Springtime Blues

To keep myself from becoming more depressed about this awful 40 degree weather, I try to find something green to make me feel better about being cold all the time. The weather here has not been cooperative with me. I have to say that I hate it. Even more than I hate Iowa weather. That's probably saying something. 

I'm really liking my job, the city I live in and being "on my own" so to speak. But I am starting to crack with all the cold rainy days we've been experiencing. I'm sick of wearing a coat and I'm sick of yelling at the kids when they try to open the windows at school. I'm not sure why, but Koreans tend to wear about 20 layers indoors and outdoors. It's useless to tell them to take off a couple of layers, they want the windows open all the time. It's exhausting trying to keep warm and not have enough clothes to layer like these kids do. I have one sweatshirt, an elbow length cardigan, and a light "springtime" jacket in my wardrobe. These kids come to school with: an undershirt, a long-sleeved shirt, a tee-shirt, a sweatshirt/sweater, a hoodie or jacket followed by their springtime coats. It's exhausting just typing that. Why do kids feel they need so many clothes? Needless to say, I am freezing right now. I'm wearing four layers and it's not enough. 

WHERE ARE YOU SPRING? I need you! 

Working Late

Wednesday was our first day with the new 2-9:20 schedule. Mondays and Wednesdays we will be working late, so I decided to start packing dinner so we wont be tempted to eat late at night when we get home.

It was an ambitious day for me. We started by grocery shopping and we we home by 11:30. I unpacked the bags and tried to cram everything into our compact fridge. I foolishly put tortilla pizzas on the menu so I had to make tortillas before I could start making dinner. What was for dinner? Vegetable gimbap, minus the ham.

I admit it, I am a lazy vegetarian. When we go out to eat, I pick the pieces of ham out of my rice and eat the rest. Koreans put ham/"spam" in everything and I'm pretty sure they don't consider it "meat." So, I've learned to deal. Anyway, it was nice to not have to pick ham out of my dinner last night! Our veggie gimbap had daikon radish strips, homemade omelette, lightly sauteed carrots, cucumber strips and brown rice.

Here is our feast: veggie gimbap, sliced apples, sliced kiwi (for me), and big red grapes (the seeded kind is all that Korea has). We also brought a snack cake and drinkable yogurts. Michael also brought a Snickers bar. You would think this would have filled us up, but we were still a bit hungry when we got home. We didn't have breakfast since we had to go to the store and we had a very light lunch, so I think I will try to fill up the lunchboxes a little more next time. It was a good start though.  

New Session

Michael and I start our new session this week. We got our new schedules this week and Michael is excited to be teaching two overtime classes, which equals 9 hours of overtime each week. Hopefully this will turn into 36 hours of overtime in his pay each month. We switched up most of our classes this time, which sadly means that I have to say goodbye to some of my kids. I will definitely miss some of them, although I am happy to turn a few of my impish children over to Michael.

We are also having to change some of our hours. Since Michael has an extra class on Tuesdays and Thursdays, we need to come in a little early. Mondays and Wednesdays, we are doing tutoring after our normal classes, so we will be at school until 9:20 on those days. Since those days are so long, we might need to work out a bento system so we can eat dinner at school.

Since Michael is getting extra hours and I am not, I will have some free time on my hands. I'm not really sure what I'll be doing, but maybe this means I will keep this blog updated more often. If anyone has any questions for us relating to South Korea or Chuncheon, be sure to ask. We have been pretty boring here lately, and I haven't felt like there has been anything to talk about.

We do have some upcoming trips planned, but they are kind of dependent on weather, which has not been cooperating lately. Hopefully, we will see some nice weather this weekend!

Bye Bye Hair!

Mitty's getting a haircut. Stay tuned.

Saturday in Myeongdong

We went shopping in Myeongdong on Saturday and the taxi driver dropped us off right in front of Pizza Hut. Michael was feeling nostalgic for some American fare and I wanted pizza, so this was perfect for us. We were told that prices here were pretty cheap, but I thought they were a bit steep. We paid 18,000 won for a small "regular" sized vegetarian deep dish pizza and two Pepsi Lights.  

The pizza was pretty good, not incredibly oily like normal Pizza Hut. It was a real treat to eat green peppers, I haven't had any for a couple of months!

