China

Well, I'm back from an absolutely amazing time in China! I kept a written journal of what we did every day while we were there, so that is what is post will be. I will make a post of only pictures and a video maybe tomorrow or the next day, but today will just be writing. It was an AMAZING experience and I will never forget it!!

Beijing, China - January 24th, 2009

Starting our day off in Korea and finishing it in China was stressful, busy and hectic, but also really fun and SO different from Korea. First, we woke up at 4:45 a.m. to the thickest snow fall I've seen yet in Korea. We met Jenny at the Songnae Station, and caught our bus to the airport. The airport consisted of a lot of stress and headaches, but we are now in China, so everything is fantastic!

We boarded our bus after arriving at the airport in Beijing with both bags in our hands and under our eyes! Soon we found ourselves at a North Korean style restaurant. It was called Pyong-yang something. It was North Korean food (which I thought was rather close to South Korean food), but Jenny said she noticed a difference. In the restaurant, there was a stage at one side. Shortly after dinner, 3 girls came out and sang traditional North Korean songs. I didn't really know until afterwards, but all of the staff and the 3 singers were all North Koreans!! We had a chance to meet 2 South Koreans in our tour group who lived in Australia for 10 years and they speak really really good English. They were telling us that the North Koreans who work at the restaurant work there for 5 years, and then they are required to go back to North Korea. After their shift every day they must go straight to quarantine, and they're not allowed to talk to anyone outside of their restaurant. Also, they don't make any money doing this, all the money (which is very little) goes back to North Korea to their parents. The 2 Korean guys (Brandon and Lynden) were saying they were scared to meet North Koreans, because it was their first time, and as of maybe even 5 years ago if the North Koreans were caught touching the South Koreans in the restaurant they would be killed by the North Korean government. We ended up talking a lot about North Korea, and they told us that when you go to visit North Korea (when the borders aren't sealed), you only go certain places and the people you see aren't even regular civilians, but paid actors who create the image of a stable country. Apparently the state of North Korea is so bad now that people are starving to death, and the situation is so desperate that they are eating the corpses of those who have died.

It was so mind blowing that this is happening in the world somewhere, that I still don't think I completely believe it. I can't put into words how I felt, (and still feel) about the situation in North Korea. It's just tragic. Anyway, I will continue to write about our day.

Anyway, these three North Korean girls came onto stage and began to sing a song called "Pangupsimnida" which means "Nice to meet you". What a cultural experience, I don't think I'll ever see something like that again.

After dinner, we went to a palace called The Temple of Heaven. It was very pretty. Just as ornate and detailed as those in Korea, but these ones certainly looked different. The palace was quite big, maybe as big as the Cheongdeokgung in Korea. After we visited the palace, we boarded our bus and ended up at a market / department store area. We caught a show with fake dragons that were dancing and jumping to music in celebration of the lunar new year.
I took some great pictures, but more importantly, that moment called for a video so I took 3 videos which I plan on stitching together into a nice edited video with sound and everything like text and effects.

After the market and dragon show, we went to an acrobat show. It was AMAZING! I had never seen anything like it! They were doing everything from plate spinning, to riding a bike around with 10 people stacked on it, to laying down and spinning a table around on only their feet! I got lots of pictures of that, so that is good. I also got a D.V.D. for 40 Chinese Yuan (roughly $8 Canadian). That show was something else! Following that show, we had dinner at a restaurant which was Chinese. Chinese food is very different in China than Chinese food is in Canada! There are no chicken balls, or shrimp that has been breaded and deep fried! Instead, there is fish, duck, rice, breaded & deep fried radishes and more that I unfortunately forget now.
Finally, after dinner, we got to go to our hotel. It is the nicest hotel I have ever stayed in! It is very beautiful - landscaping, the outside, and the interior decorations make me feel like a King living in a palace. It is very nice.

Tomorrow we are going to the Great Wall of China, which should be amazing. I was going to start to talk about the economic extremes here, but I won't bore you with that until the end of the trip's blog.

Sheay-sheay (thank you).

