New School Year

A new school year started March 2nd in Korea, and as much as I'm leaning towards a different job for next year, I have to say I am really, really enjoying this semester so far!

Maybe it was I started teaching in September, near the end of the Korean school year, and students were too bored or comfortable or tired to make much of an effort in my classes. But I'm seeing a lot of improvement in my class' noise level and participation. Plus, since they've only been in school for a few weeks, no one is really exhausted now! I've only caught two students sleeping in class so far, and I didn't care, because at least they were being quiet!

A really big change for me is that now I teach the first grade of middle school. I meet each second and third grade class once a week, and each first grade class every other week. I was terrified at first because I'd never taught students so young. I imagined myself standing in front of a class who couldn't understand a word I said. Or, I imagined myself standing in front of class showing animal pictures and saying very slowly and loudly "This is a cat. CAT." But teaching first grade has actually been a really pleasant surprise. They just started middle school and they are really excited to learn. They are by far the quietest students of all the grades, and they LOVE to participate in class. Their English levels really surprised me, and they all seem to want to communicate with me (even if it is just to ask how tall my boyfriend is, where my boyfriend lives, how I met my boyfriend, what my boyfriend's blood type is, etc.... hahaha!) I had them do a worksheet-based game this week that I used in a grade 3 class last semester. The grade 3 students didn't understand and almost all of them did it wrong, but the grade 1 students did it PERFECTLY! So, grade 1 is the bomb. Plus, they are only 12 and they are really adorable! And teaching them has given me two new co-teachers who are really great to work with. One is a new teacher at our school, and she is really nice. She even put a ton of chocolate on my desk for me when I returned after my stomach virus along with a penguin-shaped get well note. The other teacher, who I've known since September, really didn't like me at first; or at least, that's how I felt. I think she might have had a bad experience with a NSET in the past, or maybe thought I decided to come to Korea to teach because I couldn't get a better job in my own country because I'm a stupid lazy failure (which is apparently what a lot of Koreans think of foreign English teachers.) Anyway, right after the first class I had with her, I noticed she immediately started reacting more warmly to me and has been really friendly since. #WINNING.

One of my second grade co-teachers told me I've improved a lot since I started, and that is definitely true. I clearly told my co-teachers I wanted them to handle all the classroom discipline, since students never listen to me when I tell them to wake up or be quiet or stop throwing things at each other. I think my relationships with them have improved, and it's not difficult to imagine them asking me to renew my contract. Even if I didn't take the job, it would mean a lot to me if they asked me to re-sign.

But the best part is really the students. They seem better at English this year, especially the new grade 2 students, who I hadn't taught before (except some really smart ones in winter English camp) and the fabulous first graders. And even though I've been at my school for seven months (I can't believe it!), every day every single student shouts "HELLO!" at me or screams "I LOVE YOU MELISSA!" from an open window or tells me how beautiful my body/hair/eyes/whatever are. Come to South Korea if you have bad self esteem. Seriously. It's also nice seeing students I had in grade 3 last year who go to our high school now. Sometimes they run up to me and hug me (and I never remember them so it's really awkward for me!) and today I was literally encircle and swarmed by former students all screaming "WE MISS YOU" at me. Hmm. If they missed me so much, they shouldn't have talked so much in my class : )

Anyway, I know it just began, but this year started great, and with warm weather coming soon, I think it can only get better!

Cooking Korean Food!

When I came to Korea in August the only thing I knew how to cook for myself was a Pop Tart and instant ramen. Yes, I am fully aware that putting a toaster pastry in a microwave does not truly qualify as "cooking." I had lived at home all my life and the food at Bryn Mawr was always great, so cooking was never really an option. I knew some people liked to cook for fun, but spending an hour or two just to prepare one meal seemed totally insane to me.Now that I live in another country alone in my own apartment, feeding myself became necessary. After my first week in Korea I realized that surviving on a Paris Baguette sandwich every day for dinner was unrealistic. I mean, they put SWEET PICKLES in EVERYTHING. Sweet pickles are totally repulsive. So, I started to cook some simple meals for myself: first a grilled cheese sandwich, then boiled dumplings, and then pasta. I can make AMAZING pasta now. I can make a mind-blowing garlic-y onion-y tomato sauce pasta full of vegetables, and a classier olive oil, white sauce, and seafood pasta as well. I am a certified carbohydrate expert.

My delicious Valentine's Day meal... because I couldn't book a Korean restaurant :)Since I came to Korea I probably eat about two raw onions a day. Disgusting or delicious?