We shopped around for a while and went in to Cold Stone (conveniently located across the street from Pizza Hut and next door to Baskin Robins). The ordering process is a bit different. You first go in and look at a menu and order. The "waiter" yells your order to the guys at the counter and they make the ice cream. Then the "waiter" gives you a spoon and hands you your ice cream when it's ready. The menu items are similar to the states, except there is a whole section of the menu devoted to green tea ice cream, of course!

Michael ordered Cheesecake Fantasy, which disappointingly for him, did not actually contain any cheesecake. It did have strawberries and blueberries in it, which I thought was pretty yummy.

I ordered the I'm Berry Pine. It's yogurt with graham cracker crumbles, blueberries and pineapple chunks. It was delicious, although it was 3,900 won for this cup, which would be considered the child size in the US.

After our stop for ice cream, we wandered around a bit, looking at the plants that seem to have sprung up overnight.

Anniversary

Michael and I celebrated 3 years on Wednesday without much fanfare. We had originally planned to go out and do something, but Michael became ill and we had to postpone. So we bought a couple of pieces of cake from Paris Baguette to mark the occassion.

The piece on the left was mine, a coffee-flavored cake. Michael's was on the right, cheesecake.They were both pretty boring. Cakes here just don't seem to have much flavor.

More Springtime Fun

Monday morning Michael and I went out for a hike. It was a beautiful day and the trees were in bloom.

When we climbed back down from the "mountain", we stopped at a park to look at trees and Michael tried out the rope bridge.

Namisam!

We made it out to Nami Island on a truly beautiful spring day. It was in the low sixties and we enjoyed every minute of sunnyness. Nami is actually in Chuncheon, but it is on the outskirts, about a 30 minute train ride from Chuncheon Station. Taking the train reminded me of the old days (for me, back in 2006) in France and Europe and I think Michael enjoyed it too. We're itching to go to Seoul and some other areas in Korea by train now.

The Republic of Naminari (their fake nation) was pretty cute. I understand why all my kids said it was boring to go there, though. It is a sightseeing trip, full of opportunities for tourists to take photos of the beautiful scenery. There are bicycles and little cars for rent, and you can even sleep at the resort or in cute cabins. Many families came for picnics and had all sorts of good looking goodies packed in their bags.

The island is small enough that it took Michael and I about an hour to walk around the entire thing. There are several tree-lined "roads" that I'm assuming look georgeous in summer and fall. The pine tree lined "road" looked pretty neat now. There were a few cherry blossom trees which was a treat to see. This time of year there are several cherry blossom festivals in Korea, but we haven't been adventurous enough to make it to any of them and the blooms only last a couple of weeks.

We got really excited to see a squirrel, that let us get right next to it to take a picure. We also saw one ostrich, that was running around as if it owned the place. We were expecting to see a bit more wildlife, maybe more come out as the weather gets nicer.

For lunch, Michael was able to find some stuff on a stick and he had some BBQ chicken and a hotdog. I had a "grillwich" which was basically a cheese sandwich with some sugar in between the cheese slices. It was okay. We got some ice cream after that. Really, it was nice to get out and do something outdoorsy, even if it was crowded with tourists and we actually got sunburned!

Here is a link to the photo album:

Namisam

Sorry, you can't go with us.

"Hey guys, where are we going? Is there room in your purse for my poof and comb? Make sure I go tinkle before we go!"

Spring is Finally Here!

Walking to work yesterday, I spotted some much anticipated greenery. It's been brown and drab for too long. Welcome, spring!

When We're Broke, We Get Creative

This weekend was a stay at home and don't spend any money kind of weekend (again). We are technically supposed to be paid on the 10th, but since it was on Saturday, we didn't actually get paid until monday because the banks are closed on the weekends.


So Michael took us out to an early showing of The Crazies on Saturday morning. We used the debit card since we have no cash. It is amazing to me how many people go to the movies at 9 am on a Saturday. Last weekend we saw Clash of the Titans and the theatre was packed with families, school field trips and rowdy kids. We even saw one of our students there.

Since The Crazies was R rated, there were no kids in the theatre. There were several families and couples. If a theatre in the US opened this early, I would expect it to be pretty empty. We enjoyed the movie and got home before noon. The rest of our weekend was pretty boring. We were lazy and didn't do much.

As far as food goes, I had to use everything we had. I made a lot of quesadillas with homemade tortillas and peanut butter and jellies. Sunday night, I went to the Buy the Way to get some milk and we had potato soup with all of the veggies I had in the freezer. We both ended up hungry later that night because there wasn't much potato in the soup and we were running out of things to eat.

