I can't believe it's been almost a month since I've posted! oops! I never posted about my birthday, so I'll start there. My birthday was on a tuesday (the 24th) so we decided to celebrate the saturday before. Abby and I went with Kristina to her family's house in Gangwando, which is like out in the country. Houses are rare where we live. Everybody lives in apartments, so it was different to be in an actual house. We barbecued outside by a little stream. It was really nice (minus all the bugs). The food was delicious. I love Kristina's family. Her aunts and uncles are really funny, and her little cousins are so cute. We got to give 2 of them English names...Tom and Jerry. Kristina's family sang happy birthday to me too many times to count. They sang when we cut the watermelon and her uncle makes this raspberry soju wine. Every time we drank, he would start singing for me. hahaha We were sad to say goodbye:( We went home to rest for a very short time before heading to hongdae. We went to On the Border for (finally) a real birthday. Abby and Kristina wanted had been trying to find Hello Kitty cupcakes for me, but as much Hello Kitty as there is in this country, they had no luck. Abby bought cupcakes, scraped off the icing, and re-did them with Hello Kitty. They turned out really cute!

We had a fun night in Hongdae, ending with wii at Jane's Groove. We've been trying to find a wii cafe in bucheon, but no luck yet:(
Of course we had to celebrate again on my actual birthday. We went to a little italian place for dinner. Abby and Kristina got me a baskin robins walrus ice cream cake. It was really yummy! We went to The Park after that, and then we did sticker pictures!


That next weekend was Steven's birthday, Kristina's Korea 2 year anniversary, and Tom's last weekend. We celebrated Steven's birthday Friday night. He came to Bucheon. Saturday, we went to Incheon for Tom's going away party. We'd never really seen much of Incheon. There's a big foreigner group there.
This past weekend was more of just a low key weekend. We did go to the Hamilton hotel in Itaewon on Sunday because it's one of the few outdoor pools in korea where you don't have to wear a swimcap. We were a little disappointed. It was $16 to get in and $12 more if you wanted a chair (which we didn't get because there weren't even 3 together). There wasn't even room to spread out our towels on the ground together. It was really crowded. When we first got there, it was sunny, but as soon as we finished our Quiznos, it clouded up. We were in the pool 10, maybe 20 minutes and it started raining. We eventually gave up and left and went to What the Book. We decided to go to Hooters for dinner. My first time going to Hooters. hahaha. The food was good, but pretty expensive.
Everything's going pretty good at school. My partner teacher is having heart surgery, so he's out for the month. I'm taking an extra class, but they are good so I don't really mind. We have chuseok (korean thanksgiving) in 2 weeks. We were just getting tues-thurs off, but they decided to give us friday. I wish we had somewhere cool we could go, but we waited too late to get tickets. Abby's mom is coming, and neither of them have friday off. Kristina and I might try to do Seoraksan, but its so hard to plan things with the weather now. It's been raining a lot. We want to go to Everland and Caribbean Bay (the water park) too. Summer's almost over! I'm so sad:( Fall is going to fly by, and then evil winter will be here :(

I guess a couple of weeks have passed since the philippines. Seems like such a long time ago! I miss it. The weekend after we got back we had to blow up the pool (by we, I mean I) and go up to the roof to pretend we were back on the beach.

It was a relaxing weekend. We went to see Toy Story 3...such a cute movie. My eyes got a little misty at the end.
This past weekend, we made plans to go to a Smashing Pumpkins concert. It started at 7, so after having a yummy lunch Kristina's mom cooked for us, we went to Myeong dong to go shopping. We were in no rush at all. We figured there would be an opening band so we didn't have to be there right at 7. Well, we kinda lost track of time...we got there around 8:20. Turns out there was no opening band. When we went to buy tickets, they told us there was only 10 minutes left. We weren't about to spend $100 on 10 minutes so we just went to listen by the door. Kristina was really upset and on the verge of tears. She begged them to let us in for the last few minutes, and they eventually gave in! They played for 20-30 more minutes.



