English Winter Camp

At first, I was dreaming "English Winter Camp", which all public school English teachers must do in Korea. Then they knocked back my hours from 5 to 2 hours and told me I would be working from 1-3 and didn't need to come in to school before that or stay after (actually... no one ever said I couldn't stay after, but no one has said anything yet! Plus I did all my lesson plans and worksheets in December so I wouldn't have anything to do in the office, anyway.) I get paid as much as I do when I work 40 hours a week. We play games and do fun stuff. My life is awesome.

So far we have played Apples to Apples and watched "Twilight: Eclipse" and "Napoleon Dynamite". Apples to Apples was a big hit (I used the Kids version, and it was perfect for their level), but I had to explain what Beanie Babies and Godzilla are (really surprised they didn't know the last one.) I also do real lessons, too. We did a day on shopping (we made fashion magazine advertisements!) and travel (we made travel brochures!) and food and restaurants (we made peanut butter and jelly sandwiches but I couldn't find peanut butter 20 minutes before class so we just ate bread and jelly!) We have three more classes, and the lesson themes are Murder Mystery, Harry Potter, and School-Funded Pizza Party!

The students are middle school grade one and at first I was really afraid that they wouldn't be able to understand me. Even some grade 3 students barely speak any English. Despite some super-cute students who have a lot of difficulty with the class but really try, most of the students are like little geniuses! Four of them will probably be fluent by the time they graduate middle school. I'm not even kidding! They're silent when I talk, do all the worksheets I give them, and even VOLUNTEER ANSWERS when I ask questions. This NEVER happens in regular class. I have about 10-14 students (depending on who skips class, since it's free and optional) compared to the 35 I have in normal classes, so it's really nice to get to know the students by name and know more about their personalities. For example, Victoria loves Twilight and Kamanohashikamo, May has 2PM everything, Jamie's cousins live in Chicago and she can do the "Single Ladies" dance really well and every time I ask for a word she screams "POO", and Ke$ha is obsessed with Japan. Plus they get to wear street clothes and they are so cute and fashionable and smart and perfect! I am obsessed with them! I hope they're still my friends when the normal semester starts.

One day I did a lesson on differences between American and Korean high school. This is my student Lauren's response. She's 13 years old and writing almost perfect English! She really wants to go to America. She is totally going to Harvard or Yale in 3 years. Actually, probably, Columbia or Barnard, since she likes New York so much. She is also a really talented artist and her travel pamphlet for Thailand was more heavenly than the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Click to make it bigger!

The Asian Photo-booth

I want to go here every day! It's so much fun. I took these at my first visit to Ilsan! I even look kind of Korean^^ haha.... the transformation is almost complete!

It's best to go here with someone who can read Korean because all the instructions on the machines are in Korean. But it's not really difficult to do it at all! Just go to a photo store, put money in the machine, choose your backgrounds, and pose for the pictures! Then you go to the printer and decorate your picture with clip art. I chose some cute pigs, dogs, cats, and poop! Haha. When you're finished, it prints out. You can make it into a sticker and there are also scissors so you can cut them up and share with your friends! And you can scan your picture to share on your Facebook or Cyworld.

Public Transportation in Korea

I came here 5 months ago. 1 month ago a teacher at the school kindly asked me if I had ever taken the subway before. Uh, what? What do they think I do? Sit at home every day? That I have never been anywhere but my apartment, school, and presumably a grocery store? I think they also think I have no friends. Whenever I tell a story, like "I was in Hongdae this weekend...", someone always asks "Were you alone?" Then I have to explain how I have friends. Anyway I am really getting off-topic here. What I want to talk about is public transportation in Korea!

Pub trans in Seoul really is fast, cheap, easy, and safe. All you need is a T-Money card, which you can buy at all convenience stores and I don't even know where else. Basically anywhere. The card costs 2,500 won to buy (so like a little over $2) and you can recharge it at convenience stores or at any subway station. Some of them look like this.

I bought mine at GS25 and it has a cute colorful picture of people buying groceries and riding buses in a city with lots of trees and stuff. It reminds me of Where's Waldo? But actually, a lot of people have T-Money cell phone charms that they scan instead of the card. The charm was more expensive and I figured I didn't want to risk losing my phone AND my transportation card at the same time, so I opted for the card. Plus now I have more room for cute Rilakkuma charms on my phone! I just keep the T-Money card in my wallet or coat pocket. You use it to scan in and out of each station you visit.