Day 2

Today I crossed off one item on my life's "to do list" - I climbed the Great Wall of China. As we approached the site that we visited, I thought to myself - "This is the most beautiful scenery, the curviest roads, and the most exotic adventure I've ever taken! The closer we got, the more beautiful the scenery became! The curvier the roads turned! It was all very exciting. We finally got to the Great Wall after we visited a Chinese herbal medicine museum. The museum consisted of a short history of Chinese Traditional Medicine and a lady who pressed my hand, asked to see my tongue, and proceeded to tell me that I often have an upset stomach, but not to worry because it is not serious.

Anyway, we arrived at the Great Wall of China and soon we were on a gondola type lift thing going up the mountain. The scenery may have been the most beautiful experience.  Hundreds of mountains scraping the sky that - when you admired their cloud-topped summits - glimpses of the 5000km Wall would reveal themselves.

We began to explore the Wall by climbing a bunch of uneven stone steps that were so steep, I found myself clutching the ice-cold railing for support. The wind and temperature reminded me very much of North Bay in the coldest of the winter season. The wind chill was probably around -25C or so. Anyway, the short story is that it was an experience of a life time that I will NEVER forget. It was surreal.

Shortly after the Great Wall (where I bought a book about the construction and geography of the wall), we travelled a short distance to a fantastic lunch - the best I've had yet in China! There, we shopped at a really nice store that had glass ornaments in all sorts of shapes and sizes. I bought 2 things - humming birds that are on nice golden leaves, and have really nice colours. They are for my Mom and Grandma.

After that, we went to get massages which was really relaxing, especially on the day we decided to climb the Great Wall of China! I'm telling you - they don't use the word "Great" loosely. The thing was huge.

After the massages, we found a Chinese McDonalds which was great! I took tons of pictures that I can't wait to show to Steph!

We finished off the day with a visit to an aquarium which had sharks, alligators, plattipus, and tons of other fish - many of which we saw while walking through an underwater tunnel!
The dinner was alright, but not as good as the lunch we had, so it didn't really compare. Now we are sitting in the hotel room visiting, with the sound of fireworks in the background, as they have been going off all day since around 2 in the afternoon! (The fireworks were going from then until we left on Tuesday!!! All day every day!!!)

Tomorrow is the "new year" night, as well as our visits to the Forbidden City and Tienanmen Square.

Until tomorrow...

Day 3

Today was just as eventful as the last two days have been. We started off the day with a visit to another McDonalds! It was great! We also had a trip to a Haagen Das restaurant which was wonderful! After that, we went to a really cool restaurant that had a mix of Chinese and South-east Asian food. (The McDonalds wasn't part of the tour group in case you're wondering why we ate twice in a row). Anyway, it was a good meal, and restaurant was decorated like we were in a jungle! They also had a show with dinner which was pretty cool. I took lots of pictures and videos, so that is exciting. After lunch, we went to another item of my life's "To do list" - Tienanmen Square and the Forbidden City. It was really amazing, but there were so many people!!! The roofs in the Forbidden City are all sparkling gold - mute testimony to the wealth of the royals that lived within the surrounding walls.  Walking from the south to the north, each building becomes more and more spectacular, each out-doing the last in beauty. The place was HUGE - I think around 9000 people lived there when it was being used. I bought a book about the place, so that's good.

After the Forbidden City, we went on a trip on a rickshaw type thing, but driven by a bicycle. We went behind the walls that face the street and have neighbourhoods behind them. It was a really interesting experience. The neighbourhood we went through reminded me of the Casbah in Morocco, but without the pushy sales people. It was great to see actual locals in an authentic setting, away from the touristy things of the city.

After that, we went to a random Latex pillow store that I was not at all into. We got some funny pictures though.

Then we went for dinner which was almost the same as yesterday's so I won't talk about it here. After dinner we went to a show called A Night of Beijing which was amazing!! It gave a history of China through dance, music and drama. The dancing was really cool, but the music was really cool too. I took lots of illegal videos which should turn out great. Anyway, as I said before, we met those 2 Korean guys, so they're coming over tonight for some soju drinkage as it's our last night in Beijing.

Tomorrow we are leaving at 9 to go to the airport to head back to Korea. It has been an amazing trip - one that I will never forget!!!!!

I miss you, Beijing!!!!!

K bye.

