Summer evenings

My recent bicycle purchase coincided with my decision to stay another year in Seoul. I’m loving the change of perspective. Seeing the city from a bicycle makes me feel so much more a part of it. The Han River has a very well developed bike trail along either side of it, which has made for lovely summer evening rides, and some great photo opportunities as well!

Saturday’s alright alright alright

I’ve got a lovely post about some fave bars in Itaewon brewing, until then, Saturday stories! It’s been quite the epic Saturday. I woke up much earlier than I am accustomed to, and went straight to the mountain trails near my apartment with my dog Elly! She spent about an hour playing (leash free! woohoo!) in the dead leaves leftover from fall, while I took photos of the spring flowers. I’m loving the change of weather!!!

Elly, on a mission, avoiding the camera as usual

pretty spring flowers!

After the hike this morning I studied some Spanish on Rosetta Stone, and then I spent about an hour reading at a cafe called Little Jakob in Cheongdam before my afternoon lesson. It’s a great little coffee shop outside exit 12 (Cheongdam, Line 7) with comfy chairs! I’ve been on a reading spree, starting and finishing “Sellevision” by Augusten Burroughs yesterday, and starting and finishing “A Long Way Gone: Memories of a Boy Soldier” by Ishmael Beah today. A bit all over the board with genres, clearly, but both were good. I picked up a couple more books but hopefully can contain my enthusiasm for reading and draw them out a bit more!

Tonight will start at a great hookah bar called Rainbow in Kangnam. I’m looking forward to the laid back, dimly lit atmosphere for a chill evening. I’m attempting to have more chill weekend nights to facilitate more productive weekends as my time wanes in South Korea. There’s so much I haven’t seen, and I only have 4 months! I will keep you updated about the best places I find 😉

Flowers and incense: Bangkok, Thailand

Of course can’t remember which wat…. but this actually MAY have been the city shrine… memory… failing. Anyhow, I love all the colors and textures in the temple offerings in Thailand. Double plus good for the photo practicing.

Best news ever: I’ll be heading to Japan for the Lunar New Year! Japan is mega tons expensive, so I’m glad to be doing just a short trip even though I know that I will want to go back to explore more fully. It will be my first trip with my dear friend Kaitlyn (if you dont count Seoraksan, I suppose), who is leaving Korea at the end of February. Korea will become a much sadder place, to be certain. We’re excited to visit Tokyo and Kyoto, but mostly excited for the fashion. Korea’s colored tights have nothing on the Harajuku girls, so we’re hoping to pick up some inspiration!

Any advice on must-sees for a quick trip? We’ll be a day and a half in Tokyo and 2 days in Kyoto. Definitely the most money I’ve paid for a quick trip, but it should be well worth it for a chance to see another corner of Asia, and some much needed quality time with my dearest Kaitlyn.

The Grand Palace: Bangkok, Thailand

After cloudy weather in Koh Phangan, Bangkok seemed an island paradise. Of course, one laden with street food (awesome), heaps of temples (also awesome) and  of course, prostitutes of vague sexual orientation (more interesting than awesome….). One of the few things I got to see on my quickie in Bangkok (1 night! 2 days more/less) was the Grand Palace. I looked every part the dirty backpacker with an old Burning Couch jersey (no tank tops allowed), baggy Thai pants, and of course carrying everything on my back with a camera around my neck. Hot stuff, let me tell you. Our “guesthouse” was dingy and the shower never got quite warm, but it was a cheap and wonderful way to see a city I’ve been curious about for some time now. Conclusion: must come back, hopefully for a lengthy stay. I’m sure there will be more posts to follow as I collect my wits and my photos, but here is just a small taste of my 500+ photos. Sweet perception courtesy of Daniel’s wide angle lens (really ought to start adding to my lenses…)

Anyhow, enjoy the snippet and I’ll be writing a lot more often due to that pesky goal of mine. GREAT goal I might add. Have a lovely evening!

See Ya, Seoul

…for a couple days, at least. I’m heading down to Seorak-san this weekend with my coworker Kaitlyn, Daniel and some of his fellow public school teachers. A weekend out of the smog (mostly) and into the mountains, I can’t wait!