To re-load your card with money, just go up to this machine. You can select English if you want but the pictures are pretty self-explanatory. Put your card in the red pocket, select the amount to re-load, insert your cash, and wait for the transaction to finish. So easy!

At first the Seoul subway map looks terrifying. Seoul is a huge city in terms of both size and population. Proof:



But once you've used the subway a few times, you will start to move by instinct. If I'm asleep, I always wake up at the stop before my station. But sometimes, if I'm going somewhere really far away or transferring at a new station, I do get kind of confused!

There's a funny sort of subway protocol that you will instinctively act out if you spend enough time here. The six seats at the end of each car are for elderly, pregnant, or handicapped people only. If you sit here, even if you are the only person on the train, you are a horrible person. The best seats are at the end of the row. If the person at the end seat gets off, you must automatically slide over to the vacant seat. If you have to stand, you must face the window and not the center of the train. If someone near you is about 60+, it is polite to offer your seat to them. Even though everyone on the train is staring at you because a) you are white and they think you are exotic and possibly beautiful or b) they hate you and think you are a Russian prostitute, avoid eye contact! You shouldn't talk loud because only foreigners and drunk ahjussis talk loudly.




Sometimes I don't like to take the subway, though, because, unless you're in an out-of-the-way area, you're underground and can't really see anything. Even though buses sometimes take more time, I prefer taking them. You can usually find a direct route on a bus, and the odds are higher that you will get a seat. Just make sure you know where you're going! The local bus that runs from my apartment to my station only makes announcements in Korean. Bus stops will have all the stop names listed, but it's usually only in Korean. Sometimes major stops, like subway stations, will be listed in English as well. I love the subway ride from Gangnam to my apartment because you can see so many lights and you cross the Han River. I also like the bus ride from my apartment to Hongdae/Sinchon but it is really slow. I like it because it goes by Wedding Town where there are lots of cute wedding shops. If you can't find a seat on the bus, good luck, because drivers in Korea are crazy and you will probably stumble around a lot. One time I fell on an old man. He was not amused.

So, is public transportation in Seoul really that safe? I think so. The only problems I've ever had on public transportation was being harassed by American military jerks and creepy Indian guys who have white girl fetishes. The subways are impeccably clean and very quiet. No one really talks on the subway (quite different from Hong Kong- the subways there were super-clean and new, but LOUD.) Usually everyone is watching TV on their phones or sleeping. Or looking at their reflection in the reflective windows and fixing their hair (this goes for men as well.) Sometimes salespeople will set up a cart and give a speech about whatever polar fleece muffler or panty hose sock product they are trying to sell, but they don't bother you and quickly move on. Sometimes blind beggars will walk slowly up and down the car holding out a bucket for money. Sometimes they have music blaring out of their body (hidden speakers?) which always makes me laugh and then feel horrible. Usually it's weird American country music or traditional Korean music. If they have a cane, that sucks, because they might whack you accidentally. And sometimes they might touch you (like, caress up and down your back) because they are feeling where to go.

In summary, the bus is good for Seoul-watching, and the subway is good for people-watching. I have seen so many great things on the subway, like a girl using an oil absorbing sheet on her boyfriend's face, and met random cute old Korean men who just wanted to say "HellO" to an American and then quickly walk away and even a crazy man who kept ranting in Korean, walked up to me, cupped my face in his hands, and yammered somethin about me being beautiful before he got off the train. Yay public trans!

Buying Groceries in Korea

Going to the grocery store in Korea the second day I had moved into my apartment was a really overwhelming experience. I knew where the grocery store was, because my nice neighbors had given me a quick tour of the neighborhood my first evening there. Since I live in a huge apartment complex where probably several hundred families also reside, everything I could possibly need is close by. I turn right out of my apartment, cross two little streets, and then reach the "downtown" neighborhood area, where I have only ever seen one other foreigner (a middle-aged Indian woman.) Here is a pharmacy, a doctor, a hair cutter (o.O I need to go soon), a live fish restaurant, a pork restaurant, a fried chicken restaurant, actually every kind of restaurant imaginable, some clothing stores, a lot of junky stationery stores (which I love), wannabe-French Korean bakeries (Tou Les Jours and Paris Baguette), and a lot of other stuff. There's a bigger grocery store about 3 blocks away but I usually go to the Lotte Super Mart which is a lot closer to me. Also, the people there are used to seeing me, so they are very nice to me and don't stare at me as much as the people in the other place.