Now that I'm in Korea again and I'm thinking of more things, I will say one more thing about the economic extremes in China. You will see a luxury apartment building with a shanty town right next to it. It's all about polarity there, especially when it comes to the rich and poor. As you drive up and down the main streets, there would be solid walls that were about 10 feet high, with doors every now and then leading to behind the wall. Behind the walls, there were twisty narrow pathways with really poor housing conditions. They had a common washroom for every 20 houses or so.

The night of new years we were sitting in our hotel room and all of a sudden it sounded like there was a HUGE explosion outside. We looked around, and saw the clock was at midnight. The fireworks we saw were incredible! They were EVERYWHERE. We went outside in a hurry to see as much as we could, and the sky was just as bright as day because of all of the fireworks. Everywhere you looked there were fireworks going off. In parking lots, back yards, next to cars... everywhere. It was so loud everywhere that car alarms were going off. It felt like everyone in Beijing must have stopped and looked at the sky at that time. It was really really cool.

That's my journal from the trip. One funny thing - the English translations on some things were hilarious like the card we got in our hotel room when we arrived that said "Go, do not forget to family at a safe".

Alright, until the post comes with pictures and videos, I hope that was a good update about what I did in China!

Buh bye

Tickle me pink by tickling the ivories which tickles my fancy.

That title was a little 'out there'. I apologise.

I am ordering a piano. It's 399000 won which is $371 Canadian. I'm excited.

In other news, I asked my junior class to write letters to people I know in Canada. I based the people on who I didn't think would mind answering a letter from a student here, and people who often read my blog so they will know that I need their information! haha.

They have already written their letters, and I have them. There are several letters, but 3 of the people I don't have your e-mail addresses! Here are the people!

Kate (from Manitoba!)
Karen (Aunt that is.)
Erin K. (Steph's Aunt)

If I could ask you to please either ask for my e-mail address from someone who may know it (I don't want to post it on here), or you could comment on my blog with your e-mail address, and I will NOT publish the comment. Which means that I will get an e-mail with your comment and I have to approve it, so I would just write down your e-mail address and delete the comment before it gets put up on my blog. Either way I would appreciate it. Here are all the people to whom letters are going:

• Aunt Karen
• Steph
• Steph's Aunt Erin
• Mom
• Dad
• Jill
• Melissa
• Donna
• Kate (Manitoba)
• Phaedra

I hope all of those people are O.K. with writing a short 4-6 sentence response to the letters I send them through e-mail. It would be a great help and I think the kids would really like it!

For when you receive the letters in your e-mail, please reply in very simple English, these kids are JUST learning! lol. I will provide more details when the letters go out. Before then I need to figure out how I'm going to send the letters through e-mail. I am thinking of taking a picture of them and sending the picture through e-mail.

Anyway, I am going to go, I think this post doesn't follow any type of logic or sequence. I just realised that it has been quite spastic. Anyway, the big news is the piano. I shopped around at many different stores across Korea and the cheapest I could find was on the Emart website! haha, when all else fails just stick with what you know!

My supervisor has ordered it for me, and I should be getting it within a couple days!!!!!!!!!!! Living without a piano has been like someone chopped a leg off... i.e. very difficult to function! haha. Anyway, I'm not expecting the best for what I'm paying, but it will be better than nothing! I think it will be nice!!!

Alright, I think by the end of this pay period I'm going to be totally out of money! haha.

OH, this weekend I'm going to China. I don't know the last time I mentioned that in here, but that is what is happening. It is the lunar new year here, so it's a pretty big weekend. I am excited.

Alright, I will go now. I should already be in bed.

Bye!!

This week...

Hello everyone! I haven't updated my blog this week, but it has been busy. I will give you a brief update now!

During the week was pretty usual, school, sleep, lesson planning. Friday night, Sarah and I went to EMart which was fun. I ended up buying Jenga and we played a bit. That was it for Friday, because we had a pretty busy Saturday.

On Saturday (yesterday) we had our first Korean class of the new year! I really enjoyed it! I met a bunch of new foriengers which was great! They are all American, so I will 'represent' our 'hood to the best of my ability. (Jill & Jay that 'hood bit was for you).