Pictures coming on Monday, obviously. Have a lovely weekend!

(photo is of me and the child I will be stuffing into my suitcase when I leave Seoul for realsies. He is without rival my favorite student, even though they are all wonderful blahblahblah)

The Best Field Trip Ever

At my school the curriculum maintains that I must teach out of something termed the “Theme Book” everyday. This book is, to the best of my knowledge, supposed to be a fun learning experience, while adding all sorts of random English practice to my student’s everyday lives. The vast majority of this book is far too random and misguided, doesn’t fit with any lesson plan ever, lacks instructions on how to carry out the “activities” on the page, and last but definitely not least, is more often than not riddled with horrendous English. All the negatives aside, occasionally Theme Book lends me the opportunity to actually do something worthwhile.

Around about last week Theme Book randomly decided that the children should learn a smidgen of safety rules. They learned the numbers for emergency, practiced making emergency calls and a number of other safety rules relevant to 5 year olds. (Although I might argue that stricter enforcement of the “NO RUNNING INSIDE” rule would solve all of MY safety issues….)

Anyway, my co teacher decided that learning safety was just the thing for them, and asked me if she thought we should go to the fire station. Should we ever!! (I love field trips.)

After one rain out and some last minute projectile vomiting (thanks for that, Brandan), somehow we made it to the fire station. Let me tell you, this was the best. fieldtrip. ever. I’ve been to Safety Days where you put on the hard hat (and the jacket if you’re lucky) and climb up the stairs of the fire truck, but this field trip kicked Safety Day’s ass.

First off, they had miniature versions of their fire coats for every kid. Neon yellow, no less, with red hard hats. The next part of the experience was a video and chat session in Korean, so I had no clue what was coming next. As we’re about to move on to the next safety related activity, the Korean co-teachers start speaking English, urging the children to “be brave, no crying!”.  Needless to say I was a little hesitant about what was about to happen.

Turns out, this particular fire station knows how to throw a Safety Day. They had part of a fire truck hollowed out and set up as a house inside, with a fog machine blaring to similate a fire experience. The kids had to navigate through the dark and smoke and do as they were taught. Of course the smoke wasn’t actually going to hurt them, but can anyone say liability? I love Korea. After the “near death” experience in the smoke house, the children were treated to a death defying belay from 20 feet in the air. No shit. My best guess (again, everything was in Korean) is that they have pulley systems in the apartments here and the children had better learn to use them in case of a high rise fire emergency. So we proceeded to scare the living hell out of our students. Surprisingly some of them actually loved it, and the ones that were too timid didn’t have to go. But seriously, how sweet is that? It almost makes me want to be in an apartment fire. Or y’know, just go to the fire station every time I need a little thrill.

Today, I really wanted to be a Korean schoolchild.

Bonus: Even after walking past the Bulgarian restaurant I couldn’t figure out what it was called. BUT! It is next to La Vigna, can’t miss it. K-something, I think. Anyway, go up the stairs and eat there, it’s good. Also, internet should be up Monday. Fingers crossed.

The Legionnaire’s Lament

Hello again friends, rough week around the den of kindness, unfortunately. I was pretty sick with some kind of freak cold that made me want to die while teaching kindergarten. Add that to some misunderstanding/miscommunication with my Korean co-teacher (which has since been resolved with some much needed sit down time), and it wasn’t my favorite week in Seoul.

However, I did visit the zoo last weekend in Seoul Grand Park and it was wonderful! Daniel and I were wondering about the quality of the zoo in Seoul, but we were pleasantly surprised by the size of the zoo and the variety of animals. The zoo-goers could have been better, though. I noticed more than a few people throwing food into the animal cages, mostly monkeys and bears. Gahhh what a horrible idea!

Anyway, the zoo was great. Here are some photos!

meerkat manor ruined us

ostriches are funny looking

Oh how I love zoos. We spent 5+ hours wandering around the zoo followed by hurrying home to join friends to go out. Nights out in Seoul are deadly. Two things I learned from this particular night: 1) do not mix 1 bottle of soju into 2 pitchers of beer and 2) when singing noraebang (karaoke) do not allow anyone to film it. I think these are life lessons every person should know before stepping out in Seoul.