Most product information is in Korean but you can occasionally find products with dual labels or even only English labels. Anyway, it's simple enough to tell what something is, usually, just by looking at it. If I want to double-check, I can whip out my phone, which came with a free built-in Korean-English dictionary (which comes in handy all the time.) Usually I know the name of what I'm buying, though. When I first started buying vegetables I kind of freaked out, staring at the endless display cases of various green and white plant things. I wanted an onion. I saw something that kind of resembled an onion and saw that the package said "양파/yangpa" which I knew was the word for onion. Yay, problem solved! I felt so smart.

Buying food for myself was also an adventure initially because I have never cooked before in my life. I started out eating GS25 sandwiches and making grilled cheese sandwiches my first week here. Soon I moved on to frozen dinosaur-shaped chicken nuggets and pork cutlets and mandu (dumplings.) Now I usually eat a salad and pasta with some kind of seafood when I'm at home, including a sauce which I fill up with various vegetables. I even learned how to make Korean spicy seafood and ricecakes, which is incredibly easy once you figure out where to buy the pre-made sauce. If I had an oven, I could make cookies!

Food here is also pretty cheap. I buy about a dozen tangerines for about $3. Two onions are about 70 cents. A carton of milk that lasts me a week is $2 and a bottle of orange juice (I usually get Tropicana or Del Monte because it claims to be 100% real juice) is about $3. My favorite candy bars, Atlas Bars, were 3 for about 80 cents but then one day THEY MYSTERIOUSLY STOPPED SELLING THEM AND I DON'T KNOW WHY! The similar product is more peanut-y AND only has two for the same price. NOT OK. I WANT MY ATLAS BARS BACK.

In Korea people are very concerned about recycling and environmental protection so I always bring my own re-usable bags to the store. I put my stuff on the conveyor belt, bow slightly to the cashier, put my stuff in the bag, sign my name, bow slightly again, and then leave, all the while giving a sheepish "I don't speak Korean" confused smile.

Today when I bought groceries I thought they looked cute so I took a picture of them on my elephant rug (Costco, $40!):

What you see here is basically my weekly grocery haul, although I didn't buy any vegetables today because I was afraid they would go bad because I don't think I'll be eating at home again until the weekend. What do we have here? Let's start counter-clockwise from the apple juice. Some apple juice (usually I buy orange, but I wanted to mix things up; this was the cheapest but the taste is too sweet), milk (no idea what percent but skim milk doesn't seem to be common here), some "Light Coke" which is Diet Coke, Kellogg's Chocolate Chex cereal (my current obsession), Some "Oh Yes" sweet potato chocolate cakes, some almond and cranberry granola bars (the most expensive item on my list at 4 for about $4), two Lotte Ghana chocolate bars, two bananas (green- yay!- usually the bananas in the store are turning brown), some margarine (I finally gave up trying to eat the nasty corn butter I accidentally purchased at my afore-mentioned confused first trip to the grocery store), some gross sushi covered in mustard and Korean Chinese-style pork and vegetables for tonight's dinner (I was hibernating), and the tangerines. All this was about $30. Really not bad. How much do you think this would be in the US? $50?

Anyway I like shopping for my own groceries because it makes me feel very accomplished, and I like turning on the floor heat and snuggling up at my desk with homemade food and a movie on my computer to escape the frigid tundra that Seoul currently is masquerading as. WHEN WILL IT BE SPRING????

GD&TOP

Album of the year? G-Dragon is my favorite Korean musician, and his cute attitude and undeniable talent combined with TOP's deep voice and beautiful eyes and eyebrows and height... mmmmm... what am I talking about? I really love looking at the guys who made this album. I mean listening to this album!