After the concert we were supposed to meet some friends at a casino nearby. Hey, we just saved $100 on concert tickets! haha We played roulette pretty much the whole time. We wanted to play blackjack but the people at the $5 table weren't moving. I had a good system worked out and I was doing pretty well at one point, but in the end I ended up breaking even, plus making $50 that some random guy gave Abby, Kristina, and I each! We were really excited about the free food. We ordered ice cream, sandwiches, cereal, etc. Of course we were there until 7:00 in the morning. Kristina finally got a chair at the blackjack table and she didn't want to leave. hahaha Needless to say, I didn't do much of anything sunday with the exception of an emart run because hello was out of food.

Philippines

Time for a blog about the Philippines before I forget everything! It was such a nice vacation. We spent pretty much the whole time in Boracay, which some people told us not to do since its just a small island, but we really enjoyed having a more relaxing vacation.
So we caught the bus to the airport after work Friday and made pretty good timing getting to the airport. We arrived in Manila after a 4 hour flight. We were exhausted and ready to just crash at our hostel. Our flight to Caticlan was the next morning. We got a taxi and drove around lost for probably an hour, stopping to ask for directions every few minutes. For anyone who decides to stay at the Happy Coconuts hostel in Manila, Happy Coconuts car insurance is also the hostel even though it doesn't say that on the sign. The cab ride still ended up being only a little over 3 dollars. He tried to charge us more than the meter price since he had to stop so many times for directions, but Abby wasn't about to let him. haha Nothing fancy about the hostel, but it was cheap and good enough for one night. Our flight the next morning was around noon. The cab driver tried to tell us his meter was broken and wanted to charge us about 5 times as much as the cab had cost the night before. We talked him down some, but we didn't really want to be kicked out of the cab in the sketchy streets of manila so we still ended up paying a little more, plus he took us to the wrong terminal, which driving are like 15 minutes apart. Anyway, after 2 taxis to the airport, a bus to our tiny plane, a plane to Caticlan, a motorized tricycle to the ferry, and another tricycle, we finally made it to our hotel in Boracay.

The hotel was really nice. We loved our pool! No swim caps required (unlike practically all pools in Korea).

We were a little surprised at how many Koreans were there on vacation. We dropped our stuff off in the room and headed for the beach. We walked around, got cocktails, and got Abby to try balut (fertilized egg). It was pretty disgusting.

Our hotel had a breakfast buffet until 10:00, and we made it every morning. I miss having someone make me omelets and serve me coffee every day:( Sunday after breakfast we decided to go jet skiing. People are lined up along the beach asking you, "Sail boating? Jet skiing? Parasailing? ATV??" so you don't have to go far to look for something to do. We were a little disappointed by the jet skiing prices, but nobody seemed to be coming down much on the price. They took us in a jeepney to the other side of the island where it was calmer. Abby and I shared a jet ski and took turns driving. I'm a way better driver. It was scary (when she was driving), but a lot of fun. Later, we had really yummy Greek food for lunch, had massages by the beach, and then enjoyed the day by the beach and at the pool. That night the rains came, as they did almost every night we were there. We were lucky enough to have sunshine every day though. We went to the Hobbit House for dinner. The staff there were all little people. We felt weird taking pictures, but our waiter was really nice and he asked us if we wanted to take a picture together.

The food there was really good too. I had the filet mignon, which came with really yummy mashed potatoes. We were so full after that, we were kind of miserable so we went home.
Monday we decided to do island hopping and snorkeling. They took us out on a boat to an island called Crystal Cove. There we got to go swimming in 2 caves, which was really cool.

The island was so beautiful. We went snorkeling by Crocodile Island (named for the shape of the island, not because there were crocodiles there).

While out on the boat, we bought coconuts from a guy on a surfboard.

We went to a Hawaiian BBQ place for lunch. Kristina was proud of me for ordering the Loco Moco, which was rice, a hamburger patty, egg, and gravy all mixed together. It was yummy. After lunch we went to the beach where we found a family of starfish. Three of them.

