Week and a Half 'til home!

This week actually went by really fast. Friday we took class pictures. They are going to be super cute. All of the kids and I wore jeans and a white top, and were barefoot. They will be professionally edited and photoshopped. The kids also took individual pictures. Since my kids are in their last year at the school, they had them wear super cute cap and gowns. I also have added pictures of my classroom. Since Christmas isn't such a big holiday here, there are not a whole lot of decorations around. I have taken the liberty to decorate my class to the fullest extent possible. We have snowflakes, snowmen, stockings, Christmas Trees, a red green and white chain going all around the room, and a gazillion pictures the kids colored for "The Grinch." I officially turned my classroom into WhoVille, becuase I was going to do The Grinch for our holiday show (Which was canceled in fear of the Swine Flu).

Yesterday I finished all my Christmas shopping. I went into Seoul by myself, which I have done before. This time though, I took the bus instead of the subway. The bus goes a lot faster, and there are a zillion different route numbers that go into Seoul. I have taken many with other people. My friends told me that all of the 9400's went the route I wanted (9401, 9402, 9404, 9408 etc...) I guess that the 9407 doesn't though. I ended up on the wrong bus for an hour and a half before I got off and walked a mile to the nearest subway station. I did, however, take a bus back and got back just fine.

Pleas also check out a video of some of my students singing a song from the Sound of Music. All of my girls know all of the songs to Mama Mia and Sound of Music. I made them a CD for the classroom with songs from both movies on it. Here is the youtube link. The best part by far is the first 30 seconds, so if thats all you have time to watch, that would be fine.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IIg7TvQVlms

10 days until I get home. Here is what I can't wait to do:

• See my family
• Get out of the car when we pull into the driveway and scream "I'm home, come out and see me." Yes, all you neighbors, be ready for it.
• Go sledding
• Make a snow angel, and a snowman
• Sit in front of the fire with Christmas Carols playing
• Get my hair cut (I have been waiting so that I can speak the same language as the person who cuts my hair)
• Go shopping at Target and stock up on basics
• Bake anything in an oven
• Make mashed cauliflower in my food processor
• Watch a football game
• Drive a car
• Eat a meal that doesn't include rice
• Read a newspaper
• Many other things that I can't even imagine now

Love you all

Christmas Countdown

The countdown to me coming home for Christmas in on! I can't wait. I currently have 17 days until I come home. I have a list of things that I want to do when I get home, and can't wait.

Christmas isn't as big here as it is back at home, but every once in a while I come across signs of it and I get excited. The other day I stopped at a supermarket on my way home from work, and there were Christmas carols playing in the store. I ended up wandering around the aisles for a ridiculously long time just so I could listen to them. The local mall is also all decked out. This tree is about 30 feet tall, and the center of it rotates. There are also lights out on bushes around apartment complexes and even some stores. Overall though, there is a disappointing amount of decorations around. I have done my best to make up for it in my classroom. I'll have to get a picture of my room this week to show you.

It snowed for about an hour yesterday. It wont ever really stick, but it was absolutely beautiful falling. I was walking 2 miles to the subway station while it was falling. It was blowing all over the place and was really in your face, but I had a permagrin on. I probably looked like an idiot. Everyone else was cowering under umbrellas, and I was almost skipping.....An obvious foreigner.

I got paid on Friday, so I went out Christmas shopping yesterday. I got about half of it done! There are definitely some people that are hard to shop for. There is nothing very masculine in Korea. Even the stuff made for guys is very feminine, which leaves me with a conundrum for finding gifts for all you guys in my life.

Insadong is the best place in Seoul to shop for Christmas Presents, because that is where all of the shops are that have traditional stuff. It is a completely modern area, so my friends and I were shocked when a group of traditionally dressed....warrior people?! They were kind enough to let us take pictures with them.

We also went to this tea place that was the cutest thing in the world. The whole thing looked like a train. The aisles actually had rock and teasels and everything. The seats were train seats, and there were luggage racks about the table. They also had amazing tea. I shared a pumpkin spice tea with a friend because it was super expensive, but it was delicious, or as they say here 맛있어요. (Machissiyo)

It has been an interesting few weeks. There is a lot of things going on here because of the swine flu. There are many students who are not coming to school because their parents are afraid they will catch it there. They have even closed down individual classes when too many kids were out sick with colds or sore throats because the parents have insisted on it. They have also canceled the Christmas program because they don't want to have all of those people in one room together for fear that one person infects everyone else. My kids had started to learn their lines and the songs that they would sing, and were kind of sad that we won't be able to perform it.

Last week I had what we call an open classroom. All of the parents get to come in and observe a class. We have to practice exactly what we are going to do many times. It is almost more like a rehearsed play than a lesson that I teach. After the lesson, I went into a room with all of the parents and they got to ask questions. I was kind of intimidating. I had the two directors sitting on either side of me, and was facing all the parents. They spoke all in Korean, even though everyone in the room could speak English. It was quite a relief when it was done, but I have do do another one next week too.

