Night out in Itaewon

Last saturday, Chuseok weekend, Cassy, Sam, and I decided we wanted to go out in Seoul. Now Seoul is a massive city, so when you go out at night you have to choose one of the neighborhoods, and we picked Itaewon. Itaewon has more foreigners than any other area, it's right by the US Army base so most of the shops, restaurants, and bars cater to foreigners. To get to Seoul from Songdo you travel by bus (1 hr) or by subway (1-2 hrs), and since it was Chuseok and the traffic was going to be insane, we decided to go by subway. But first we did a little pre-partying in Cassy's apartment before heading out and took some pics:

Then we headed out for the trip there. It took us forever to get there that night because of all the people traveling for the holiday, so it took us about two and a half hours! Another thing you do since it's such a long journey with lots of stairs and escalators is you wear a pair of fold up flats that you can stick in your purse when you get there and carry your heels until then. We all had bought some at H&M earlier that day, so we also were all matching! Haha we got a lot of stares:

So we finally made it to Itaewon and headed to the Grand Ole Opry. You heard me, there is a country bar in South Korea called the Grand Ole Opry! Just off the main street and up a steep street called Hooker Hill you see a big lit up sign that says "Grand Ole Opry - Seoul, Tennessee". Stepping inside sends you straight back to Texas. You can tell it's all regulars and we were obviously not ones especially since we were really overdressed. We grabbed beers and found a seat at about 15 til midnight. Every Saturday at midnight they play Lee Greenwood's "Proud to be an American" followed by the National Anthem, and everyone stands and sings along to both while facing the giant American flag they have on the wall. It was so great! Here's a few pics:

So great. And then afterwards is when the line dancing starts. They have a verrry small dance floor right in the middle of the bar and the people who get out there are very serious about it! Not very inviting to new comers, but then they played one I knew so I got out there and danced!

Haha it was a lot of fun, and I was obviously laughing really hard. They also played the Cotton Eyed Joe, but there was absolutely no room on the dance floor! Sam wants me to teach her some of the line dances so we can go back and she can get out there (she's from Wales). So after being there for almost two hours, we went to look for something else!
We walked back to the main street and ran into two guys who stopped us because they heard Sam's accent. One of the guys was from Yorkshire and the other was actually from Virginia, and they seemed nice and normal enough so when they invited us along to meet up with some of their friends at one of the pubs we went along. We walk in and the only people there are this group of about 15 guys, besides that the place is dead. So we think, well, we'll be nice and have a beer and then leave. But we actually end up staying for a long time because they're actually a really nice group of guys from all over the world and they play on the same intramural football team in Seoul. After a while though we tell them that we've got to go because we really want to go dancing, and one of the guys, Manos (Greek), says that he knows the DJ of the most popular club in Itaewon and he can get us straight in.
Turns out Manos seems to know all the right people, because for the rest of the night we bypass all the long lines of people waiting outside, pay no cover, and just get to go right into numerous clubs. It was so much fun! We definitely ran into the right people that night! Clubs in Seoul don't close until 6 or 7 am, so we stayed out all night. Around 6 we decided it was time to grab a taxi back to Songdo so we said goodbye, grabbed some food and headed back. A taxi back runs about $15-$20 a person, so it's definitely worth it on the way back.
It was a really fun night, and the three of us are planning on going out in Seoul again this coming weekend, but this time not Itaewon but in a University area!

Chuseok

So time to do a ton of blog posts!! I know it's been awhile since my last post, but we had a big holiday here in Korea last weekend so I've been enjoying my time off and not really had time to write any! So I'll start from the beginning, which is all about Chuseok.

Chuseok is basically a the Korean equivalent to an American Thanksgiving, except it's an even bigger deal. All the Koreans go home for the Chuseok Holiday, which was on Monday September 12th this year. So since everyone is traveling back to their hometowns, you want to stay away from the airports, trains stations, and bus stations on that weekend. Songdo was literally a ghost town last weekend, since no one is actually from here since it was just created about 8 years ago. It was so weird, no cars, people, nothing. Just us foreigners! 