We were determined to eat out on the beach for dinner despite the rain. We went to a place with a tarp covering. We got leaked on a little and a lot of people had their umbrellas out, but the food was good! Kristina had the brilliant idea to order dessert first, then we split a pizza.
Our Tuesday adventure: helmet diving and parasailing. We went out on a boat to a platform in the ocean where we were instructed about equalizing and hand signals. We were then dropped in the ocean with a 50 pound astronaut helmet. A diver brought us to the bottom of the ocean where we got to walk around and feed the fish. Definitely a unique experience. Abby got bitten by a fish (for the second time since we'd been there). I had some helmet issues...it was stuck to my forehead the whole time, but other than that, it was a lot of fun!

Right after that, we got on another boat, a superman boat, to go parasailing. It was a lot different than parasailing in Bali. Abby went first, then Kristina and I went together. They wanted us to do 2 together because it looked like it might storm and they wanted us to finish faster.

Anyway, we went straight off the boat instead of off the beach this time. We went up in the air a lot slower than in Bali. Once you're up, you're kind of sitting instead of just hanging there. It was a lot more comfortable. Kristina was brave enough to bring her camera up with us so we got some cool pictures. After we were safely back on land, we had yummy Mexican food for lunch and spent the rest of the day on the beach and at the pool. For dinner, we went for Indian food, which made Kristina really sick the next day. We think it was the food anyway. She spent the whole day in the room, so Abby and I decided on just a relaxing day at the beach and pool. It was a really nice day, but really hot. You could hardly stand to be out of the water. Kristina was still sick when it was time for dinner, and it just happened to be the first night it didn't rain. The sunset was GORGEOUS.

Abby and I ate dinner out on the beach. The food wasn't amazing, but it was really nice eating on the beach.
Kristina was feeling better Thursday, so we decided on a trip to Ariel's Point. There you could go cliff diving, plus they provided a buffet bbq lunch. We went with a group of people who were also English teachers in Korea.

They were really nice. We had a lot of fun. We met a temperamental alcoholic biting monkey on a leash named michelle. She stole and destroyed one guys shoe. Honestly, before I even saw the cliff we were supposed to jump from, I had no real intentions of actually doing it. Once I did see it, there was no way I was doing it. Abby and Kristina said it hurt really bad. Abby has bruises. I'm the smart one. See the little tiny ledge at the ladder in the picture? That's where I jumped from. hahaha

Friday, our last day, we wanted to go out on a sailboat, but Kristina was feeling sick again, the water was pretty rough, and it looked like it might rain. We hung out at the beach for a while, did a little shopping, went to the pool, and went to get ready for dinner. We actually ran into a friend of ours from Bucheon, Shawn, so we met him for dinner out on the beach.

We had a wonderful rainless last night. I decided to have filipino food, chicken adobo. It was really good. We had ice cream, did a little more shopping, bought 40 cent chocolate cake in a bag, and called it a night.
Saturday morning, we woke up to rain. I guess boracay was sad we were leaving:( We packed and had our last breakfast before making our journey home. Our flight from caticlan was delayed so we got stuck in that tiny airport for a while. We were hoping to get an earlier flight from manila to korea, because none of us had any desire to spend 10 hours in manila. The airport in manila was an adventure. Of course we had to go to another terminal once we got there. They sent us to the wrong terminal...again. When we finally got to the right terminal, they informed us there was only one flight to korea, and it was our flight at 1am. We had been so sure we would be able to get an earlier flight, we really had no idea what to do. We walked around the airport for a while trying to find food, following signs about restaurants that led to nowhere. We eventually asked the security people, who took Kristina's license in exchange for a security badge and then took us to their basement cafeteria that wasn't really in the basement. It seriously felt like a basement even though there were huge windows all along the wall that made it quite clear we were on the first floor. I think we all felt more like we didn't belong there than we had felt in a long time. Not really what we had had in mind for lunch, but it wasn't bad. After eating and returning our badge, we tried to get the airport to help us find a hotel. They told us the price, but when we got to the hotel, they wanted to charge us extra for a 3rd person even though we were only staying a few hours. We were going to pay it anyway since we didn't really know where else to go, but when we walked into the room, we couldn't breathe. It smelled like something had died and they had tried to cover it up with orange spray. We decided to go back to our hostel. We got in a cab after being attacked by children who wanted our chocolate. We got kicked out of the cab after realizing the driver wanted us to pay a lot more than we had paid both times before. Not wanting to stand on the street in a pretty sketchy area of manila with our suitcases, we agreed to a still overpriced, but slightly cheaper cab to get us to the safety of our hostel. We were only there for like 5 hours before it was time to go back to the airport. We finally got on our plane, the coldest airplane I've ever been on in my life. We had to ask for extra blankets, but we were still freezing. Even though it was 1:00 in the morning, they were serving meals and selling duty free stuff. They didn't turn off the lights til like the end of the flight. I was so cold I couldn't sleep anyway. Worst flight ever! All I could think was I couldn't imagine being on that airplane flying home from korea. We were soooo glad to be back in Korea when our plane landed. We had a really great vacation, but Manila made us feel very thankful for our lives in Korea.

