Sunday, April 18, 2010

I scream, you scream, we all scream for...mother alien ice cream??

It has been brought to my attention that I have not done an ice cream post in a while, so here ya go... I went out for dinner with one of my korean coworkers a while back, and afterward we got ice cream at baskin robbins. Most of the flavors are normal and the name kinda tells you what's in the ice cream. The Korean is usually the English word just written in Hangul. There's one called Puss in Boots that I've always been curious about, so I asked her what it was. She told me in Korean the name of the ice cream is like mother alien or something like that. I have no idea how Puss in Boots has anything to do with mother alien, or why you would choose either as an ice cream name. I wonder if they have that flavor in the US...

Thursday, April 15, 2010

Korean Couple Holidays

Ok, I know I don't usually post new blogs so often, but yesterday was a holiday here in Korea. Actually, the 14th of every month is a holiday for couples in Korea. Of course you know about valentine's day, which is celebrated on Feb. 14th. In Korea, valentine's day is only celebrated by the girls giving guys gifts. The guys are expected to give gifts to the girls on white day, which is March 14th. For those who are single and did not receive a gift, they get to celebrate black day on April 14th. They eat black noodles (jjajangmyun) so that other people know they're single. These are the most well known couple holidays. But I had heard there was a holiday on the 14th of every month, so I googled it.
January 14th is Planner/Diary day. Couples give each other a planner so they can plan the things they will do together that year.
I already mentioned Feb-April.
May 14th is Yellow/Rose day. Couples wear yellow or spring colors and give each other roses. Single people eat curry.
June 14th is Kiss day. Obviously celebrated by kissing.
July 14th is Silver day. Couples give gifts made of silver.
August 14th is Green day. Couples wear green and walk in the woods. Single people drink a green bottle of soju.
September 14th is Photo and Music day. Couples take lots of pictures together (which is sort of an everyday thing anyway it seems) and then go to noraebang (private karaoke).
October 14th is Wine day. Celebrate by drinking wine.
November 14th is movie day. Couples watch a movie together and drink orange juice...
Finally, December 14th is hug day. Celebrate by giving free hugs.

Tuesday, April 13, 2010

In America, sausage is pig...

Kids love to bring snacks for the teachers here. It's really sweet. One snack that I keep getting from my kids that I would prefer them not to share is this:

You can find them at the counter in any convenience store. They look like string cheese, but definitely are not string cheese... What is it? I would still like to know. The kids call it sausage, but when I ask if it is pork or pig, they think that's hilarious and say no. I told them that in merica, sausage is pig... I think there is some cheese in it, and one Korean guy called it mixed meat. I tried google and tons of these articles came up
http://www.engadget.com/2010/02/11/south-korean-iphone-users-turn-to-sausages-as-a-cold-weather-me/
Apparently the Korean snack sausage is not only a "delicious" snack, but it also functions as a handy iphone tool in the winter when it is too cold to take off your gloves.

Monday, April 12, 2010

I was so excited to get an Easter package from my mom last week! I don't think a chocolate bunny has ever made me so happy (plus cadbury eggs, dove eggs, and oreos!) Thank you mommy!!! Last week was a fun week at school. I was sick and ended up losing my voice...never good for a teacher. It was report card week too, so that only added to the stress. Doing report cards for the first time at this school was a little confusing. We have to record the oral tests we do with the students and upload them when we do comments. It turned out mine were all in the wrong format so I had to figure out how to convert them along with figuring out how to do all my report cards on the slowest computer ever. On top of all that (sorry, just venting now), one of the korean teachers was sick so I ended up having to teach a class during my break time when I had planned on working on my report cards. Oh well, its done and over with now. Needless to say, I was very happy for the weekend to get here.
I went for Korean bbq with Kristina and Rachel Friday night. So yummy:) After dinner we went by The Park where we met up with Mario and Stephanie, two of my coworkers. We really wanted to find icy soju cocktails (Its really like drinking an icy!), but we failed. We found soju cocktails, but they were not icy:(
Saturday morning I got to see one of my kindergarten (now elementary school) classes from last year. I've been writing letters and emails back and forth with one of them. She just moved so she's actually at a new school, but she told me she was going to be meeting the rest of the class in Bucheon Saturday and she asked me to come. I was soooo excited to see them all! They are a really good group of kids. We met at Sopooong and had lunch. We got to run around outside a little and then one of the mom's asked if I would go with them to paint pottery at a European porcelain museum. The mom's gave me a really cute umbrella too:)
When I got back home, I met up with Abby and Kristina to go to yeongdeungpo for shopping and dinner at On The Border. Oh, we also went to a little stationary store Kristina found by Bucheon station. They had colored board markers....I don't mean just blue, black, and red. They had all the colors! For those of you not in Korea, that's the first time I've ever seen colored board markers here. I brought some with me from America, but I know they won't last long, so of course I bought them! Anyway, later we went to Dongdaemun for midnight shopping. I was soooo exhausted when we got home!
Sunday was a really nice day. It wasn't really sunny, but it was warm. I got to wear flip flops for the first time since I've been back! Abby, Kristina, and I went to a new ice cream place. It was more like frozen yogurt. They had one of those guys on stilts outside making balloon animals. He made me a flower:) Later we went to Bupyeong because I lost my camera charger and I had to get a new one. They didn't have one for my battery, so they gave me like a universal charger. It's kinda cool actually. We did a little more shopping and then came home to relax for what was left of the weekend.
And now it's monday. Oh, how I love mondays...haha

Sunday, April 4, 2010

Happy Easter everyone! I can't believe it's April already! I can't believe its April and its still this cold... It was a little warmer today...warmer being 50's. I guess I haven't posted in a few weeks. Last weekend Abby, Kristina, and I went to the art museum in Seoul for the Andy Warhol exhibit. The line to buy tickets was sooooo long, then more waiting once we actually got inside. It was really cool though. We headed to Itaewon for dinner afterward. It was kinda funny, we got carded when we went in (the only time that's happened to any of us in Korea) and then they brought us coloring pages and crayons while we waited for our food. hahaha Of course we colored:)
Last week at school we had our monthly tests, so that was fun... Nothing else too exciting.
Thursday, we had Kristina's unbirthday dinner and finally gave her her birthday present (only 2 months late). Abby and I put together a scrapbook for her like they did for my birthday. It turned out really nice.
Friday I went to Outback with Rachel for dinner. I needed a quiet night, so I came home and watched a movie and went to bed early.
Saturday Abby and I went to Kristina's house for an egg dying party. We were supposed to decorate cookies and dye eggs, but we couldn't find powdered sugar for icing. It was hard enough finding white eggs. We had to buy a huge thing of them, which actually turned out to be good because boiling eggs was a lot harder than we thought it would be. I don't know what we did wrong. We put salt in the water and it wasn't boiling that much, but like at least half of our eggs busted after we put them in the pot. Anyway, the ones that didn't bust, looked really cute. We decorated them with crayons and then dyed them. It was a lot of fun:)
Saturday evening a group of us went to Hongdae. We had a lot of fun.
Today we went to church in Bucheon. We had a hard time deciding if we would go to the church in Seoul, but we decided to stay in Bucheon. There was a dinner after church, but we were really hungry and they hadn't started cooking yet so a group of us went to Bennigans.
I'm gonna try to get to bed early tonight. I have a little bit of a cold:( Hopefully I'll feel better tomorrow!