Farewell lunch at Mr. Pizza

Today both of us went out to eat as a sort of "farewell" outing - I with my 10 and 11am classes, and Ali with her coworkers. Out of pure coincidence, we ended up going to the exact same pizza restaurant! Mr. Pizza has some pretty good pizza as well as a salad bar and yogurt bar. After Ali finished eating with her coworkers, and they left, she came and joined our table while we ate.
I also presented awards at that time - for each class we give out an award for the top student based on grades, also if someone has perfect attendance, they get an award. The top student receives a free textbook for the next level of class, and for perfect attendance a 20,000 won voucher is awarded toward the next level tuition (about $20).
In my 10 am class, Jennifer got both awards, and in my 11 am class Daisy was the top student, with no one achieving perfect attendance. Of course, they were duly excited; in fact, Daisy was actually surprised she had passed!

All in all it was a fun time, even though a pretty small percentage of my students showed up that day.

Ali and her coworkers: Christie - the Adult Textbook Office Manager, Robin and MJ (June was sick and couldn't make it)

Jennifer with her two awards

Daisy with her award - I think she was too surprised to smile!

The whole group, after Ali joined us. L-R: Ali, Amy, me, Randy, Jennifer, Rudith, Michelle, and Daisy

Jennifer insisted on getting a picture with me

And of course, after that, Daisy had to, too

We had never seen an intersection with so many crosswalks before, so Ali took a picture of it. It has all the usual ones across each street, as well as two diagonal ones that cut right across the middle of the intersection. Traffic comes to a complete standstill for the use of these walks.

Daisy and Michelle found a cute puppy to pet just before we got back to the institute

Riding the rails

Our first experience with the Seoul subway was way back at the start of December. Jonathan and I took Seoul subway Line 1 from Cheonan to Hoegi station in Seoul where we met our friend Renee. She gave us a lovely first taste of Seoul. But that evening, instead of taking the two and a half hour subway ride back to Cheonan we opted for the KTX for our return trip.

Our next subway experience took place while we were visiting Busan. We didn't realize it at the time, but Busan was actually a great place to learn how to use the Korean subway system. Busan currently only has four subway lines and we quite quickly learned how to navigate our way through the city.

Busan subway map

 At the end of our Christmas break we headed back to Seoul to begin our new jobs. And we were very glad we'd had the learner course in Busan. Seoul subway system has more than 10 lines and, many times, countless routes to get wherever you're headed. It can get a little confusing. (Especially when you happen upon a subway station that doesn't have a single subway map outside the turnstiles...a situation that happened to us in mid-January. We ended up just guessing which line would be best to take and didn't make too bad of a choice. We just had to make one transfer to make it back to our familiar Hoegi station.) Anyway, we've since acquired English subway maps from generous coworkers and have been improving our subway-smarts ever since.

Seoul subway map

So when my friend Renee, who is now back home in the U.S., posted the following video on Facebook, I immediately knew it would make it on our blog. The song in the video is based on the Seoul subway transfer song. Every time the subway gets to a station where travelers can transfer to another subway line, that song plays as a reminder to get off if that is your transfer. It's quite a handy feature and the tune is pretty catchy. It can get stuck in your head for hours... Enjoy! (Warning, the video showcases a remix version of the song, so beware. Not all audiences might appreciate it.)

Subway maps from exploringkorea.com.

Lunch with All-Day Club

On Friday, January 27 Jonathan and I, as well as many other foreign teachers, went out for lunch with the All/Half-Day Club.

All-Day Club is exactly what it sounds like: a class that goes all day from 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Students in this club get all kinds of one-hour classes, each taught by a different teacher: conversation, pronunciation, grammar & writing, religion, as well as others that I don't have any idea about. Half-Day Club members join in the class at 1 p.m. Sometimes Half-Day Club members take normal English classes in the morning, too. Jonathan actually has four Half-Day members in his morning English classes. He teaches an hour of religion class on Thursdays at 2 p.m. to the All-Day Club. Even though I'm not technically a teacher at this institute since I work in the textbook office, I teach All-Day Club an hour a week, too. I teach a conversation class on Thursday at 5 p.m. In addition to their long week days at the institute, members of All-Day/Half-Day Club are also required to attend the weekend events, vespers (called FNF - Friday Night Fellowship) on Friday evening, and Sabbath School, Morning Clubs (like English-geared Sabbath School classes), and church on Saturday. Needless to say, they're pretty busy students with only one day off from learning and speaking English every week of the term. And since they spend so much together, they're all really good friends. It's great to see classmates get along so well and be so happy and jokey with each other.