Mud Fest

Off to the Philippines tonight! I'm soooo excited to spend the week at the beach! I guess I should blog about mud fest before I leave.
We went with a group from Rhythm and Booze again this year. They got a bus and we stayed at the same minbak as last year. We were a little disappointed to see rain was in the forecast for the whole weekend. Our trip had been cut short last year because of rain, so we didn't want that to happen again. Anyway, we left Bucheon a little before midnight Friday night. It was about a 2 hour bus ride (much better than last year). It was kinda rainy Friday night, but not too bad. I heard it raining really hard while we were sleeping. When we woke up it was still raining, which isn't a big deal when you're playing in the mud, but it was kinda cold. We started off the day with a delicious ramen breakfast, which i dumped in my lap:( At that point I was happy to have the rain to wash off. hahaha After food, we headed out in search of the mud. We walked toward the beach noticing that we weren't seeing any muddy people... When we got there, someone told us they were bringing in the mud the next day. We found the mud wrestling pit, which was filled with more dirty water than mud. There were people carrying buckets of mud back and forth to the slide. There seemed to be a very limited supply of mud. We were of course very disappointed, but we weren't ready to give up. Mud fest has colored mud painting, which we missed out on last year, but we saw a few colorful people walking around, so we asked them where it was. They told us it was about a 15 minute walk away. We started walking, and we stumbled upon the good mud. The really thick and oozy kind. We joined the huge group of people and covered ourselves in it. So much fun! When we couldn't possibly get any muddier, we walked farther down, eventually finding the colored mud painting. The line was really long, and someone told us it was about an hour wait. The slide lines were really long too. The Noise, a band that came with our group was about to play so we went over to watch that. They were really good. After the concert, we went to the ocean to wash off our mud, then headed back to our minbak. We got clean then went out for samgyupsal for dinner. We were all tired after a long, muddy day, so we went back and took a nap. We woke up later and sat outside for a while. The mosquitos were REALLY bad, and somebody broke my tennis racket bug zapper, so we decided to go to the beach. Some of our group decided to go swimming, but it was a little cold for that. After a while we headed back to the minbak where the mosquitos chased us inside.
We woke up sunday to SUNSHINE! yay! We started off the day with corndogs for breakfast, then headed off to play in the mud. We painted each other at the mud painting booth. We put hand prints on each other, which were sunburned into our skin. Then we went to wait for colored mud. It was worth the wait I think. We had a lot of fun sunday. We went on the slides, hung out in jail, and washed off again in the ocean.
Our bus left at 7:00, so we had a good full day to get plenty of sunburn with mudlines. haha At least no mud rash this year!

Hello Kitty

I got a kitten! It wasn't really a planned thing. I was out shopping with Kristina, and a friend of hers called and asked if she wanted a kitten. She asked me and I was like, "um...i dunno..." and she took that as a yes. We stopped by e-mart on the way home and picked up some food and a litter box, and that night I had a kitten! We decided on the name Hello. Get it?? Like Hello Kitty! haha Hello is sooooo tiny and cute. He meows alllll the time, even when he's eating. Not so fun when I'm trying to sleep, but I still love him.


Anyway, mud fest this weekend! It's supposed to rain:( We leave tonight at 11:00 and dont get back until sunday night. I hope Hello does ok being alone for the weekend.