Anyway, I met people from: California, Minnesota, Oregon, North Carolina and Hawaii. It was pretty fun. After Korean class, we went back to Chinatown in Incheon, where I went before and took those pictures for this blog. It was nice. We did the same thing as before: restaurant, the park and the coffee shop.

Saturday night we went to a place called Nicolia's Cafe which was really charming. I really liked the atmosphere. We ate there, and ended up laying LIFE, and Cranium. (Life was the cafe's and Cranium was ours.) We played Cranium with James (Britain), Joel (Minnesota), and Kayla (I forget, but somewhere in the states). It was really fun. Joel and Kayla live in the apartment next to us. Very exciting! New foreign friends!

Anyway, today is Sunday and we are going back to Itaewon. I want to go to the foriegn food store that I went to last weekend after the bookstore. We are studying a Spanish unit in one of my classes. I am going to make a little bit of Spanish food for them for tomorrow! Should be fun!

Well, I have 7 more essays to mark, and this procrastination has gone on long enough! haha. Thanks for all of your comments, I really like reading them!!

See ya

Pay Day

After about 7 weeks of penny-pinching, I finally got paid!!! It was a delicious feeling. Well. The first thing I got was a cell phone. In Korea, you can't really get a land line (unless you're a local, and even then no one has one). So. I needed a phone to be contacted by work / friends so that is the story of the cell phone. It's about $20-$30 a month. Depending on how much I talk. Also, my phone number is weird! It's in this arrangement: 000-0000-0000. It is very sleek. I also bought a little mushroom from Super Mario Bros. to put on the phone. Please observe:



It's a little blurry, but my camera also isn't the best. You get the idea.

I'm officially in the 21st century now. It's still a little confusing, but I'm getting used to it. My last cell phone was 9 years ago and it was the black and white Nokia 5110 . You know... the one that would just turn off whenever it felt like it? haha. The good old days.

The next day (Saturday) we went to Myung-dong again. It was pretty fun, and I got some clothing. Shopping is different here in Korea! Everything from sizes to the way they literally stand right next to you staring at you while you browse through the stores.

The first major thing I noticed was the sizes. I am usually a medium in Canada. I have a thin body, but my arms are long. That's somewhat normal in Canada. BUT. In Korea, if you have long arms like me, it's assumed that you're grossly obese. As a result, I would find things that fit me perfectly around the chest/stomach area, but the arms were short (I mean like half way up my forearm). When I found things that had the right arm length, the actual body of the shirt made me look wider than the Valles Marineris... SO. In most cases I ended up buying XL!!! (Which is still tight around my body!!)

Anyway, after some searching and hunting, and trying on and pushy sales people, I finally found some stuff. I will tell you the original price and the haggled down price along with these pictures.




This was 50 000 W, but I said 40 000 W. That's approximately $34.68 Canadian. (I'm using http://www.xe.com/ , so there's nothing approximate about that... lol!)

I like this one because the collar is different with the buttons, and it's lighter than my other sweaters that I wear to work. Also, it's very "old man", which I like. I think these are called cardigans.









The green sweater and this stripy burgundy dress shirt came from the same store. I wore them yesterday after I bought them. I was really daring here, I would never put burgundy with green, but it looked really nice. Anyway, they were supposed to be 28 000 each, (56 000 in total), but I got 50 000 in total ($43.35 CAN). A little pricey, but oh well. They look nice.






I think this was my 'best buy' of the day. I got a sweater and a little tie from "Forever 21". I wasn't allowed to haggle here, because it's a store something like Old Navy or the Gap. BUT. They were on sale. The shirt was 14000, and the tie was 12000 (26000 = $22.54 CAN). This is also something I'd never buy (The small tie especially...) but it's really popular in Korea so I'm calling this my "Korean outfit". haha. I need a white dress shirt to wear under the sweater to put the tie on... perhaps with my dark jeans and a dress shirt. I think that would look nice.

Lastly - and I think most importantly / practically - I bought a new winter jacket. I knew it got cold in Korea, but perhaps I didn't think that it would get as cold as home, or maybe I thought I could handle it... Anyway, I didn't bring my heavy winter jacket from home. It was too big to pack and it was rather large and made me look like Appa Sherpa. Also, we're going to China in 2 weeks, so I wanted a warm jacket because it's colder in Beijing than it is here. So this is my new jacket:

Rather snazzy I do believe. It was on a MAD sale. It was half off. The original price was 369 000 ($319.97), so the price I got it for was 185 000 ($160.42).

