It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays blog readers! I finished my last class of 2013 on Friday, and now just have one and a half days of chilling at school before I am ON MY WAY HOME. Very exciting.  Last year everyone was feeling pretty gloomy around this time, but my imminent departure has filled me with Christmas joy. On my door I have a very pretty snowflake, in my gross kitchen I have a Christmas scented air freshener Adri left me actually smells a lot like a tree, and inside my little apartment I have managed to get some candles. It's very jolly!

On Friday I played review games with my kids. When I said we were playing games, one kid piped up " SIMON SAYS?" I was surprised as I thought grade 5 was too old for that game. Anyways, I had all my fancy shmancy computer based games to play which had specific phrases from the textbook. Well, when the computer decided to just shut off completely and refuse to turn on, I was sure glad to know exactly what the kids wanted. It was the most intense Simon Says ever. It was awesome. I was proud of myself for winging it successfully so here I am bragging online :)

Also exciting I met my coteacher's new baby son! He is, as expected, adorableeeeee. Sooo teeny tiny. It's always nice to be in a home with a new baby, especially a first child and first grandchild. He was getting so much snuggles and love, it was wonderful to see.

Anyways, here's some more little tidbits as usual!

I wonder what my neighbours all
think of their festive foreigner resident.
I imagine they feel cheered up by
my amazing craftiness.

Some girls sporting their new indoor slippers.

The fad of Canada Goose jackets has reached
Korea! That is.. sort of. I couldn't believe
this sketchy fake was worth 80$!

Correcting some grade six writing tests
I had a chuckle at this answer.

However, this was definitely the best of them all.

Two of my besties out here left this week forever.
Here's the gorgeous spread of our last meal!

Snow surprise! 

My kids were trying to make snowballs and throw
them at me. Growing up in Montreal,
I know my snow and I knew this was
not snowball snow. It was amusing
seeing their confusion when the powder
would blow back into their faces. 

TOO CUTE.

On a parting note: Part of my writing test was fill in the blanks. One blank was "Well ______!" with the correct answer being "Well done!" An extremely perplexing proportion of  low level kids wrote "Well barbecue!" This is a mystery that will never be solved.

Tidbits

This weekend I took a quick trip to Seoul with my friend Tina. It was really nice going with just one other person and no tourist agenda other than shopping. Being less touristy does mean I didn't really take any photos, but here are some for you to enjoy.

Amazingly delicious mandu, aka Korean dumplings.
One of my favourite foods out here.
Anyways we got a tasting platter in the
trendy university area, Hongdae.
This whole thing was only 8$!

On the subway I gave my seat
to a woman with a baby stroller
because I am a kind and decent human.
I grew concerned by how much
her baby was moving around,
when I realized it was a dachshund. 

I went to a little pub which served
french fries covered in mysterious powder.
Salt? Sugar? Parmesan?
Also served was a spring roll wrapped
around a "cheese stick." Imagine those
 processed cheese sticks
we got for lunch back in the day.
Obviously any kind of french fry and
fried cheese is always delicious,
but it was amusing enough without
the two fingered gloves given to us
to protect our dainty fingers. 

It was definitely a lovely trip. I feel like such a small town bumpkin in Seoul as I gaze up at every building and am ruthlessly jostled by hordes of people. It's always a lot of fun, but never entices me to move there! I am always fascinated by the freshly cut up "gangnam sisters" aka women who get their faces so plastic surgeried up they look like sisters. Oh swollen eyelids, how you terrify me. I also witness a plastic looking woman apply a full face of makeup on the subway. With her fingers. I am no germaphobe, but caking on foundation with your subway fingers seems like quite an invitation for a blemish or two. 

Back home I had a gloriously successful cooking experiment. I cooked some kimchi (cooked kimchi tastes totally different than raw. Much mellower) and added it to a classic western flavoured sandwich. It. was. amazing. I made a wrap of the same ingredients for dessert. 