So Abby came over to make ghetto s'mores last night. Korea doesn't have graham crackers, so we had to use these wafer things... kinda like waffle cones. They were pretty good. Anyway, I left a chocolate bar on the table, and when I woke up the next morning, it was in liquid form. Not just soft, it was completely drinkable. Just thought you guys should know how hot my house is right now. Thanks to Abby, I have a fan now. The AC doesn't do much. Oh well, I'll take this over the evilness of winter any day...

4th of July weekend

As you know, this weekend was 4th of July weekend. As much fun as we had last year with our bbq in the park, we had no desire to be yelled at again, so we decided to have our bbq on the roof this year. We were a little discouraged by the weather forecast (rain), but we went on with our plans deciding we could always move inside if we had to. We missioned it to Costco friday night to pick up needed supplies for our party, then we had a cupcake baking party at kristina's. not an easy thing in korea. who would think it would be so hard to find icing or the stuff to make icing in this country? after searching all over homeplus, we asked a guy who worked there, pointing to the icing on a cake on a box of cake mix. he dragged us all over the store before finally leading us to an empty shelf in the bakery section. no icing. we found tiny bags of powdered sugar, so we bought like 6 of those. finally we began our cupcake baking party. i dont know if kristina doesn't know how to use her oven, or if its just completely useless, but after waiting like an hour for the cupcakes to bake, we finally moved them to the toaster oven. they cooked much faster in there. we made red, white, and blue icing that strongly resembled candle wax, and we made a cupcake flag.

all during our cupcake marathon, we were constantly checking the hour by hour weather updates. it wasn't looking good, but saturday morning there was no rain, saturday afternoon no rain. we went to abby's to get ready for our bbq. kristina and i shaped the meat into hearts, stars, and hello kitty.

abby, her coworker rebecca, and i blew up the kiddie swimming pool (not an easy task).

finally, people started showing up and we headed to the roof. it sprinkled a little when we first went up there, but it stopped not long after that, and that was the last we saw of the rain! it was still cloudy, but it was hot. perfect weather for swimming. at least abby and i thought so.. haha we had a lot of fun. we even got out the water guns and water balloons:)

we went home to change before heading to the park for the magazine party.

we hung out there for a while, went for korean bbq, then back to the park, then FIREWORKS! thank goodness for homeplus. with all our planning, we had forgotten to get fireworks, but abby went to homeplus and got some. i didn't even try to hit anybody with one this year. haha

after fireworks, we went to noraebang. thats always fun. we ended the night with a slumber party at my house. what slumber party is complete without mcdonalds delivery in the morning? the sun was out, and being the real 4th of July, how could we not get the pool back out? so we blew it up one more time and we managed to fit 4 of us into the pool (a little cozy, but still fun). we were up there a while before the little security guard came to yell at us. i dont know how we managed to not get yelled at the day before...anyway, we had to say goodbye to our pool:( we stayed up there a while in the sun (my sunburn is lovely). abby and kristina went to bucheon station to go shopping, but i decided to just stay home to relax and recover from another fun, but exhausting weekend! On the agenda for weekends to come: next weekend=shopping, 2 weeks=mudfest!, 3 weeks=the PHILIPPINES!!! We just got our hotel booked! It looks really nice! I can't wait to be on the beach!

NEH Magazine

Check out the article Abby, Kristina, and I did for Bucheon's foreigner magazine!
http://issuu.com/nehzine/docs/issue_4

BuSaN!

I keep saying I feel like we're doing so much fun stuff this summer, it makes it go so fast! This past weekend was a trip to Busan. There were 8 of us going. We were supposed to take the train 10:30 Friday night from Seoul station to busan. Our plan was to leave bucheon around 9, but we were just taking our time and it ended up being about 9:30. On top of that, we decided to take the bus instead of the subway. Bad idea considering Korea's traffic. We realized that our chances of catching our train were not looking good so we got off the bus and took the subway the rest of the way. I'm sure it was quite amusing to watch a group of foreigners run across subway stations. Anyway, we made it to the track at 10:31. Just in time to watch our train pull away.

Luckily, our friend Doug was able to get us new tickets. We had to transfer once, but everything worked out. The train ride was actually a lot of fun. The second train had little noraebang (karaoke) booths. We managed to fit 4 people in the tiny room meant for 2 people.