Everyone knows I am obsessed with Big Bang (Jae Hyun keeps calling me "otaku") and I guess I love them so much because, unlike 99% of other Korean pop artists, they write their own music, have some control over their image, and haven't been completely re-made with plastic surgery. Yeah, plus they're hot, so what? They each have a unique look and style, unlike some other KPop bands. Like, I am pretty sure those 2 guys in SS501 who have the EXACT SAME FACE but aren't related have to be a big joke. One of them is definitely a holographic image projected of the other one.

Anyway, you can download this album very easily on the internet for free, and you can also buy it on iTunes and YesAsia.


First single: "High High"


Second single: "Knock Out" (Fun fact: the dog is GD's Sharpei Gaho, and the toys are from TOP's toy collection)


My boys debuting "Knock Out" at the YG Family Concert where I was :)


Performing their album intro, "High High", and "Oh Yeah" on MNet Countdown


This video is my obsession. This is Big Bang doing a surprise performance at the MNet Asian Music Awards, after which the news of the GD&TOP album, the Seungri mini-album, and the new Big Bang full album was announced. I was watching it on my TV live and it was AWESOME. I think it really showcases their talents and their great performance abilities. They really know how to work a crowd.

T-Social Christmas Party at Heaven in Gangnam with Se7en and GD&TOP

One day my good friend Tony sent me a Facebook chat littered with exclamation points about an ad he had seen in Korean on Facebook for entering a contest to win tickets to a Christmas party hosted by SK Telecom, Facebook, and Twitter, featuring live music by a lot of Korean hip-hop bands and pop singers, including Se7en and G-Dragon and TOP! You could win tickets by joining the page and leveling up by posting information about the concert to your Facebook and Twitter pages. All this we figured out with the help of our Korean friends, because all the information was image-based and impossible translate in any way other than consulting a Korean speaker or painstakingly re-typing all of the Hangeul and entering it into the usually inaccurate Google Translate (which I would later spend hours doing after our tickets were confirmed....) While at first we barraged our Facebook friends and Twitter followers with links and pictures about the party in an effort to level up, Tony discovered a glitch where you could just keep clicking on the "Share" button and level up without actually having to post the information to your social networking site. Thus, I got to level, like, 750 in 2 days.

Lots of freaking out and hair-pulling ensued. Our names weren't on the guest list, even though our page said we were invited. Then we sent emails to SKT with our information and screen shots of our pages, anyway, and I got a response, but Tony and Joelle didn't. Tony befriended a nice girl from the Philippines on the Facebook page and she let him come as her guest, and Joelle and her sister who was visiting decided to just show up anyway. As it turned out there had been a problem with the site and they totally got in, anyway. They just never got their confirmation email.

So we went to the party on Christmas Eve. It was the coldest day of the year. It was freezing cold even when the even more freezing wind wasn't blowing. I have never been so miserable in my life. I walked to Club Heaven with Tony and Lisbeth, my guest, but we had some trouble finding it. When we finally found it, we had to wait in a line outside. There were outdoor heaters, but they just made my legs itch. It was just the coldest and most miserable I have been in my life! Not fun at all.

We finally reached the front of the line and the bouncer, a cute fat African-American dude who chatted with us briefly, let us enter. It's interesting because in order to access Heaven you must first descend into Hell. You have to go down like 3 flights of stairs and everything is dark and the lights are tinted red. There were stickers of peoples' names all over the walls and we saw Tony's name and Joelle's name so we called them and told them that they should be able to get in OK. I checked in by giving them my Twitter ID, and then we picked up jello shots that were in clear plastic SKT boxes (which I stole and took home to use as a box for spare coins), checked our coats, and went to stand by the stage. Heaven is a really nice club and I can understand why admission is like 30,000 won every night. The bathroom was big and clean and had lots of mirrors and even a lounge area. And sinks like they have at Distrito in Philly (like, the sinks are on a table in the middle of the room, and the mirror hangs down from the ceiling). We had been worrying over the "Bling Bling" dress code. I was worried that, in my one-shouldered pink-silver 80s party dress (50% off at the H&M in Myeongdong... I was so happy because when it was full price I fell in love with it, but couldn't justify spending so much on it) I would be under-dressed, but some people were there in jeans, so it was OK. The girl who came with Tony had been to Heaven before and showed us how you could go around part of the dance floor and get a spot really close to the stage that nobody else knew about. So we were right next to the press box, and really close to the stage (well, the upper-right corner of it.)