Unrelated to anything,
but here I beat
my Words with Friends
MASTER friend with an
OUTSTANDING score.
I want to remember
this forever. 

And in a final note: to others living here wondering How to make a 1-800 (or 1-866, 1-877, you know, toll free) phone call from Korea. Turns out you can't from a phone... buttttttt you can use Skype to! I have no money on my Skype account, but I just pushed "call" and typed in the number and boom instant connection. Hurray success!

I'm all better! Also old.

I forgot how dramatic my last post was. I'm all better :) No more raw beef!

Also I received the greatest hat in Korea for my birthday.

Meat follow up

I woke at 5:30am clutching my stomach in agony. Teacher was dreadful. Ex-vegetarians, stay away from raw meat. I'm in so much pain and it's very unpleasant. (No one else is sick so food bourne illeness seems unlikely)

So full! Beefsplosion.

Today the grade 6 teachers received some kind of bonus. I am not exactly sure how, it seems they/we scored really well on teaching reviews. I was told I didn't review anyone since I don't speak Korean, so I said they all have high reviews IN MY HEART. Luckily, they are used to my humour and laughed. SO we went out to a gigantic beef dinner. The place is a butcher shop and restaurant so you pick your cuts then go sit down. It was called 소풀 which is "So Pul" which means.. cow something.. but anyways when I exclaimed "SO FULL" everyone laughed because to the Korean ear that sounds like the restaurant name! Works out well because literally every English speaker is likely to say that after a meal at this place!

Anyways we ate a variety of cuts including one very marbled specimen I was told was expensive. I try to tell the difference but I still can't really. (Also I still think piggy is tastier.)

THEN.. get ready for it..

I ate not one, but two kinds of raw beef!! It's very surprisingly light! I didn't catch the name of the first kind, but it was nice and served with little bits of what I think was Asian pear so it was super light and fresh. The second kind was called Mungtigi (뭉티기) and is apparently a specialty from Daegu. It was bigger slices and came with a little relishy sauce. Both were quite nice, much to my surprise! My coteachers kept calling it beef sushi which was a pretty good translation not knowing the accurate words! I did tell them tartar is more commonly used though, and that despite it being my first time, Westerners do also eat it.

I pretended I was a wolf while eating it. It was fun.

I am so meat-ed out though. I can feel my arteries clogging. I look very forward to some lentil soup tomorrow. I've gotten scarily good at leek, potato, lentil, and spinach soups. The secret, I've discovered, is a spoonful of cayenne pepper.

Bbq fume hood thingy. I'd never seen this model before,
kind of like a giant faucet.

Meattttt

Tartar # 1

Tartar # 2, mungtigi, and relish 

PS Washing my hands before lunch, I was surrounded by some of my kids doing the same. We can all see our faces in the mirror, which led one girl to exclaim
"TEACHER! Your face is WHITE!"
"Yes.. yes it is."
"Are all Canada people white face?"
"No, we are all different colours. White.. brown.. black.."
"I AM BROWN BYEEEEEEEEEEE!"

I had a chuckle.

Making Kimchi!

Super exciting! Today I got to make kimchi! Kimchi is made once a year, and many of my students told me that this was their weekend plan. I was envious. Super last minute, a friend of mine, Candi, who is married to a Korean man, Taek, invite me along to their kimchi making! I am so happy! It was so fun, and joining in with a family is always much more exciting than doing a tour group. The family owns a restaurant, so they need a lottt of kimchi. We were six people working and we covered 70 cabbages. They are doing 150 more tomorrow!!

Anyways it was super fun. We worked with Taek's mother and some family friends. I managed to impress one woman so much with my kimchi making skills she said I should meet her son! I also was brave and ate the offered oyster wrapped in kimchi. Quite an intense breakfast. Of course, we were fed until bursting and given giant tupperwares of kimchi to take home. I will let mine ferment and then experiment with some Korean cooking!

So kind of Candi and Taek to invite us along! 