I think it was like 3am when we made it to Busan. It was raining, and it pretty much rained the whole time we were there. So much for tanning on the beach! hahaha Anyway, as tired as we were, we dropped our stuff off at the minbak where we were staying, then went to the casino after some overpriced kimchi jjigae. The guys went off to play blackjack, while the girls played the slot machines. I think my luck was the worst. I lost 20 bucks and then i decided casinos weren't as fun as they looked. hahaha We finally headed back to our minbak around 6:30am to get some sleep. We had 3 tiny rooms. One for the guys and 2 for the girls. It was a sleep on the floor kind of place, which I have no problem with. The bathroom was pretty gross though. We woke up noonish to find it was still raining. Oh well, we put our bathing suits on anyway and had yummy mexican food for lunch. After a while, we decided to just go to the beach. It was kinda cold, but swimming in the rain was a lot of fun!

That night, we put our devil horns on and headed out for a sam gyup sal dinner before going to watch the world cup game on the beach (yes, still raining). I can't believe how many people were there. It was crazy.

By half-time, I was freezing, so Abby and I went back to the minbak. Korea ended up losing, but everyone said they put up a really good fight. The sun decided to come out a little sunday morning. Abby, Carissa, and I went and got sandwiches and had lunch on the beach. We went back and threw our sopping wet clothes into plastic bags and made our journey back to bucheon. Fun times!

It's been a while since I've posted. Have you missed me? haha I suppose its past time for an update.
It's World Cup season, and while I've never really cared about it before, its a huge deal in Korea. Korea's team is the Red Devils. All the little kids show up at school in their red t-shirts, devil horns, and face tattoos. They have tvs set up outside all the restaurants, and when there's a game on, people of all ages show up to cheer. 2 Saturdays ago was Korea's first game. Although none of us are big into sports, Abby, Kristina, and I weren't about to miss out on all the excitement. After a day of shopping in Seoul, we put on our red t-shirts, devil horns, and face tattoos and headed to the Park to watch the game.

There were so many people there, both foreigners and koreans. All night we were cheering DAEHAN MINGUK! (Republic of Korea) We didn't quite last to see the US play. I think that game started at 3am. It was a fun night, and Korea beat Greece 2-0! The next game was thurs against Argentina. I had open class that day (when the parents come and sit in on the class). It went well, but I was exhausted when I got home, so I decided against going to watch that game. We lost anyway.
So, Abby, Kristina, and I were asked to write a top 10 only in korea article for the new bucheon magazine for foreigners. Of course we weren't going to turn down the chance to be in a magazine! haha so Friday night we had our photo shoot. We were supposed to be men in suits on the exercise equipment....cause they do that. I haven't seen the pictures, but supposedly they turned out really cute. The magazine will be published next week.
Our friend Ashley's sister is here visiting. We were supposed to take her to hongdae after the photo shoot, but she was still jet-lagged, so we stayed in bucheon and took her to noraebang. Then we ended up having a sleepover at Ashley's house complete with mcdonalds delivery the next morning (thanks to abby). Saturday evening, we went to a baseball game. We had been wanting to go to one for a while. like i said, i'm not a big sports person, but it was a lot of fun.

The whole game they were singing, dancing, and cheering. A lot of the songs were to the same tunes as english songs so we got to sing along:) (B-I-N-G-O!) I took some videos, but all my baseball pictures, along with a lot from friday night got deleted:(
Sunday, we had another adventure. We woke up early to meet at the subway at 7:30. we took the subway across seoul, followed by a 1.5 hour bus ride to go river rafting! Sooooo much fun. The guides didn't speak a lot of english. we asked to go on a course that was fun and easy. we were assured that the course would be funny (often used interchangeably with fun in korea) and easy. After a picnic, we got our life jackets, helmets, and paddles and were given a quick training session. Then we were informed that we would have to know the commands in korean...that made me a little nervous. The course had some slightly scary points, but it was pretty easy. Abby did fall out 3 times, but only once was at a scary part with rocks. we got to take a break and go swimming and jump off a little cliff thing. That was a lot of fun.
After a weekend of almost no rest, Korea had another soccer game last night/this morning at 3am. we decided to go to sleep early and then wake up for the game. There weren't nearly as many people there as before, but for being a weeknight, there were still quite a few. When we went to the Park, it was dark outside. When we left, the sun was up. It was weird. Korea and Nigeria tied, allowing Korea to move on to the next level or round or whatever. Go Korea! Fighting!!
I'm glad i watched the game, but i've felt like i was going to fall asleep teaching several times today. i can't believe i'm actually doing this blog! haha
the plan for this weekend: busan! so excited to be at the beach! yay!

