Everland!!!

Everland was soooo much fun! It was really cold, but there were like no lines and it just made it feel more Christmasy. There were Christmas lights and decorations everywhere. It was so pretty! The people were all really friendly too. In the US the typical worker at an amusement park is a college student who makes it obvious that they would rather not be there. At Everland the workers were constantly smiling, waving (with both hands), dancing, and wishing you a Merry Christmas-uh. I went with Abby, Kristina, and Shawn. We left at 9:30 Saturday morning. It was a 2 hour bus ride, but we were all really excited so there was no sleeping on the bus. When we finally got there we were just in awe of everything. We were taking pictures every few minutes.

First we watched a musical called Santa Express. There was lots of singing, dancing, crazy costumes, and soapy snow falling from the sky. A lot of the performers were foreigners too. It was very entertaining.

After the show they decided they wanted to ride a roller coaster. I had promised Kristina that I would try and be brave and ride a roller coaster...so I did. Now, I didn't ride just ANY roller coaster. I rode the roller coaster that holds the record as being the steepest wooden roller coaster in the WORLD! It had a 77 degree inclination. It is also the highest, fastest, and longest roller coaster in Korea. Of course I knew none of this before I rode it. Afterwards I felt like I could pretty much ride anything as long as it didn't go upside down.

After that we went sledding. Soooo much fun (except when I crashed into this poor girl. I wasn't so good at controlling what direction I was going).

Later we went on a ride called Let's Twist. It was here that I learned you should always watch a ride to see what it's going to do BEFORE you ride it. This was the one negative side to the lack of lines. My bad feeling about the ride was confirmed when it proceded to twist around and turn me upside down (hence the name). At one point during the ride we all saw something fly through the air and crash on the ground. That something was my cell phone. It fell out of my coat pocket. When the girl handed me the pieces of my phone and said, "I'm so sorry, but I love you," I was sure that my phone had reached the end of it's life. When I put the battery back in and turned it on, I was surprised to find that I have the most durable phone ever! We headed off to the next ride. I happened to think that my T-money card had been in my pocket too and now it was gone. It wouldn't have been such a big deal except that a while back I had some issues with the ATM and when I tried to get out 40,000 won (about $40), I accidentally got out 400,000 won (about $400). The largest korean bill is 10,000 won, but they have check like slips worth 100,000 won. You have to sign them and give them your phone number when you use them. Anyway, I didn't want to carry around 400,000 won so I put 100,000 of it on my T-money card. Maybe not the best idea. So we went back to look for the card. I was thinking there was no way I would be lucky 2 times, but after the ride stopped, they found my card. Yay! So we were off again to ride more rides. They wanted to ride another upside down one that appeared even scarier than the twist one so I opted not to ride. I was going to take pictures, but I couldn't find my camera. We figured surely someone would have seen my camera fly through the air if I had lost it on the twist ride so we backtracked to all the places we had been since i had last taken pictures. The guy at the petting zoo called the lost and found and we discovered that my camera was in fact at the evil Let's Twist ride that tried to destroy my life (sorry for being overly dramatic). We were amazed to find that my camera was still working and didn't even have a scratch! I think it must've fallen out of my pocket onto the seat next to me and maybe didn't actually fall on the ground. Whatever happened, I was very happy to have my camera back. So we continued to ride rides and walk around until it was time for the Magic in the Sky show that night. There was christmas music, fireworks, and lights in the sky. I have part of it on video:

Next was the Moonlight parade. Lots of floats with lights, music, dancing, and crazy costumes.

After the parade it was time to say goodbye to Everland and go home:( It was such a fun day!

Sunday was the Christmas service at church. It was different than any Christmas service I'd been to before. He preached from John, which doesn't exactly cover the Christmas story. It was good though. I enjoyed it.

After church Kristina took me and Abby to Bucheon Station because even though we both live in Bucheon, we had never been there before. It has a really big shopping area. There is also an Outback and TGI Fridays right there. We went to TGI Friday's for dinner. It was expensive, but really good. After hearing them sing to someone for their birthday we decided to tell our waitress that it was Kristina's birthday. We were hoping for dessert, but we just got a song:

Well, they did also take our picture and they gave Kristina a card with 4 copies of the picture. They were really nice:)

So that was pretty much my weekend. I'll put pictures on facebook later.