I also know how to cook four Korean meals and I should really thank Jae Hyun for this, whether he showed me how to make it or just provided me with the ingredients! Here are the Korean dishes I know how to make.

First, I actually taught myself how to make 해물떡볶이, which is one of my favorite street foods. It is haemul ddeokbokki, or spicy rice cakes and seafood. It's better with little bits of squid but my grocery store is so small they don't carry it- I'd have to trek over to a bigger store or Home Plus to buy some. The sauce is spicy (the main ingredient is Korean red pepper paste), and you can also mix in onions, garlic, and carrots, and random green vegetables.

Haemul ddeokbokki with mussels. You can make the sauce but I just buy mine from the store and add in some extra red pepper powder and paste.

Next, Jae Hyun taught me to make 된장찌개,a soup made with soybean paste. This is one of my favorite things to eat at restaurants, especially with samgyeopsal, but it never tastes as good when I make it at home! No matter how much red pepper powder I add, it's never spicy enough for me. This is best eaten with rice and side dishes like kimchi and those little dried salty fish I love to snack on all the time.

Usually when I make it I leave out the beef since I don't really like beef.

Then I taught myself how to make 김치찌개, which is kimchi stew. I think I started to make this because Jae Hyun's mother had given me an approximately 10-pound bag of homemade kimchi and I had no idea how I was going to eat it all and I was going to Japan in a week or two. This soup is delicious and is also best eaten with rice. I think I have a kimchi obsession because I also eat my kimchi jjigae with a side of kimchi.

The most recent Korean food I learned to make is 파전. Pajeon is a Korean pancake. It's very delicious and easy to make. Just like regular pancakes, pour mix into a bowl and then add green onions and onions and whatever else you want. I like to make kimchi pajeon and I usually put in little baby shrimp as well. You can fry it and then dip it in a little soy sauce when you eat it. It is so good! Also, as you can see, I finally bought a table. No more eating at my desk! Yay.

Soy sauce, little dried fish, kimchi, and kimchi seafood pancake. It's messy because I couldn't flip it correctly. It was too big!

Also, Jae Hyun picked out this metal thing for me at Home Plus that I can put in my pot and STEAM my dumplings, as opposed to boiling and then lightly frying them. This little metal thing is awesome and was about $3 and really improves the dumplings. It's like magic!

So, I know this is hard for everyone to believe, but I can actually cook now! And I enjoy it! I mean, except the fact that my kitchen has no heat and all winter I have been cooking in my kitchen in 20-degree weather. And the lightbulb really sucks. But other than that, it's rather enjoyable! And I only started a fire once!

Microwave rice (since the rice cooker that came with my apartment lacks a power cord,) kimchi, little dried fish, pumpkin, and fish cakes which Jae Hyun's mother made.

Big Bang Big Show 2011

I went to Big Bang's Big Show Concert on Sunday and it was amazing (of course!) This is the second time I've seen them perform together as a group. I've seen GD & TOP solo and Taeyang twice (once solo, and once in a car leaving Inkigayo... haha.) I will write more details and share the pictures and videos I took later.

Actually, going to Big Show was the #1 thing I wanted to do in Korea, so I'm really, really happy! I just wish we'd had better seats :( We were seriously the third row from the back of a humongous stadium.

Big Bang premiered their new single, Tonight, at the concert. The song and video aren't particularly spectacular, but they did film it in Las Vegas, which is interesting.

Also, continuing their tradition of producing funny parodies of popular Korean TV shows, they screened a 20-minute long parody of "Secret Garden" which was basically just an excuse for GD and TOP to kiss each other so the VIPs could scream. It was really funny, and I think they are all really amazing actors. I especially loved Daesung's evil ahjumma character. And I still can't believe how much GD looked like a girl!

(This is part one of two. This aired on a Korean TV show but some parts are different from the version aired at Big Show, most notably TOP discovering that G-Dragon is wearing Oska socks!)

Tokyo Trip in Detail

Here is a detailed textual account of the recent week-long trip I took to Tokyo with my friend Tony, who is also an English teacher in Seoul. Enjoy!