For lunch, we went to a buffet restaurant called Ashley's. The food was delicious and we had the added benefit of having our students translate the food labels for us and tell us what was in each dish. During lunch one foreign teacher sat at a table with three Korean students. It was so nice to be able to talk to a few students in smaller groups and get to know them better. That's hard to do in class since there are 20 students in the class that Jonathan and I teach and 15 students in the lower level class. All in all, we really enjoyed the meal and the time out with our students. Given the chance, we'd certainly go again!

Pretty handkerchief collection on the restaurant wall

Tiffany, Daisy, Soo & me

Friends Stella and Trisha bought matching cell phone cases

Jonathan at his table of females: Julia, Jessica and Gisele

Apartment Video!

At long last, here is a video tour of our apartment in Seoul! Hope you enjoy!

Fort-building

I'm subscribed to a blog called Uncluttered.com. I love cleanness. And, believe it or not, I love cleaning. One of my biggest childhood trials as an older sister was trying to educate my younger siblings (namely Bryn, the crazily-creative-enthusiastic child that she was) in the ways of cleanliness (I can proudly say she's very cleanly now, maybe even moreso than me). So when Jonathan saw an article about the Uncluttered blog on Lifehacker earlier this spring, he forwarded it on to me. And I mostly love reading it. Then he got me the book and I rapidly read it. I mostly love that, too. There are some things I agree with in the writer's posts and some I know I'd never want to do. But all in all, it's a good reminder to me why being uncluttered is important in life; to make time for the things that really matter.

So when a new blog post from Uncluttered showed up in my Google Reader feed about a month ago I clicked on it and read it right away. And I loved it. It was titled, Clear the Clutter, Build a Fort. And so, a few days later, I did. Jonathan helped, but he opted to drag the twin mattress from our office into our room instead of crashing on the hard floor. So he had to sleep outside the fort (which was probably a good thing considering we don't have any blanket here large enough for a two-person fort). But I slept inside on a thin blanket over the ondol (heated floor) and it was glorious. Except for early in the morning when I woke up from floor overheatage. Man, that linoleum can sure get hot! But after adjusting the heat I went back to sleep pretty quickly and all was good. All in all, a fun evening creating the fort together and snuggly-warm night sleeping inside it.

The fort, complete with Jeju mandarins holding down one corner

All cuddled up ready to sleep

Pre-waking up shot by sneaky, early-riser Jonathan...

Icheon day trip

Icheon is a small city about an hour southeast of Seoul. Jonathan and I learned about it recently while browsing our South Korea guidebook. We had last weekend off from our usual weekend duties so we planned a day trip to Icheon. On Sunday we located the nearest station to catch a bus to Icheon and took the subway there. Then we had a quick run to our bus after purchasing tickets and realizing the next bus left in 2 minutes. We were on the bus for all of a minute when it started backing up. The bus was maybe only a third full. (Soo different than taking a bus in Tanzania where the driver doesn't move until pretty much every seat is full. I (Ali) was actually kind of shocked when we left with most of the seats still empty.)

Icicles on our walk to the subway

Bridge over the Han River in Seoul and mountains in the distance!

Ice fishing city (captured as we whizzed past on the highway)

Icheon pottery exhibit along the road entering the city - Icheon is well-known for its quality traditional pottery

Pottery statue

When we arrived, we wandered around the streets near the bus station and found this pretty little park and frozen-over pond. We lingered for a while, enjoying the warm weather and sun, and snapping some pictures.