Cabbages are cut into quarters and left to soak
in salt water as step 1.

I imagine step 2 is making the kimchi
paste, but we didn't see that. So all we
did was smear the paste onto the leaves.

While making these, we snacked
on the little leaves that fell off.
Fresh kimchi is tasty too!

Teacher Hike - NaeyeongSan, Pohang

Oh dear I actually went on this hike two or three weeks ago. Seriously worst blogger. Anyways, it was a beautiful day and my school took some teachers one a hike! I never say no to free cultural events, especially if there's a likelihood of free food at the end ! Add the lovely company of my coteachers and you have yourself a wonderful afternoon!

 On the walk from the parking lot to the hill, we passed through a little street lined with restaurants and shops. Shops sold trinkets common to most hiking areas: fans, walking sticks, water, knick knacks... and something I hadn't seen before..

Wait a second.. something's a little
weird with those bottles for sale in public....

 My coteacher's saw me taking photos (and giggling at the bottles) and insisted I take a picture of this lady making traditional noodles. When I commented on the industriousness of the Korean elderly, I was told that the latter said "If I do nothing, I will get sick." I laughed and said the Western mentality was usually more along the lines of "I am sick, so I will do nothing!"

Persimmon tree! Very tasty fruit.

Waterfalls!

Cool rocks

Ok so now we're on to the dinner part of the story. Dinner started off amazingly, with scrumptious kimchi and tofu and veggies to snack on.

We had a pumpkin (squash) savory pancake which was so delicious we ate it before I took a photo. I saw the menu had duck and squash, and I got all excited for this duck pumpkin dish that sounds amazing but I haven't had yet. But then, sadly, we were served one of the only Korean dishes I don't like!

This is a soup. It's called Samgyetang. Accoding toWikipedia, this means "chicken ginseng soup," but I call it "bland chicken carcass soup." Fun fact, ginseng is not actually that good.  It's not bad, but it's the only flavour in this incredibly boring soup. Also fun fact, the whole chicken is just plopped in there. So you get to dismember it with chopsticks and never know if you're eating meat or sinew or whatever else is in a chicken carcass. I mean, I guess it's nice they remove the feathers and innards, but I could really do without seeing the sad neck flopping around. Anyways, this soup was actually slightly different than the bland chicken carcass soup I'd previously had because it had another special ingredient...

Abalone.

Oh abalone. So expensive. So gross.

Bland chicken carcass soup was followed by bland rice goo. I think it's similar to congee? 

Add caption

While eating various bland chicken/rice stuff, this really freaky bit of fish was staring at me. I was too discouraged to give it a try.

HOWEVER While I complain, do remember I inhaled pumpkin pancake and seafood pancake along with all the sides so quickly no photos were taken. I just really don't like this weird soup, and I reallly don't like watery rice.

But I love you Korea and I love all your other food!! (ok not the bugs)

Oops I don't post much anymore

HELLO!

I remember reading  blogs before coming here, and all of them had a "Sorry I don't post much anymore" post. Well here's mine! I've gotten so much worse at being a documentarian. I am much less inclined to go on weekend trips than I was last year as all festivals start to bleed together, plus it's chilly, and even when I do go somewhere I always seem to forget my camera!

Side story, I taught grade four today. I teach them once a week, and don't teach with the homeroom teachers. So when I see the homeroom teacher at break they're always extra nice to me since I'm somewhat more of a guest and for whatever reason they all happened to be sweet middle aged ladies. Anyways, today I swear they called me beautiful for about ten minutes. It was incredible. I was wearing my nicest sweater which always gets comments (ironically purchased at a Korean grocery store!) but this was the longest compliment streak of my life! Ok no, that was sports day when I sprinted. But still! I keep trying to express to them that I am nothing special back home, but then this just elicits MORE compliments. They were asking me how to say "s-line" in English. This is the Korean way to describe an hour glass figure. I didn't have the heart to tell them a comment along those lines in the workplace back home would garner some very funny looks. Can you imagine a young teacher being told by her senior peers how shapely she was! 

