both agreed that the Great Wall, the Forbidden City and the Terracotta Soldiers were our top three so the cruise will have to wait.

We met up with some of the other teachers and went to see Changdeokgung Palace. Most of the palaces have, at some time, burnt down and been rebuilt. That is true of this palace. None of the furnishings or valuables are kept in the palaces any longer, they are all in the Palace museum. The buildings are very simple and the rooms are small. The ruling family in South Korea lived quite simply by Western standards. The last ruler to live in the palace was the King Sunjong. He lost the crown in 1910 but continued to live here until his death in 1926. His widow, Queen Yun, kept the palace as her home until she died in 1966. The last royal prince came here to live with his Japanese wife. He did here in 1970 and his wife was the last one to live in the palace. She died in 1989. The palace now belongs to the country and is a Unesco site. As I said, the buildings are very simple and the king, along with all the other people, slept on the floors. This is not as bad as it sounds - apparently it was unsafe to have furniture in his room as potential killers could lurk behind it. Also, there was no heating other than a heated floor so this would keep them warm in cold weather. Okay, enough with the history lesson, here are some photos. I wish I could say that I know the names and functions for each buiilding but that is just not true!!

This is a gate, it might even be the front gate!



The purpose of this room has escaped me. It did have lights and a bit of furniture. No one is allowed to go in the rooms. These shots are taken through a window where we could stand and peek into the room.

Here is a picture of another small building. Truthfully, the buildings all look the same!

Do you see what I mean??

Here is our sweet tour guide. You can't enter the palace without going on a tour ($3). There are three English speaking tours daily and we were late leaving. We had to run in and catch up with the tour!

It was a very HOT, HUMID day, as you will see from the pictures of me! However, it did not look this hazy! These are gardens along the wall that goes around the whole palace enclosure. It is hard to say but there were probably about a dozen different buildings with their own front courtyard.

Here is another section of the wall with trees on the inside. This is a chimney for ovens that are in a nearby building.

More gardens...

I think this is a room where the king would have meetings. The few pieces of remaining furniture are French.

Saturday's speeches

To be fair, here are the speech pictures from Saturday. The first picture is Sylvia and she wants to be a diplomatic official. She says that she speaks Korean, English, Japanese and Chinese already!

This is Linda, she wants to be a famous fashion designer!

This is one of Joann's students. I am not sure what her dream was though.

Photos of comedians

Here is the box from the donuts today. You can just make out the Dunkin' Donuts logo at the top of the box. I wasn't lying about the vitamins!!



Before the show tonight we went to a little place for soup. This is the only dish that they serve and it is one of those places where you take off your shoes and sit on the floor. Joann was a bit worried as they serve a hunk of ham on the bone in the soup but she was willing to try it. It was unbelievable good! I think they had a vat of the stuff simmering all day. It was so flavourful and the meat fell off the bones. Yes, Joann also loved it.






Here is Katy with her soup!



The three comedians were hilarious. They were all here teaching, although none of them are qualified teachers. The first performer was Scottish and he was very funny. He did an impression of an American soldier (the US base is in this neighbourhood) and he did an amazing accent. It was funny but I must say he is bold. There were several soldiers in the bar and they were much bigger than him!




The next two comedians were Canadian! The second guy was from Alberta and he was very funny. It was amazing how we all seem to be having the same experiences teaching here.

The last comedian was Anu's friend and he was the best. He is also from Joann's home town in Newfoundland. Joann was in tears!! In case you are wondering, we got two drink tickets with our entry fee and yes, they had wine!!

On the way home we spotted a couple of interesting places but they were closed.

I would love to know how they would accomplish this, but, as I mentioned, they were closed!!

Korea Day 16 (Saturday, Aug 1)

Yes, the work week is over. We started the day with Dunkin' donuts at our meeting. Our Korean boss, Bailey brought them for us. They are actually less sweet here and reasonably good. The box said "vitamin donuts" so, assuming that they were healthy, I decided to have one.

The day went smoothly, it was speech contest day 2. My speakers were not as strong as yesterday. We decided to have two representatives from each class as the assembly was a bit too short yesterday. I picked my top two, Linda and Sylvia. They had tough competition from the other classes as some students had lived in the US for a few years and also memorized their speeches! It was fun though. My students seemed exhausted by the end of the day. I was melting.