Korean-style gazebo and bridge in the middle of the frozen pond

Jonathan picturizing

And the picture he took

Back side of the gazebo and bridge

Ali exploring a small penninsula

Some sort of monument

Jonathan getting in a short workout

Gazebo and bridges from the front with a patchwork of footprints on the pond

And again from the side

Pots in a yard

After exploring the small park area, we browsed a few more streets (and snapped the above picture) then made our way back to the bus station and tried to figure out how to catch a city bus to Termeden Hot Springs, our original reason for making the trip to Icheon. We carefully examined all the signs at all three bus stops along the street and eventually found one that would take us to the hot springs (although the bus number on the sign differed from the one in our guidebook - we figured our guidebook must be outdated). The only problem was that it only came every two and a half hours... We weren't really sure why that was because we got the impression from our guidebook it was a pretty popular attraction (yeah, we're not all that impressed with our guidebook). So, without knowing what else to do and not wanting to wait another hour and a half to catch the next bus, we took a picture of the sign with the Korean and English words for Termeden and then showed it to the nearest taxi driver. He nodded his head and we hopped in for a ten-minute ride to the hot springs.

Once at Termeden, we were a bit boggled. Luckily one of the ladies at the front desk spoke English and told us which option we wanted (not the spa/sauna one, a choice we were very glad she'd made for us once we got into the changing rooms and realized the spa/sauna consisted of stripping down to nothing and washing/soaking/sweating with a bunch of other naked same-gender people). We made a few blundering mistakes, such as not knowing what to do with our shoes when we had to take them off just inside the entry-to-the-facility-gates, and trying to locate the actual hot spring pools. I'm sure a bunch of Koreans were inwardly laughing at us as we wandered around trying to figure it all out. After several dashes into the changing rooms to look for the pools and try to ask people for help, then meeting up again outside the changing rooms, we finally had it mostly figured out and then bade each other farewell until finally reaching the pool. Once there we were glad we'd come and had managed to figure it out. The set-up was lovely with an indoor pool and an outdoor one and many interesting features. We didn't get pictures of the outdoor pool, but I snapped one of the indoor pool just before we left.

Women's shoe lockers

Empty indoor hot spring pool

Good-bye Termeden Hot Springs

Once the pools closed for the night we caught the free shuttle back to the bus station. It would have been great to know about that on the way to the hot springs, but at least we know for next time to look for a bright red shuttle bus with Korean words and a few pictures of pretty flowers on the sides. From there it was easy and quick to get tickets for the bus back to Seoul and then hop on a few minutes later. Then it was just an hour ride and about half an hour on the subway back to our station. We were so relaxed from the hot springs that we fell asleep soon after getting back. A wonderful and very different day here. We thoroughly enjoyed it!

Kimbap success!

We first ate kimbap at a vegetarian buffet that Jonathan and I went to with one of my religion students from Cheonan. I piled a generous helping of sushi on my plate at the buffet and then, when I sat down to eat, learned the truth. I actually didn't have any sushi on my plate. And that's because sushi is Japanese. And the most popular variety contains meat. My plate actually contained kimbap, which is Korean and usually vegetarian. So, I'm very sorry to inform all of you vegetarian folks out there who think you're eating sushi, but you're really not. You're eating kimbap; kim=seaweed, bap=rice.*

The first Friday after we moved to Seoul, Jonathan and I wandered around our new neighbourhood looking for a grocery store. We found one only a few streets away (affectionate nicknamed the Elephant Mart by our fellow foreign teachers because of the elephant-esque logo), and were happy to discover it had most of the food items we needed. In the kitchen products section we noticed roller mats and exclaimed that we should make kimbap. So we tossed two roller mats in our cart amongst the food. And then we went home to our apartment, put the items away, and the rollers have been sitting in a cupboard in their packaging ever since.

But this afternoon we decided today was K-day. And so we made rice, cut up veggies (carrots, cucumbers, yellow bell peppers and danmuji, pickled radish) and soy hot dogs, and broke out the roller mats. Here's what it looked like.

Measuring out the rice

Rice rinse

Our trusty rice cooker

One of the largest carrots we've ever seen!

It really is huge! We only used 1/8 of it for our kimbap today, and had leftovers

The rice steaming away

Since we don't currently have any tofu, we decided to heat up some of the delicious hot dogs that can be found at the corner SDA food store

Smallerating the hot dogs

All the necessary ingredients for a great meal

Ready to start building!

Is it just me or does this table look really low?

The key is to have an even, thin layer of rice on nearly the whole sheet

This meal had a lot of colour

Rolling

Ali building her kimbap

A surprisingly good knife that came with the apartment

All ready to devour!

Yum!!

*An interesting article comparing sushi and kimbap.