I found such a glorious bakery. Check it out, I even
splurged on a 3$ avocado! All that is missing
is some decent cheese!

Beautiful night.

My friend's mom was in town so we went to that
"traditional" restaurant... If you look carefully beyond
the chandelier, there are Halloween streamers!
This was last week.
Also there was a strain glass window of
The Last Supper.
It was.. special.

Selfie at school. So. Cold.
(Although today they turned on
the heat for the first time!!
Was so much less cranky)

Last night my friend was invited by some coteachers to a show. As always, we had no idea what to expect but it was closeby and free. I obviously forgot my camera... Anyways, it was awesome! It was a show of traditional Korean instruments and dancing put on by local teachers and students! Turns out one of my kids was in it! It was truly amazing, especially the ribbon hat dancers! Anyways, after the show everyone had an awesome dance party outside where we were finally allowed to use our cell phones again!

Korean college entrance exam

As you should all certainly know by now, I teach elementary. So I wasn't really affected by the college entrance exam, but it's definitely an interesting aspect of Korean culture I thought might interest YOU my devoted blog readers.

This week, all students in high school grade 3 (aka grade 12 in our nomenclature) took a college entrance test. It is similar to American SATs - the scores determine which university you go to. Except from what I understand, these scores matter more than anything else in determining your university, and which university you go to determines your entire career, so safe to say these exams are a big deal.

For example, the exams are NINE HOURS long.

Here is an article with some more information. It explains the various ways the government help the students out, from delaying adult working hours to 10am to reduce congestion, to offering rides to students. Even our elementary school had no bells on test day, to reduce noise pollution in the area. I can't even begin to imagine the stress these kids must go through. My coteacher explained it is a culmination of all they have learned for twelve years, so they had better be ready. Yikes.

An interesting cultural side my coteacher also explained: it is traditional to give students sticky candies or sticky rice cakes before the test. This is because around 20  years ago, students would first apply to university before taking the test, and would actually take the test at the university they had applied to. Sticky rice cakes were given to help the students "stick" to the uni by doing well on their exams! Nowadays the test is done before applications, but the sticky treats are still given!

Seriously though, as much as I loved exams (I know I was weird deal with it) I don't think even I would have enjoyed one lasting nine hours. Nine hours. NINE HOURS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Sarcasm Win

Random shy kid had finished her work, so I told her "excellent!"

Then a boy, one of my favourites because despite being a huge guy he is a total sweetheart, overheard and said "I'm finished too! I'm excellent!"

I jokingly said "No, you are not excellent."

"Teacher?! why?!"

Of course I smiled and said "I'm joking!"

He thought it was SO funny. "Teacher!! Your face!! So real!!! I am so scared!!" I was amused and glad he was too.

Also I got TWO letters this week! One was given to me by a girl in class and she said "In class, no read. At lunch, read. OK?" Got it Ann student! (She's awesome because 1. great taste in English names, and 2. unabashedly wears glasses frames with no lenses in them and allows me to poke her through them)

The other was officially in my mailbox. Yay. Funny how when I first made my mailbox I couldn't possibly have posted all the letters I got, but it has died down so much now that each letter gets me blogging! It's ok, the novelty is gone for them, but not for me!

Oh another amusing story. Some girls were playing with makeup in one class (oh puberty) and I mentioned how one girl's lips were very pink. She told me it was a "tin-teu" and was SO impressed I knew the word. Her mind was then blown when I told her that "tint" was actually an English word. Even further blew her mind by saying that we had lip tints in Canada as well!


Some random shots:

Finally got a night photo at Anapji woo!

Where I get my nails done!

Oddly, trees here are totally massacred
in the fall. I have no idea why.
I think it's done in narrow roads
to prevent falling branches?
It's horribly ugly.

My cookie puddle. I need to work on my baking it seems.