Happy June everyone! I seriously cannot believe its June already! Crajeeeee. I had today off because it was election day. I was pretty much ready for all the campaigning to stop. Its very loud and obnoxious. They all have big talking TV trucks blaring loud music. People stand in rows dancing, waving, and bowing to everyone walking by (not to foreigners, we can't vote). Seriously, there was a line of people bowing outside the mall and when Abby and I walked by they stopped:( Its nothing like campaigning in America. They have numbers, which one of my korean coworkers told me sort of represents their party. Number 3 gave me his card at dinner the other night (he thought i was korean) so i'm rooting for him.
So like I said, I had the day off. It was a really nice day outside, so after straightening my apt a little, I took a book up to the roof. I love my roof! Abby had to work, so Kristina and I met up with her after she got off for dinner and shopping by Bucheon station. We went for ice cream before heading home, where a REALLY drunk girl gave us her roses. I was sure she was going to drop her ice cream on me, but she didn't.
Back to my roof, last weekend we spent all Saturday up there. Abby's boyscout friend Stephen even set up his hammock, which he had worn as a toga the night before. Toga night=so much fun! Anyway, we barbecued on the roof that night. Abby and Kristina brought their dogs to run around and play and Abby and Stephen, cooked for us. We started out on Abby's roof, but the security guard wanted to lock the door and he made us leave, so we crossed the little bridge connecting our roofs and went to my building. The little security guard came out over there too, but im pretty sure he was just telling us to clean up our mess.
Sunday was Costco mission day. I don't think I've ever seen it that crowded. The experience of Costco in Korea is similar to being stuck in traffic. There was a line and traffic control to get down the escalator. We got a table in the food court right away though.
I guess it's about bedtime, I have work tomorrow. I think they should give us the day off every Wednesday. Maybe, if elected, number 3 will make that a rule. 2 more days til the weekend:)

That's right, I'm a Korean TV star!

A couple weeks ago Kristina, Abby, and I were filmed for a tv program about ddeokbokki and how healthy it is and how it can help you lose weight (not true at all). It was mainly for Kristina. Her uncle was the one who set it up. They went to her school and followed her around all day, but Abby and I went to her house after work. After being stuck in her bedroom forever, we finally got to help make ddeokbokki (sorta) and then eat it on tv. It was a very interesting experience. I wasn't sure if Abby and I would actually make it on tv or not considering they filmed Kristina for like 10 hours for a 5-minute segment. I wasn't sure how many people would actually see it either. I tried telling some of my classes. Most of them didn't seem to understand. The ones who did were told the wrong channel. I thought it was KBS2, but it was on KBS1. Anyway, we were actually on tv a lot longer than I expected. It aired Friday night. During the show, our friend Doug called Kristina. He was watching it on tv in a taxi. We were having lunch in a little Korean restaurant the next day and it was on tv again. Everybody was clapping for us. hahaha:) As soon as I got to school today, kids were coming up to me saying, "Jennifer Teacher! I saw you on tv!" One girl said, "Teacher, ddeokbokki is spicy to me too." My partner teacher printed out a picture of me on tv and posted it on the door to the teacher's room.
So this past weekend was a 3-day weekend for Buddha's birthday. We wanted to go to Seoraksan, one of the most popular mountains in Korea, but we couldn't leave until saturday morning because of the tv thing. Abby and I bought the tickets friday. It was going to be a 4hr bus ride leaving at 6:30 in the morning...or so we thought. We were on the bus for about an hour and a half when it stopped and everyone got off. We thought, ok, maybe it's a bathroom break. No, the driver started yelling at us to get off. We get off the bus to find we are in Seosan, not Sokcho (where Seoraksan is). My guess is Seosan is not one of the top tourist destinations of Korea. We went inside the bus terminal to see about getting a ticket for Seoraksan. There is no bus going straight there. We would have to transfer, and we had already gone out of the way. Soooo, we went to Dunkin Donuts across the street to do some research on Seosan. We found another mountain (Palbongsan) and took another bus. After a 30 min bus ride, we were dropped off by a bunch of tractors and cows in the middle of NOWHERE. Getting lost in Korea has never scared me much just because there are always taxis around, but I wasn't seeing any taxis where we were...

