Christmas was really nice. I ended up working like a freaking elf (hee hee) to get everything for the kinder kids (Ivy Kids) event but it ended up working really great. All the kids loved it and their moms had fun so it was great. My room was, of course, the biggest hit since we had "FunLand" with games and snacks. Then the afternoon kids had their Christmas Carol contest (that I mentioned earlier) and almost all of my classes won. In fact 3 out of my 4 classes won and got to have snack parties. They were so cute and they did such a good job. I was so proud of them. Although I made sure that before they went out there I told them "No matter what Susy teacher is very happy and proud. You are the best for Susy teacher." Because Julia (one of the Korean teachers) told me that her class cried when they didn't win and I didn't want that to happen. :-)
For Christmas weekend I headed up to Seoul. Mostly we just putzed around and walked in the little shopping area near his apartment in Sungshin. We also went to this awesome place called Dongdaemun Market which is really famous. It was great. I got a scarf and a necklace and Jure bought me a cute hat for my Christmas present. Then some of the people from Jure's school were getting together and ordering Turkey from some fancy schmancy hotel on Christmas Eve so we went to his friend Chris's apartment and had this uber-traditional American Christmas dinner in the capital of South Korea. The oddness of it kinda hit all of us. Nevertheless it was absolutely delicious.
----- My epitomal "so-I'm-in-Korea" picture (near Dongdaemun Market).
----- Walking the side streets in Dongdaemun (the weird stuff they serve at some of these restaurants you can't even imagine - they sell these little octopuses/octopi?? that you're supposed to eat live and as you try to swallow them the little suction cups thingies get stuck on your throat... ok that's gross and I'm not normally squeemish)
----- The pretty lit up pyramid outside Doota dept store in Dongdaemun.I came back to Daegu for a really short work-week. The I headed back to
Seoul for New Year's weekend. On Saturday Jure and I met up with his best friend Jeremiah and his wife Som, who is the cutest girl ever. She's Thai and her english isn't too great so far but she is soo much fun. So we headed over to Itaewon (an area of Seoul where there are a lot of clubs and a lot of foreigners go there to go out). It was funny cuz as soon as we got off the subway I heard salsa music and I was like WTF. But at the time that we went in there it was pretty empty so we went somewhere else instead. We ended up at the UN Club (??) where they played hip hop music. At first it was mostly me on the dance floor by myself (I needed my Titi and Suki and Putz very badly) but then Som got inspired and came to dance with me and finally we got the boys off their butts. We danced until 5:30 in the morning. How great is that? We got to just take the metro back to his apartment since it had restarted. I felt kinda bad thou cuz Som felt pretty drunk and Jeremiah had to carry her on his back the whole time (what a good husband).
----- In Itaewon getting a couple of beers.
----- Dancing with SomThen on Monday, December 31st, we hadn't really decided what to do, so we just met up with the people from Jure's school in Downtown Seoul. We were right near the ECC Head Office at the Jogno Sam-Ga stop, so that's like in the middle of it all. There were millions of people there and we got to see the bell being rung right at midnight by these monk guys. It was pretty cool. Excluding the fact that it was absolutely, completely, ridiculously freezing. I really thought my toes were going to fall off. I could barely walk. Additionally, there wasn't like an official fireworks display. It was just people with roman candles shooting them off. I don't know about you but the idea of a bunch of crazy drunk people (foreigners) shooting Roman candles is not exactly comforting. A couple of people started shooting them down at the floor so they would bounce around and hit people's feet. Yea, it was both as bad and as funny as it sounds. After the impromptu/informal fireworks display we all headed back over to Itaewon to dance the night away. We ended up in a place called Polly's Kettle (again ??) but it was pretty fun. I got to dance and Marni (a girl I knew from mine and Jure's orientation) and I got up on these tables and started dancing. It was pretty funny cuz the manager guy came over and we thought he was going to tell us to get off but instead he just told Marni to put on her shoes and then he told the bartender to start flashing lights at us. I loved it. Yet again, we were out til the morning. We didn't head back until about 6AM. And the subway ride was interesting. We met a couple of drunk Russians (who couldn't even walk straight) and then some silly Korean girls (who i think for some reason thought i was gay??? i'm not at all sure why??). So for the second time in one weekend I didn't go to sleep until the sun was out. But at least I had fun.
----- All the people and the fireworks/roman candles in downtown Seoul.
----- The first kiss of the new year (for good luck ;-p)
----- Dancing at Polly's Kettle with the Seoul ECC crew.The lack of sleep did not really make for a very good work week once I got back to Daegu. Especially because the ECC (school) month officially finished and the new month began which meant a lot more work. At the end of the month we have to set up a ton of things for the next month and do evaluations and progress reports for each child. So that's what I've been doing most of this week. It also did not help that on Wednesday I started to feel super sick. It was not pretty. I made myself some chicken soup on Thurday and tried to rest (and took a lot of Sudafed) so I feel a lot better now. And now I just need to prep all my lessons for this month and clean my apartment. Any words of motivation?
And I promise to be better about the blogging thing from now on.
No comments:
Post a Comment