sorry guys i know its been a while, but i'm back! to catch you guys up a bit, last friday we had another small group pot luck except it was a lot more people than just our small group. its a good thing kristina and her mom have an apartment much bigger than the average english teacher's apartment. it was a lot of fun though for everyone except maybe the dog.
saturday was my lazy day. nothing much to tell there.
sunday i went to church. we're doing a christmas series since it is that time of the year after all. the pastor has to work christmas eve and day so this sunday will be the christmas service. anyway, after church i went to the movies to see twilight with abby, kristina, and her cousin wonji. despite all the hype about it, i didn't know that much about it. it was pretty good though.
this week we got a new korean teacher at school. she seems pretty nice. they sent me and the new teacher for training yesterday. they really explained how their book system works, which is very organized and also very confusing when not explained properly. i would've really appreciated having this training earlier, but i'm glad i didn't have to go alone. anyway, even though it was a really long day of sitting and listening, i feel like i learned a good bit and it was a break from teaching.
after the training i decided i really needed to get a haircut. i've been putting it off for a while, but i decided it was time for my first korean haircut. i found a place that had quite a few people and figured that was a pretty good sign. the reactions people had when i walked in were pretty amusing, although a little embarrassing at the time. everyone stared and whispered and giggled. i tried using hand motions to tell the woman that i just wanted to get my hair trimmed, but they gave me a book to find a picture. a few minutes later, another woman who spoke engish very well came over. i was able to tell her what i wanted and she did a very good job. so yay for a non-disasterous first korean haircut experience:) ...and while we're on the subject of hair, if you have blonde hair and you're coming to korea, you might want to consider dying it first. since i've been here i've had a woman grab and pet my hair on the subway, one of my students got out of his chair during class to pick one of my hairs off the floor (i think he kept it to do some sort of vudu magic), and today my pre-k kids were pulling my hair out of my head! of course it was the little girl who usually hides behind the easel who started it. i would much rather her hide. i think it was an accident the first time, but then she took my hair and was showing it to all the other kids and of course they wanted some too. it was not fun:( those kids are vicious and even though i'm bigger than they are, there's 6 of them now.
In happier news, tomorrow i'm going to everland (korea's version of disneyland)! i'm going with a few people from church. gotta get up kinda early so its about time to bring the blog to a close. sorry no pictures this time. i have some of my tree with presents under it (thank you for sending them!), but i haven't put them on my computer yet. i'll take lots of pictures at everland too. ok, well that is all. goodnight!

Snow! Snow! Snow! This was on the ground when I woke up this morning:)

It was mostly gone when I left for church, but it snowed again later too. Anyway, backing up to friday (aka igloo day=super cold). I went to a potluck we had with our small group. It was at Kristina's apt, which is really nice. It was freeeeeeezing though walking to her apt. The wind was blowing tears out of my eyes. It was too cold to even snow:( It was a fun night though with lots of good food. It was late when I got home so I slept in saturday and was kinda lazy. I had planned on going out to buy some more decorations for my tree, but I didn't want to face the cold. I met Kristina and Abby saturday night though at "the mall" (thats what its called). We kinda walked around there for a while. Later we went to that rhythm and booze place. it was packed with foreigners. i didn't know there were so many living in bucheon. Today, I went to church. It was good. The pastor was back. He just got married so he had been gone a couple of weeks. After church, Kristina, her mom, Abby, and I went to Costco! It was kind of a long journey, but it was fun. I didn't actually buy anything. We were mostly going to eat in the costco food court, which was insanely crowded. All of the tables are always full so you have to go up to a table and just stand and watch them eat until they get up and leave. Its kinda awkward. Here's a video:

Costco was pretty much just like a Costco back home. When we left there, it was snowing:) We played in it a little bit.

So before I went home, I finally went and got some more decorations for my tree:) I have lights too. They're shaped like little stars and you can put them on lots of different settings...pretty cool!

So now my weekend is pretty much over:( The end.

Ice Cream Adventure With Mr. Fishy

Ok, I know it's been a while since my last ice cream post, but this one has to be the most interesting yet. Meet Mr. Fishy:

I was a little nervous about what ice cream shaped like a fish would taste like. I assumed the brown stuff in the middle was chocolate and the little round things were some sort of nut, but you never can tell. Sometimes there some english, but not on the fishy ice cream. I had to buy it though. I was thinking of you really. My blog readers just had to know about Korean fishy ice cream. Anyway the outside was like the ice cream cone, which I think is a pretty good idea. It's less messy. Take a look at the inside...

No, it wasn't chocolate. It wasn't bad. I couldn't really tell what it was. It kinda looked like jam, but didn't taste fruity or anything. So I used the babelfish online translator, which isn't super reliable, but from what I can gather, it was some sort of red bean stuff? maybe? I dunno, like I said, it wasn't bad and at least it didn't taste like fish!

In other news, we had a story telling presentation today with the morning kindergarden kids. They've been practicing for quite a while. All their parents came to watch. The kindergarden is divided into 3 groups. Amber is the youngest class, then Jade, then Ruby. Each kid in Jade and Ruby class memorized a short story to tell. They also sang a few songs as groups. They all did really well. Natalia, Michael, and I also had to introduce ourselves which was a little scary. It went ok though.

So the 3 of us went out for lunch today and we walked by this older woman. She said "hallelujah!" and turned around and stopped us. She started pulling all this stuff out of her purse to give us. She gave us these brohcures (all in korean), some candy that tasted like popcorn, and natalia got tissues. She kept talking in Korean, but we caught a couple more hallelujahs and Jesus Christs. It was very interesting. It seems like there are a lot of Christians like that in Korea. She seemed like a sweet woman, but I think it kinda turns a lot of people off toward Christianity...