Steff Hotdog

If you know Michael well, you know he loves hotdogs. It's pretty much a staple in his diet, alongside milk and cookies. One of his students, "Jessica," told him he could get a Chicago style hotdog and he immediately told me after the class, "We're going to Steff Hotdog tonight."

Steff Hotdog happens to be adjacent to TLC, so it's kind of strange that we haven't been here before. The brand is Danish, but I've never heard of them before coming here. The menu is pretty straightforward. They have sandwiches, hotdogs, some basic Korean fast food options like corn salad, cheese sticks and french fries, and of course coffee. Steff Hotdog is actually more known for their coffee in Korea than for their hotdogs.

Michael ordered one "Original" and one "Chili Hotdog." I ordered the tuna and egg sandwich and we shared an order of "Cajun Fries" and a "Cider." The spread of food looked pretty good.

They received major points for having American ketchup. They also received negative points for only giving us this small packet of ketchup for our large bag of potato wedges.

Michael started with the original dog and he was delighted to say it was good. The second one, looked in the pictures to have bits of beef on it, kind of resembling the chili dog most of us know. The one he got, however, was a Korean style dog with a chili spiced condiment, some sweet pickles, and of course corn. Michael was not happy about this one. He was actually quite upset, but he still ate it. The Cajun fries were pretty good. They were like seasoned potato wedges. My sandwich was good too. The bread was lightly toasted and the tuna salad had french fried onions in it. There was a dijon mustard style spread on it as well that made it quite tasty. We will probably be coming back.

Not so cute at 6 in the morning.

Gizmo won't let us sleep once the sun comes up. This is not appreciated, since we usually go to bed between 1 and 2 am. She tries to be cute about it at first, digging at us and snuggling under the covers. Then she becomes exasperated trying to wake us up. She meows pitifully at us.

We try to appease her by filling her food bowl and giving her fresh water. This calms her down for about 5 minutes, and then she's back to tormenting us. Finally, we cannot take it anymore and we get up. And of course she's ready for bed.

Improvised Dinners and Desserts

I am starting to get used to cooking and baking here, although it is never quite what it is like back in the states with things like herbs, an oven, and real cheese. Anyway, I haven't given up yet.

Last Saturday, Michael was craving Pane. If you recall from earlier posts, pane is a so-called Italian dish consisting of spaghetti doused in a cream sauce served in a garlic and sweet bread bowl. We ate it for the first time at The Grazie two months ago and Michael still thinks of it fondly. Having just returned from a hike, and having little money left until our next paychecks, I agreed to make it so we wouldn't have to go down to Myeongdong.

I am starting to get making the cream sauce down, using flour as a thickener. I think it helps that we get "low fat" milk here, that is way fattier than 2%. We never really know what we're getting because of strangely labeled Konglish cartons. We had little to no ingredients, since we needed to grocery shop. So I used buckwheat noodles for the pasta, biscuits for bread bowls (since it would take about three hours to make real ones), and green onions when it would have been better with regular onions and mushrooms. We did have plenty of fresh garlic as well. The pasta was pretty tasty but the biscuit for bread didn't really fly. Anyway, it was kind of fun to see what I could do with what we had.

Sunday I went into baking mode and made chocolate chip cookies and snickerdoodles. The chocolate chips here are like little chocolate flavored candies and therefore didn't do much to enhance flavor. They looked pretty though. I overcooked each batch of snickerdoodles, but they were pretty good. I will try again in a few days, reducing the baking time.

We're Always Working for the Weekend

We've had a relaxing weekend, filled with hiking and baking and lots of xbox playing. Happy Easter to everyone in the states. Korea doesn't celebrate, at least that we know of. We saw some women dressed up outside of a church this morning, but they might always be that dressed up for church.

Saturday we went for a hike on Anma-san. It's a little mountain about 1/2 mile from our apartment. We don't know how far we got but I think we only made it part-way. It was a nice day for hiking. The weather was chilly, about 45 degrees, but the trees kept the wind out. There was a wide variety of people out. Men in suits were jogging back and forth and older women decked out in full gear complete with hiking sticks. We were noted for our token foreign looks. One man forced his toddler to walk up to us and say hi. The little boy was so shy, he hid behind his dad's legs. We smiled and waved at the boy, but he refused to say hi to us.