It's fur all in the inside except the sleeves (I wanted it to be in the sleeves too, but oh well). It is very comfy. I love the feeling of the fur around my neck! Also, I think it looks more "grown-up" than my corduroy jacket from the gap that is so old it's starting to turn red.

My goal in shopping yesterday was to find more clothes I can wear to work. I think I succeeded. I haven't gone shopping for a very long time, so that was fun. The last time I went shopping and bought that much stuff was probably while I was at Western 2 years ago! haha. Twas fun.

Well those were my purchases for yesterday. Needless to say, with those purchases and China coming up in 2 weeks, I shan't continue this financial frivolity. My goal is to save $1000 every pay cheque. The only exception I will make is for travel. (As that was one of the main reasons for coming here in the first place). SO. As such, I will be saving $1000 every pay cheque until May. I won't save $1000 from May's pay because I'm going to Japan that month. The same goes for July (when I'm leaning towards going to the Phillipenes), and when I leave (I'm going on a trip to somewhere random). In total, I should be coming back to Canada with around 10 000 000 Won. That's my goal anyway!

Alright, I hope everyone in Canada (and elsewhere) is well.

Until next time!

Lobsters on the streets of Korea

I know I promised that my next post would contain pictures of my recent adventure to a zoo / amusement park. However, you'll understand by the fantasticness of this post, why I had to break that promise. I explain most of it in the video, but here's another explanation.

This is probably the most bizarre thing I've seen since I've been to Korea... and I've seen MANY bizarre things:

You know those games where you pay a quarter and you steer that metal claw that tries to grab a toy? Well, they have several of them here in Korea. In fact, I won a little stuffed animal from one the other night. However, there is a twist. In one of the machines, there are LOBSTERS. I assumed they were alive, but after I tried to pick them up I discovered that one was dead, and one was living. So. I decided to try to "win" the living one.

Please enjoy the video of me "Fishing for Lobsters in the Streets of Korea". Thanks to Sarah for the wonderful video job!

Only in Korea... Only in Korea...

"Seoul Land"

Well I had an eventful weekend that I thought was going to be average!

I was asked if I wanted to go to Seoul Land on Saturday. Not really knowing what that meant, I said "sure". We arrived at Seoul Grand Park (which is a subway station so it's quite easy to find) to see a huge open space with mountains all around. It was soooo refreshing not to see tall buildings and to be able to feel like you weren't a sardine squished in a can!

We walked up to a big building and purchased tickets for something and before I knew it, we had gone on a tram car, a ski lift and found ourselves at a zoo! We saw tigers, lions, leopards, pumas, coyotes, otters and I forget what else. But it was really fun. It was rather cold yesterday though. After the zoo we split into 2 groups - Lindsay and Jenny went to the art museum, and Sarah and I went to the amusement park! We had time to ride 2 roller coasters, which were kind of different here (a.k.a. not as scary/fun), but I had a really good time anyway.

After that we went to a restaurant by the Yongsan station called "Amigo's" it was VERY good. I could eat that every day. I had a baked spaghetti and cheese and chicken thing. Very very tasty.

Then we played cranium for a few hours! It was a fun weekend!

My camera died as soon as I got to the zoo, so I will have to steal pics from Lindsay and Sarah's cameras. I think Sarah did most of the picture taking though, so I'll have to get her camera A.S.A.P.!

I started to teach again. My first day back was Friday, so I had to teach one day and it was the weekend again. Teaching was just as I remembered, a little tiring, frustrating etc. but I brushed off those feelings as my usual "beginning of the week slump". I have noticed that around Tuesday/Wednesday I feel not very enthusiastic about teaching. Then when Thursday and Friday hit it's close to the weekend, and I get excited to do touristy things and I enjoy the fact that I'm way over in Korea!

Alright, well here I am wasting my Sunday! I think I might go for a walk somewhere today. I'll have to see where my legs carry me!