We saw some mountains in the distance and decided to walk toward them. We talked to the man with the cows and he pointed us in the right direction, telling us something about 1 o'clock 30. Hoping the mountain wasn't an hour and 30 min away, we started walking again, and eventually found the mountain. Now I know it wasn't Seoraksan, but this was an intense mountain with huge boulders and ropes. It wasn't just hiking, it was mountain climbing. We made lots of friends. Like I said, this area didn't seem to be all that popular for tourists. We were the only foreigners around. Everyone was staring (more than normal) and wanting to take pictures with us. They liked us. haha:)

It started to rain when we got to the bottom of the mountain. We were hungry, but didnt have much luck finding food, so we made our journey back to the bus that only comes like every one and a half hours. For some reason, the bus ride that took 30 min to get there, took us over an hour getting back. When we finally got back to the bus terminal, we got tickets for bucheon and had a quick lunch (where we saw ourselves on tv). The bus left at 4:30. I remember saying, at least we dont have the 4 hour bus ride that we would have from seoraksan. Well, somehow, that hour and a half bus ride turned into 4 hours! When I looked out the window after 2 hours and still saw rice patties, i knew it wasn't good. When we finally got home, I was exhausted. Didn't do much of anything Sunday. I finally left my house to meet the chingus for shabu shabu for dinner, but the rest of the day I just recovered. The seoraksan mission might have to be postponed for a while!

Dear Korea, In case of fire please do NOT go to the roof.

Fire drills are not a common thing in Korea. We had one at my school last year. It was kind of a joke, but my new school way outdid ILS with they're fire drill this week. They actually sent half the kids to the roof! I mean, as cool as a helicopter rescue might be, I just feel like the roof would not be the safest place to go... And of course as we're trying to get the kids out, the teachers are all taking pictures. Hopefully we never have to deal with any real fires.

Animal Adventures

This past week was a really easy week because Wednesday was Children's Day (no school) and tuesday and friday were children's day activities. Since we had the day off wednesday, we celebrated cinco de mayo with taco night at my house tuesday night...a day early, but we continued the party until the next morning at noraebang.
Wednesday we made the trek all the way across seoul to coex mall to go to the aquarium. It was a long journey, but definitely worth it. It was super-crowded being children's day PLUS they were letting everyone in for free that day, but it was definitely the coolest aquarium I've ever been too. It had all the normal fish, sharks, sting rays, etc. plus penguins, a beaver, 2-headed turtle, monkeys, and worms you could dig in the dirt to find. They had fish in a washing machine, refrigerator, computer, drink machine, etc. Even Kristina, my fishaphobic friend, really enjoyed the aquarium;)

Anyway, after we finished looking around there, we decided to celebrate the real cinco de mayo at On the Boarder. We told them it was my birthday so we could wear the sombreros.
We had so much fun at the aquarium, we decided to have another animal adventure at Seoul Land Zoo this weekend. Seoul Land has an amusement park, which we went to last year, and a zoo, but you can't really do both in one day. We probably got there a little later than we should have. We missed the animal nursery because they closed that at 4:30, and they closed the whole zoo at 7:00. We didn't get to see all the animals we wanted to see, but it was still really cool. We saw giraffes, rhinos, ostriches, seals, sea lions, lions, hippos, peacocks, kangaroos, etc.

We headed back to Bucheon to have dinner at our galbi buffet place. yum! It was a fun day.
Today we just had a relaxing afternoon in the park playing with puppies:) Warmer weather makes me happy:)