Day 1: We took the brand new (well, like, one-month-old) airport subway line from Seoul Station to Incheon (please remind me to fly out of Gimpo next time... it's about 45 minutes closer to Seoul!) Our flight was with All Nippon Airways and we had booked it at half the price it cost on Orbitz by going through a Korean travel agency (whose website had English options. It was very easy to do.) We got the cutest little ANA lunch box with raw tuna, fruit and vegetables, orange juice, a cookie, and- this is the best part- TWO kinds of sandwiches inside. One was (imitation?) crab and mayo, and one was ham and cheese. It was delicious! After about two hours we landed at Narita Airport and followed directions from our hostel's website to Asakusa. Asakusa is a part of Tokyo most famous for the Sensoji Shrine and surrounding market areas. It's by the river and although it was from from busy areas like Harajuku, Shinjuku, and Shibuya, we liked it a lot. We found our hostel, the Khaosan Tokyo Samura (great place!) without any trouble and explored the area after dropping off our luggage. We ordered noodles at a corner shop from a machine which was fun at first but later proved to be a very useful way to order, since each button had a picture. We wandered around the Temple and shrine area at night, later discovering that according to superstition we may now be possessed by fox demons. It was freezing cold and I was eating an orange ice pop. Then, since we were pretty exhausted from traveling all day, we went in for a nearly night.

Day 2: We went to Akihabara, the famous electronics and gaming district, since it was only a few stops from our hostel. Tony was in heaven. There are stores crammed wall-to-wall with old video games, DVDs, pop star goods, and arcades everywhere. We tried to get AKB48 theater tickets and they told us to come back the next day. We went in and out of various stores and then scoped out a maid cafe, where we paid for drinks, cakes, and the company of girls dressed in maid costumes. The cafe we chose was actually famous and even the Backstreet Boys have gone here! Apparently, you can see it in their Asian tour DVD. We ended the night in Shibuya, which is kind of like Myeongdong in Seoul but WAY bigger. So many people and so many stores. It was crazy. I bought a dress (actually, it's a shirt on me) in the famous 109 building. We got dinner at a cool place where you order from a computer screen (not surprised, since we were in Tokyo) and I ate a crepe (they are everywhere in Tokyo) while we walked around and went in and out of stores. Since it was another long day, we headed back to our hostel early.

Day 3- After grabbing a donut or similar item from the nearby Family Mart for breakfast, we returned to Akihabara to see an AKB48 trainee concert at the AKB48 Theater. We almost didn't get in, as the man selling tickets kept saying it was sold out. But then the man we met yesterday came in from the back and remembered us and gave us tickets. Mine was 1000 yen because I'm a girl, but tickets are twice as much for men :) There were only about 3 girls at the concert. The rest were creepy older men. We went to a waiting area, the hallways lined with pictures of the girls, where we checked our bags in lockers and waited to enter the theater. Actually, foreigners get special front-row-center seats, and Tony and I got to go in before everyone else. The seats were even marked "reserved for foreign visitors." The girls started out doing a dance with chisels and sexy coal miner outfits, and it didn't get any more standard from there. There was a song where they were all wearing Vegas outfits, and lacrosse uniforms (including sticks,), and own where their dresses and microphones were covered with bows, candy, and flowers. After the concert, everyone got to give them a high five as they left the theater. The girls were extremely friendly to us (I guess they don't get many foreign visitors) and said "Thank you!" and "Goodbye!" to us. After this, we went to Harajuku, the famous epicenter of teenage fashion in Tokyo. I didn't see as much crazy stuff as I'd expected, but I did see some Lolitas and ganguro girls and people with crazy clothes and rainbow hair and tons of makeup. We also checked out the park, where we watched rival gangs of rockabilly dancers in 1950s clothes with greased-back hair have dance-offs. We also checked out the Meiji Shrine, which is an eerily quiet wooded area in the heart of busy downtown Tokyo. We got dinner at a little healthy food cafe and I got another crepe. We explored Takeshita Street until it became apparent that everything was closing.