As we were walking back down, a girl around 10 ran up to us and said in perfect English, "Excuse me, where are you from?" I told her, "I'm from America!" She smiled and ran back to her family. Parents think it's cute to make their children practice their English on us. We're thinking about handing out business cards to attract these children to our school.

Hiking was pretty fun. We're out of shape, so it was also difficult. I was struggling going up one of the stretches and paused to catch my breath. A man walked up to me and smiled and made motions as he spoke what I assume was, "Come on! Keep Going!" He laughed and kept running up the steep stairs.

In most parks and on most trails in Korea, there is gym equipment free for use. There are these twisty contraptions that I only see 40+ women use and the rest of the equipment doesn't seem to be popular. I've heard that Koreans don't like muscle mass and consider muscular people to be a bit fat, so I guess I can understand why these "gyms" aren't used.

Now that winter is slowly, slowly coming to an end, we are looking forward to doing some outdoor activities and getting back into shape. We plan on going hiking at that same spot again and we will try to find some other trails as well (I know of at least two others, although I don't know how to get to them). We also have badminton rackets and balls, but I'm not sure how often those will get used.

I took quite a few pictures so I will have to post a photobook, here:

Anma-san

We're not just English teachers, we are cultural ambassadors.

Michael and I were reminded today of how we weren't just hired for our abilities to speak and write English. We were also hired for being young attractive Americans. The school we work for was founded on the basis of learning Americanized English. Kids learn phrases relevant to our culture, such as "speak of the devil" and "he is chicken" so that one day, they can go to the U.S. and use these outdated phrases in real life.

Today, Michael had a period off and he spent it teaching the director about Billy Ray Cyrus and "Achy Breaky Heart." The director is contemplating having the kids learn line dancing. Horrified, Michael suggested they choreograph a dance to "Ghostbusters" instead. The director thought that wasn't a bad idea either.

We use American textbooks for our classes. It's nice and familiar for us, but there are a lot of cultural references that we have to explain to the students. Especially in "social studies" class. Our third and fourth graders, who range in age from 8 to 12, get to read about the country they live in - oops, I mean the United States. The book constantly has questions like, "What state do you live in?" "Who are our neighbors to the north?"

Here is an example of what I teach the preschoolers. My classroom ranges from 4-7 years old. They are mostly adorable. My favorite is Nancy. She's four and always gives me answers with a smile. She is so little, I sometimes have to lift her up to reach things on the white board. These kids are really just learning vocabulary from me. It's kind of like day-care. I ask them what things are on the page, what color it is, what letter the word starts with, and how to spell it, if the word is short. A couple of the kids just started learning English and they get the letters mixed up a lot. I usually write the word on the board for them to copy on their worksheets, but today I had a couple of short words - grass and sky. I spelled them out loud, very slowly. The more advanced students got them, but one kid got stuck on sky. He wrote "s" just fine, but the "k" started as an "j" and then an "l". And he totally forgot what a "y" looked like. He wrote an "r", then an "x". Nancy and James, the smartest of the bunch, drew "y"s in the air to show him. I finally had to write it on the board.

Regardless of how they do in class, I usually give everyone a sticker as they leave. It kind of helps them, because I let them choose which one they want. So they have to say the color or what animal it is, something like that. Today, James insisted that he get two stickers, which was fine, I have a ton. But then, he wanted more, "I want an elephant!" The more he wants, the more Nancy feels that she deserves, so really I need to learn my limits. I shouldn't have to bribe my kids for affection, but Michael's kindergarteners are always holding his hand and pulling on him, so I feel like I need to win their love somehow ;-)

My student Sharon - who comes to our school four hours a day on Tuesdays and Thursdays - is always doodling in class. She is an overworked 8 year old in the most advanced class at our school. She has told me in the past that she likes to please her mother by studying all day. The proudest moment of her life, she told me today, was when her mother told her she did a good job studying. She likes to give me notes, and I gladly accept them, because I like gifts. I drew her a note today and she threw it away.

Gizmo's saying hi because she hasn't been shown in a while. She's been enjoying the fresh spring air this week.

This weekend we're planning on doing some hiking/sightseeing so we should have a lot of pictures to show. We're running out of money again, since we have only been paid for half a month since we got here. But once the 10th hits, we plan on making a trip to Seoul and probably to Nami Island as well. Stay tuned.