A lot of indie hip-hop bands and one ballad singer performed, and then the main acts took the stage. Se7en was great. Even though I still only know 3 of his songs, and have seen him 3 times in concert, I enjoyed him. Then, G-Dragon and TOP came on. Be still, my heart. Because of our location we could see them waiting in the corridor to go on-stage, which was exciting. First GD came one and did his old solo song "Heartbreaker" and TOP came one and did his solo song "Turn it Up" before they united onstage and did some songs from their new album. Of course their performance was awesome. These guys really know how to work a crowd. TOP brought his standard moody too-cool-for-school attitude on-stage and GD was running and dancing around like a little kid. They finished way too soon (they had two other club shows that night, including one at Harlem in Hongdae which the YG CEO owns and Tony went to [actually it was so crowded he could just hear it from the staircase]) and although the audience screamed for an encore (in Korean it just sounds like you're shouting "Anchor! Anchor!" they didn't come back out. Too bad. Tony stayed out with our new friend, Lisbeth went home, and I took a taxi home (way cheaper and faster than I thought it would be!) and made a ham and cheese and onion and lettuce and tomato sandwich and Skyped with my family because it was Christmas Eve!

We also got a goody bag that had a party invitation with all the winners' Facebook and Twitter names, some stickers, and some pins and a pen. I think you were supposed to write your name on the pins and wear them, thus turning the T-Social Party into a true Social Party. I don't think anyone did that, though. They did have stations where you could use a Galaxy Tab or something to Tweet about the party, and they projected the Tweets onto the wall, which was cool.

Here are some pictures and videos from our night! Courtesy of me, Joelle, and the SKT Facebook page. (I never use flash and my camera isn't very good, and some of these photos were never edited for lighting or shadow, so they're not very good.)

Herb Island in Pocheon

Before the jimjilbang, Jae Hyun and I went on a little day trip to Pocheon, Korea, which is not too far outside Seoul (to get there, take Line 1 all the way to the end [Soyosan] and then take bus #57 for about 20 minutes to the Herb Island stop.) Besides my trip to Busan, and our school trip to the Garden of Morning Calm in Gyeonggi-do, this is the only time I have been outside Seoul proper since coming here in August. Really, almost everything worth doing and seeing is inside Seoul, save for some temples and ancient things, and the gorgeous beaches of Busan.

Herb Island reminded me of the Petit Prince village in Gyeonggi-do, which I saw fliers for at the Garden of Morning Calm. Both are miniature theme villages that are good places to go on dates or to go to take a ton of pictures of your Korean child. Herb Island's concept is letting you make your own herb soap and candles, buy plants in homemade pots, or buy pre-purchased products made with ingredients grown on Herb Island (which is not in any way, shape, or form a real island.)

So, here are some pictures! Some are mine, and some I stole from Jae Hyun's Facebook. He has a really nice camera and was writing about it for his college newspaper so he kind of had to take a ton of pictures.

The entrance to Herb Island

The Herb Island Restaurant. He got Korean bibimbap (rice mixed with vegetables and red pepper powder) and I got fish with vegetables and rice.

Me looking cold. It felt like -15 degrees Fahrenheit that day. I have never been that cold in my life!

Some miniatures you can buy for a dollhouse.

Jae Hyun pretending to sew in the life-sized dollhouse.

A small-scale reproduction of the Trevi Fountain. There's also one in the basement of the Lotte Department Store at the subway stop you use to go to Lotte World. Weird.

Inside the greenhouse.

The Christmas decorations were part of the Christmas Festival.

Jae Hyun says people go to this bridge to propose to their girlfriends.

I think couples write love notes and tie them to this tree. Kind of like how couples write notes and attach them to locks and keys and put them on the fences at Nam San Tower. A testament to couple-culture in Korea.

Korean baby posing for a picture with a Smurf. Smurfs are currently very en vogue in Korea.

Inside the Herb Restaurant: my picture this time.