Day 4- We went to the POKEMON CENTER in the Shiodome Building! It was so cute! I was disappointed by the lack of older toys, but they had some around. Obviously there was a lot of Pikachu, but I also found Lapras surprisingly well-represented. Plus, you could buy plastic figurines of just about every previous-generation Pokemon. I bought a little Bulbasaur, Ivysaur, and Venusaur. I have them lined up on my desk so I can always remember my favorite (and first ever!!!) Pokemon. Yes, I live in a delusional world where Pokemon are real/important/my friends. There was a lot of merchandise of the new Pokemon from Black and White. Also, and this is the best part, the Center constantly plays a remixed one-minute loop of the PokeCenter music! I think the people there must go crazy! I bought more here than anywhere else... the Bulbasaur evolution figures for myself, a Squirtle for Jae Hyun, chocolates in a commemorative tin, candy in a Pikcahu tin, and Lapras/Pichu, Dragonair/Pichu, and Snorlax/Pichu coasters for my apartment. Later, we walked towards Tokyo Tower, stopping at Daimon Temple along the way. This was a nice temple, and much less crowded than Sensoji. We went up Tokyo Tower, which provided us with amazing views of the city, and actually discovered a cool graveyard at the back of the temple we hadn't noticed before. When we left the Tower, we checked out the graveyard, and then went back to the subway to check out Ginza. This is the nicest, most expensive area of an already nice and expensive town. My friend who had been here before said he felt like a hobo in Ginza. First we went to the Imperial Palace, and then tried to walk to a famous raw chicken restaurant in the central Ginza area that Tony wanted to eat at. Unfortunately, it was closed. We walked around and got yakitori in a small restaurant. Tony was happy because he got to have his raw chicken, while I had two chicken breast and one shiitake yakitori.

Day 5- Shinjuku was a main area we hadn't been to yet, so we went here to take advantage of the free observatory on the 45th floor of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building. It was just as beautiful as the view from Tokyo Tower. Everything looked like it was from Katamari Damacy! I'm terrified of heights but I love the view from up high. Then we went to Roppongi which was kind of a disappointment. The famous Roppongi Hills shopping and eating center was way too expensive, and the art museum I wanted to go to was also really expensive. We decided to go to Harajuku again. I got a weird deep-fried ball covered in mayonnaise and green onions with chunks of bread and vegetables inside for dinner (not so healthy) and another crepe, and we just walked around, taking pictures and looking at stuff. I think that was the night Tony went to the partying area on the bad side of Shinjuku Station, but I was really tired again so I just went to sleep!

Day 6- Odaiba! Probably the prettiest part of Tokyo. Odaiba is a little island offshore built on tons of trash. You can take a monorail here, and the view from its elevated track is beautiful, first of downtown Tokyo, and then the water. There are lots of things to do in Odaiba. We got lunch in Palette Town, which is a shopping and eating area. I also bought a shirt here. It's like the Venetian in Macau- the walls are built to look like Venetian palaces are above the stores and the ceiling is like the sky, and it even changes from day to night- but no canal. We went to the free Toyota showroom and looked at cute cars and played a driving simulation game that I was really bad at. There was also an antique car museum. My favorite place was Hello Kitty's Kawaii Paradise, which I'm sure children love. Everything is pink. You can buy Hello Kitty stuff, eat at Hello Kitty's Pancake Paradise, play games, and take pictures (for $6!) with Hello Kitty. We wanted to see the beautiful Palette Town ferris wheel at night so we spent some time in Leisure Land, a huge arcade. When we left, it was dark and the ferris wheel looked beautiful. We went down to the coast to see the famous Rainbow Bridge and the miniature Statue of Liberty. After getting a cheap dinner at the aquarium, we headed home on the monorail.

Day 6- At this point we had run out of things to do. Tony wanted to go back to Akihabara to buy more games. I definitely didn't want to do that, so I went to Ueno Park by myself. There are lots of shrines, temples, and museums here. I saw the pond and a handful of temples and shrines, and spent some time at the National Museum of Tokyo (gotta say, kind of a small and boring collection, but still some interesting stuff.) Since we didn't have phones, we met back at our new hostel (back in Asakusa) at 5:30 to check in to our capsules (we had checked our suitcases earlier.) The capsules were so cool! Surprisingly spacious and comfortable. I really liked the privacy. The only downside is that the end closes with a shade, not a plastic door like a microwave as I had expected, so I was woken up several times by other guests. I got up at 6 the next morning and took the elevator up to the communal shower floor, where I had to shower in a sauna room that was public. Actually, I was the only person there at that time, which was good. Then we grabbed our bags and started the trek from Asakusa to Narita to Incheon to our homes. After buying the subway and train ticket to Narita, I had exactly 3 yen in my possession. I cut it close, but it worked out OK.

My advice for people visiting Tokyo is: either be really rich, or be on a strict budget, because everything is really expensive! And it's true- you should bring cash, because most places only accept cash. ATMs are easy to find in big shopping malls in Shibuya and Harajuku, but not in most places! And most of them only take specific cards! (My Korean card is a Shinhan/Visa card, and several ATMs did not accept Visa- only weird Chinese and European cards.)

All in all, it was a great trip, and we did so much stuff! I'd wanted to go to Japan for YEARS, so I'm glad I finally did!