Turkey hats, Christmas trees, and chicken feet

ok, I know I didn't put up any pictures of the turkey hats last time so here ya go.
This is Sam:


Guess what! I now have a Christmas tree:) Yep, saturday I went to Homeplus and got a (fake) 4ft tree for 14,000 won. I bought strands of beads to put on it, but I still need to get some ornaments and maybe some lights. Its pretty cute though. I turned on Christmas music while I was putting it up. Here's the end result:


Later, I went to meet Kristina and her mom for dinner. We went to a sahm gyup sal buffet. You actually cook the meat yourself at your table and then you wrap it in lettuce along with rice, garlic, or whatever, and then u stuff the whole thing in your mouth. It was very yummy and cheap. Here are some pics:








mmmm yummy chicken feet! haha no i didn't eat the chicken feet. i'm not quite that adventurous when it comes to trying new foods.



After dinner, we went and got coffee. We also did a virtual roller coaster thing which was fun. Maybe if I did that a lot I could get over my fear of roller coasters. haha:) So that was pretty much saturday.

Sunday I went to church, picking up a couple of people I recruited along the way. Well, I didn't really recruit them. I told Mark, who is in the army and lives on the Yongsan military base, about my church and he wanted to try it and a girl named Abby was actually looking for a church and found this blog so she emailed me asking about it. But they are both really nice and I think they liked the church so that's good. Didn't do much else sunday.

Today was pretty much a normal monday. We put up a Christmas tree at school. So that was exciting:) I also got another kid to add to my pre-k class...not so exciting......I mean YAY the class has now doubled! They aren't quite as bad now, except Kathy who pretty much hides behind the easel the whole class except to come out in time to cry about not being able to color cause class is over. Fun times:)

Alright, well that's about all I have. Goodnight everyone!

Happy Thanksgiving!

This has got to be the weirdest Thanksgiving ever. I'm away from my family and I don't even get the day off:( Doesn't even feel like Thanksgiving at all. We did have kind of a fun morning with the kids making turkey hats. They turned out so much cuter than those turkeys you make by tracing your hand. I took the supplies to make my own later...I dunno what I'm gonna do with it, but thats ok. We also had pumpkin pie after lunch which was pretty good. Other than that, its pretty much been a normal day. I found out what days I have off for my winter break today. Christmas is on a Thursday this year right? So I get Christmas day off, work Friday, and then I have all the next week off. I have no idea what I'm going to do during that week. Any ideas? Oh, and I have some videos from the snow last week that I thought I'd share.
I just thought this was funny!

It started snowing a little harder...

Time to play!

Thanksgiving Dinner

Well, I guess its about time for another update. We'll start with Friday. They have small groups that get together from church and I decided to go to one Friday night. I met Kristina and went with her cause neither of us had gone before. There were like 8 of us, which was a lot of people for one tiny apartment. It was much smaller than mine! It was 2 rooms. A bathroom and a kitchen/bedroom. It was good though. I enjoyed it. They meet at 9:30. The subway stops running at 12:30. If I had left right when it was over I would have been fine, but I made it to the subway in time to watch the last train leave:-( You would think the subway would run a little later especially on the weekends, but it doesn't. So I had to take a taxi home. One of the most valuable things you can have with you is your address written in Korean. I keep it with me all the time just in case. Cabs in Korea are pretty cheap too.
Anyway, I didn't really do much saturday. I did some laundry and cleaned, but other than that, I just relaxed. It was nice.
Sunday, I went to church and then after that, those of us who signed up for the Thanksgiving dinner rushed off to catch the bus to the subway station. We took the subway to Yongsan station and then we took cabs to a church where we got on buses to go to the military base. This process involved a lot of waiting and we were all very hungry. We finally got there though. They had the dinner in a place called the Dragon Hill Lodge. It was really nice. I thought it was going to be forever before we actually got to eat though cause they had this lady hosting the dinner that started talking about having teams and earning points to see which table got to eat first. We had to come up with as many words as we could out of the work Thanksgiving and the table with the most words got to eat first. We thought we were doing good with 28, but the winning table had 59...so we sat and waited and watched people walk by us with plates of yummy food. It really didnt take all that long though. It was an all you can eat buffet style dinner. They had turkey, ham, stuffing, mashed potatoes, pumpkin pie and a plethera of other foods and desserts that are associated with Thanksgiving (plus kimchi). It was beautiful:) and very yummy. I ate as much as I could since I paid 40,000 won to go.

They had other entertainment during dinner too. They had people sing and apparently one of the singers was from a famous korean pop band called Fly to the Sky. We got a picture with him.

So that was pretty much it. Completely worth the 40,000 won in my opinion!