Apparently for Chuseok teachers get gifts that Friday before, so I came home from work with some goodies, which was a nice surprise! Although they are not exactly things you get in America. Haha ya ok so my first gift I got from one of my kindergarden kids:

That was my first gift of the day, a fancy wrapped box of Elizabeth Arden beauty products. At that point I had no idea that it was normal to get gifts from the kids on Chuseok, so it was all very random to me!

Next I got this beautiful box filled with Korean rice candy and desserts:

Oh and then from the directer all the foreign teachers received a giant gift set of Laver, which is dried seaweed!! I actually tried some of it, but it tastes awful!!

You can't really tell how much is actually in there, but it's about a years supply of seaweed. I have no idea what I'm going to do with it. Other than that I got some smaller gifts like boxed pastries, a Starbucks gift card, some fruit, and small rice ball desserts. Huge gift sets of Spam are also a very popular gift over here. They really love their Spam and Seaweed. Cassy got a huge gift set of Spam, so since we've both never even eaten it before we're going to find a decent looking recipe online and experiment. It just doesn't seem right letting it all go to waste without at least trying!!

So that's Chuseok in Korea, family, food, and spending time together. Of course I spent my weekend very differently, but I'll tell more about that in my next post!

My Moment of Fame in Korea!!

It's Friday morning here, and before we start our Holiday weekend here and I have even more to post about, I thought I would finish up the happenings of last weekend!

On Saturday we went to another baseball game, but this time it was packed with people! Crazy traffic getting in, because the team our team was playing is the equivalent of the Yankees back home, so they have a huge fan following. It was a lot of fun to be at a game like that, and the weather felt like a texas fall back home, so it was perfect. Here's some pictures of all of us there:

Bora, me, Cassy, Sam, and Kristin

Sam, Cassy, and I with the mascot

Oh and last time I posted about the baseball game I gave you some footage of the strange chants and dances of the cheerleaders, well this time they busted out a disco number complete with wigs and sunglasses! No videos sorry, but I do have some pictures:

Sooo very random. The game was really exciting and very close, but our team did end up losing sadly. Buuuut I came to school on Monday and one of my older students asked me if I had gone to the game, and I thought maybe he had seen me there but not said hello, so I was teasing him about being afraid of me. But he starts getting really excited and tells me he was watching the game on tv, and that's where he saw me! Apparently we were on tv a few times and for long intervals! Haha so there's my little claim to fame in Korea. I'm sure I was pretty funny looking, yelling all these Korean chants that I have no idea what they mean!
They also had a tribute to the foreign baseball players on Korean teams that night, complete with a nice cheesy video (The Calling, Where ever You Will Go song in the background playing haha). And they had fireworks, and they were so close! I love fireworks, oh and there were a few different sparkly ones I saw that I haven't seen in America before:

Anyways, after the game we went and ate some street food that's set up in tents right outside the baseball complex. They're supposed to be mimicking food tents you would find out in the country years ago, so they're very traditional in terms of food and drink. Because of this, instead of cups you get bowls to drink out of, since in the country to save money they wouldn't buy cups but just use bowls for everything. And we drank traditional fermented rice wine out of them (which has a slight yogurt taste) but is supposed to be healthy for you because of that. Minus the alcohol in it of course.

And here's a closer view of my bowl/cup:

And the rice wine we drank (also added a shot or two of soju in it):

And Cassy and I "enjoying" it haha:

In traditional Korean dining, you order a few main dishes and everyone eats off the same plate and shares, so following that we all shared a seafood pancake, which wasn't  like american pancakes but more of a chewy texture with shrimp, shellfish, and squid in it:

And yes you cut it up and eat it with chopsticks. I actually like this one, it didn't have a strong fish taste and the baby shrimp were yummy. We also ordered some sort of squid/octopus dish which was EXTREMELY spicy and I couldn't look at it for too long at a time because of the tentacles:

Om nom nom, right? Not so much! So it was a really great weekend, and now I'm so glad it's friday again and we have a 4 day weekend!!!! It's much needed, I've been sick this entire week so I need some R&R to recover. I'll be sure to let everyone know what I got up to on my holidays, have some really random fun things planned! :)

Free Beer!