My final passing thought: listen to The Decemberists. I change my favorite song pretty much all the time, but I do have a soft spot in my heart for ‘The Legionnaire’s Lament”. Enjoy.

Getting There

After a 4.5 hour bus trip, I finally arrived in Busan on Friday night, only to find a 1.5 hour subway ride ahead of me. It turns out Dadaepo Beach is seriously on the outskirts. I passed the subway ride easily enough by reading the rest of the book I had brought with me. After the subway it was time for a quick taxi ride to the beach. Unfortunately my cabbie was not all that cooperative, although I can appreciate where he was coming from. We had some communication issues.  I wanted to be dropped off at the beach, and he didn’t want to leave me there all alone.

The cabbie would not relent until we had stopped at the police station to speak to an officer who was slightly better at English, and finally allowed me to be taken to the beach when I gestured TENT to them. Ohhh, he says, TENT. Gotcha. Because you know all I need for night beach safety is a tent. Obviously. Whatever his reasoning, I was happy he finally took me there.

Upon arriving at Dadaepo Beach, I realized this might be more of an ordeal than I had originally imagined. The ultimate teams were not the only folks staying at the beach. There were probably over a thousand people all sleeping in tents or on long low tables, or just walking around. Booths featuring simple carnival games were mixed in with food booths. I wandered around the beach for probably a half hour, texting the two people I knew on the team, and hoping one of them wasn’t too drunk or already sleeping. My desperation point came when I was approached by two separate groups of guys trying to pick me up using their limited English. “Where you goiingggg?!? Come with us!” Umm, no thanks.

Just as I was trying to decide which family looked nice enough to let me stay in their tent (it was 1:30am at this point, I wanted SLEEP!) I saw a guy throwing a disc up in the air. He led me to the matching tents that belonged to the ultimate kids, and I could not have been happier.

After that bumpy start, the weekend sailed by. I made fast friends with the players and we played a lot of disc, had some beer and food, and had a great time. My team almost won the tournament, losing to a team in the finals that we had beaten the day before. It felt great to get away from Seoul and fall back into a familiar tournament routine.

On Sunday after the tournament, I decided to take my first trip to a ginjabong, or Korean sauna. After the games I was dirty, sore and tired, and the other players assured me nothing felt better than the sauna. I mustered up some courage to get naked in front of a bunch of Koreans, and made my way in. The sauna had 5 or so pools of differing temperatures, a row of sinks for cleaning up, one wet and one dry heat sauna and a fragrant cedar-lined hot tub (my favorite!)

At first I was a bit shy about walking around in all my nude glory, but everyone else seemed to be comfortable, so I shook it off. Until I noticed a group of young girls very obviously staring at me. Turns out they were just curious about me and anxious to try out the English skills they practice at their private school. The girls took turns asking questions about how old I am, where I live, what I do here, how long had I been in Korea… etc. I welcomed the distraction from my other anxieties, and chatted away.

Turns out I had nothing to be nervous about, after all.

Busan-ing

I’m taking my first trip within S. Korea this weekend, if you don’t count traversing Seoul by subway, that is! I’m headed to Busan by bus (you don’t want to know how long I tried to make that pun work…) for the Busan Rock Festival and Ultimate Tournament. I didn’t recognize a single band on the rock festival list, so you might say I’m going for the ultimate. I’m excited to kick off my 10 day break from teaching 5 year olds with a little exploration, exercise and debauchery.

Last weekend’s foray into the world of Seoultimate (oh yes, I continue to go there) lifted my spirits. I’m in godawful shape, but there is something about this humid air that makes my lungs hold on for a few hours of running, throwing and catching.

After 4 years, countless knee pain and threat of major injury, through the bad times and the good, I still love this sport. I love that you can go anywhere in the world and play a game of pickup and go to a tournament or two, and meet new friends who share your interest in ultimate at least, and probably a lot more.

Wish me luck 😉

Disclaimer: No Koreans were harmed in the making of these puns. My boyfriend is undoubtably groaning in INTENSE PAIN…. mission accomplished.

Stroll through Seoul