The weather here is quite funny. When we went for lunch, it was hazy and we knew it was going to rain. Once back in class, thankfully, the rain poured, the wind was very strong and there was thunder and lightning. It looked like quite a major storm. It lasted about 10 minutes and then was gone. When we left to come home, it looked as if it had never rained. It is unbelievably hot and humid outside today.

One of the teachers, Anu, had friends here in Seoul. One of them is a comic and will be performing tonight. He is western and will be speaking in English. We are all going to watch the show. Anu arranged tickets for all of us (12 people) so it should be fun. It's at a western bar called the Kabinett Wine bar in Itaewan. I am hoping that the name does not lie as I haven't had a sip of wine since I arrived in Korea.

Joann and I started doing some research for China. It is very hard to find two or three things to do in such a vast country filled with amazing things to see. We are trying to fit in a few days in Beijing (great wall and forbidden city), a few days in Xian (terracotta soldiers) and a 3 night/4 day cruise on the Yangtzee. It may just be a pipe dream to do all of these in little over a week but we are hoping!!

Korea Day 15 speech photos

I was too lazy to go back and add these photos to yesterday's blog. Here are the speech contest photos. This one is my student, Tim, speaking in the auditorium. He was soooo sincere!



Here are all of the top speakers on the stage to find out who won.



Here is one of Joann's students practicing her speech in class before the contest.

You can see me and some of my students (to the left of me) in the auditorium waiting for the speaches to start.

Here are more of my students, starting with Aleesha in the red shirt.

Here is one of the classes of little kids preparing to give their class cheer.

Here is the other class of smaller students giving their cheer. Actually they are getting ready to start.

This is a shot of the auditorium to give you an idea of how daunting it was for the students! I was very impressed.

Korea Day 15

I did feel more refreshed today after a good night sleep. I can taste my day off - today is Friday!!

Today was the big speech contest. Tim, a very strong student in my class, won the speech contest for our class. He speaks well and he is confident so I knew he would do a good job representing our class in the contest. The two little classes were very cute with their class cheers. The speeches were quite impressive. They were short but everyone tried really hard. Personally, I thought Tim did the best job but someone else was chosen. My class talked about what they wanted to do when they grow up. Tim wants to be a singer. The winner talked about pollution.

It's laundry time so Joann and I got instructions - all the dials and buttons have Korean instructions!! We have a load in, each floor where we are living has a front loading washing machine. There are drying racks behind the kitchen. Unfortunately, there is no iron so don't criticize too much when I start to look wrinkled.

After laundry, Joann and I will get something to eat, go for a walk and get some fruit for breakfast.

We also have to look into getting a visa for China. I am not sure if I mentioned this but Hailey's boyfriend, Jesse, was here and he is living in Beijing. He told us to get in touch with him and he would take us out one night. It's great to have contacts. Hailey and Jesse are in the photo when it was her birthday.

Well, I'm out of things to say for now and I don't have any new photos uploaded. We have now been here for two weeks. It doesn't seem that long at all.

Just to update, we managed to get two loads of laundry washed and hung to dry. We went to an italian place for pizza. It was good but not like traditional pizza. We were very excited to see arugula on the pizza though. After pizza, we went to a newly opened ice cream place, Cold Plate Creamery. Apparently the Koreans really like ice cream! It was delicious. You pick a flavour of ice cream and a theme (mine was mud pie and coffee ice cream) and they make it for you. They put the ice cream on a frozen slabe of marble (hence the name) and mash it a bit and add all sorts of good things. To mine, they added an oreo cookie, some peanut butter, a bit of whipped cream and some chocolate sauce. They then mush it all together back into a ball and put it in a cup, waffle cone or waffle cup. It was delicious. It was a very popular place as it just opened yesterday. They had staff out in the afternoon trying to entice people into the store. It was full when we went. It was funny because Baskin and Robbins is just down the street so they also had people out front of their store, trying to compete for business!

After the ice cream, we went for a short walk and headed in to sleep.