Yes, you heard me, free beer on Friday! The Songdo International Beer Festival is still going on here, it actually lasts until September 9th, so Cassy, Sam, and I went over there Friday night after work. It's all held outside in these tents that are set up with a main stage in the middle with tons of tables and chairs. We walked around and sample all kinds of beer and rice wine, mostly Asian made but a few European beers were there also. They have all kinds of great street food there too, it all looked and smelled so good! We decided on Cass, a South Korean beer, and for 10,000 won ($9) we got 5 big beers. I mean it was soooo cheap! So let's just say that wasn't our only round. And the beers not bad. For dinner I got a Turkish Chicken Kebab, I had no idea how much I missed eating tortillas but it was so good.

Here's my beer and kebab:

The picture is a little bright, sorry, but you get the jist. And here's a photo of what they shave the chicken off of to make the kebab:

And then this is a really common street food in Korea, they're potatoes that have been sliced very thinly in a swirl and then fried, so basically potato chips on a stick!

And then I think this is pork on a stick, could be chicken, but pork is a lot more common here so that's why I think that's what this is:

Here's a shot of the stage, when we were first walking around a Korean guy was singing on stage with the most fakely high pitched voice I've heard, it would have been a joke in the US, but they seemed to really like his voice. Anyways, he was singing 'Memory' from the Broadway show 'Cats', it was just so random and funny.

They had a ton of different singers and styles, from a jazz saxophone playing Hey Jude, to a Korean Elvis, to a pop band singing Ricky Martin.

Here's a video of the Ricky Martin song, we were all singing along at the randomness (that's Cassy and Sam in the video btw):

Needless to say it was a great time and it was across the street from my apartment! I'll have to keep a look out for other things going on there, one of the teachers told me that they had traditional Korean wrestling one time, so I hope that one comes back! That's it for tonight, I'll have to write about this past Saturday another time!

Field Trip Friday!

This past week was crazy, report cards were do for each class, lesson plans for the next month on the computer, and we had phone teaching too (where we call the kids at home and ask them a bunch of questions). A lot happened too, Jemma's contract was up so a new teacher arrived this week to take her place. The new teacher is named Sam and she's also English (well actually Welsh) she's really nice and she's an actual teacher back in England so she's settling in well. On thursday night we had a going away dinner for Jemma at the Korean BBQ place (so delicious) and then went out for drinks after that, all on the director's bill! I also received care packages from home this week, really wonderful surprise, and I shared some of my twizzlers with the other teachers! So here's all my sussies:

I'm excited to hand out some of the candy as prizes, and I'm going to try to play Old Maid with one of my kindergarden classes this week! 

On Friday, we had a field trip for all the kindergarden classes to learn about Korean traditions. All the kids dressed up in the Korean Hanboks and we took buses out and learned about traditional dress, tea ceremony, bowing, games, and dance. The kids were sooooo cute, here's a few pictures from the trip:

Learning the traditional tea ceremony:

Then they played traditional games, the first being throw the arrow in the bucket:

Then kick the sparkly pom pom ball:

And finally a mixture between throwing dice/lots and a board game:

Then we all learned how to properly bow, boys first:

And then the girls turn:

Ok so every hanbok is different, and little Emily's had a red cap/hat to go with it. All throughout the day it kept moving around and sliding into her face, I was laughing really hard about it, and kept taking pictures. I tried to be discreet, but I think she caught me in the pic below. It was just so funny though!

So cute!

After learning to bow it was time to learn a traditional Korean dance! They put these weird white sleeves over their hands and kinda waved them about, as you can see in these pictures:

And then here are two videos of them dancing, the first one is the actual dance they learned, and the second is freestyle chaos dancing:

And then here are a few pictures of the outside grounds of the place:

As you can see, it's right in the middle of all these really modern buildings, so it was a very drastic new vs old scene, especially with all the kids in Hanboks. It was a really fun trip, and it was nice to get out of the classroom and do something different! Ok more posts to follow on what happened this weekend!