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!