It is starting to get cold here. It has been below freezing for a while now, but of course I am too cheap to turn on the heating in my apartment. It stays around 16 degrees Celsius, or 58 degrees Fahrenheit in my apartment. It is kind of okay because I don't spend a whole lot of time here. I have a nice blanket that keeps me warm when I am sleeping, and I have gotten used to just wearing warm clothes the rest of the time.

Yesterday (Saturday) I got to go bungee jumping!!! It was so much fun. I went with some coworkers and my friend from church. The tower is only 45 meters high, but it was quite a rush. It was only scary for a split second just after jumping from the tower, but most of the time it was just an amazing adrenaline rush. I would do it again in a second. I was harnessed in so that the rope was hooked to my back instead of my feet, so it just felt like I was flying.

This is the tower that I jumped from. It is only about a kilometer from my apartment, and I run by it almost every day. I now get to run by it knowing that I have conquered it.

I got all strapped in and ready to go!

I waited up on the top of the tower for four other people to go before I was able to go.

Here is a link to a video of my jump on youtube. The video starts out sideways, then flips so that it is right-side-up. You will also notice that my videographer has a comment about his own jump at the end of the video. He kind of forgot that he was taping....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xqSBH6ZQzD0

Can't wait for some of you to come and visit so you can do this too!

It has been a long week at school. It seems like there is a never ending list of stuff to get done. I'm not sure why, but for some reason I thought that maybe that would go away when I graduated from college. I try not to have to take stuff home to work on on the weekends after spending more than 50 hours at school during the week (Yes, I know that many of you spend more time than that at your jobs), but I think that I have done school stuff every weekend that I have been here. It is hard to find time to study for my Korean class, but I think that I am doing okay.

Yesterday I went on the most amazing hike you could probably go on in Seoul. I have gone hiking with the same person for the last few weekends, but this was the first time it was just the two of us. That actually ended up being pretty good because there was no one to slow us down! We went to Bucansan, which takes about an hour and a half to get to from where I live. The hike up was part hiking, part mountain climbing and part rock climbing. We were on the mountain for about five hours, and the whole thing was breathtaking.

This is Travis and his awesome camera. It is an actual film camera that you don't see anywhere anymore. He takes it everywhere with him and protects it with his life.

This is a guy that we saw hiking up who was going barefoot. It isn't extremely common, but ever once in a while we would someone going up the mountain with no shoes. Ouch.....

There are a lot of people who climb this mountain, and they have been climbing it for a long time. This had to be a softer stone, because people's footprints had actually carved stairs into the side of the mountain.

This is fortress wall on the North side of Seoul. I know that they have walls on the North and South side of the city. I'm not sure if it goes all the way around the sides too. It was pretty amazing to see it stretching up and down the sides of the mountain. It was kind of like seeing a mini Great Wall of China.

We ate lunch on the top of this peak. We actually climbed to the top of that rock that is highest in the middle. There were a lot of people up there, but no one else attempted to climb on top of the giant boulders. The more challenging part was getting down from them. I kind of had to leap off of it. The rock surface that I landed on slanted down towards the cliff, and it took me a few steps to stop my momentum. Travis was sure that I was going to fall off the edge. Some old Korean guy saw and came running over to make sure that Travis didn't make the same jump.

The mountain has several temples on it. This is just one of the many, from far above.

These are just two of the amazing views that I had from the mountain. I got so many breathtaking pictures, but none of them really do justice to the majesty of the mountain.

I have purchased my ticket to come home for Christmas. It was quite a sum of money, but I'm sure that it will be worth it. As much as I love it here, I really can't wait to visit home.

Love you all!

We had a ton of fun at school for Halloween. Of course, I got to school and my camera battery was dead again, just like on Chu-suk. I will try to find some pictures that other people have and post them eventually. At school, we made 7 different activities around the school. There was a haunted house, a room where they got wrapped up in toilet paper to be mummies, a "monster dance" (basically the cake walk), pin the tail on the donkey, etc..... I was in charge of the Monster Dance room. By lunch time, I had danced and sang for seven twenty minute sessions, and I was beat. We then went for a parade around the block , where there were parents standing about every 20 yards to hand out candy. By the time we got back, the kids could barely hold their bags. After the kindergarten, we had two more 2 hour classes, both of which had a Halloween party and parade and dancing. By the time I went home that day, I had lost my voice, and my feet were killing me.

I had the most amazing day on Sunday. Of course, I had left my camera at school on Friday, so I had no way to document it. After church, me and two other guys drove about an hour out of the city to the countryside. By the end, we were driving on these little eight-foot-wide roads that had so many potholes that it was just destroying the little Teeca (sp?) that we were in. We went to the house of a couple who goes to our church. From there, we went strait up this mountain to an amazing lookout where we could see for kilometers and kilometers. We hiked until the sun went down, which was pretty early (maybe around five o'clock). On the way back we stopped at their neighbors studio. She had come hiking with us, so she invited us in to see her artwork. She in an amazing painter, and has work displayed in the Korean National History Museum. She offered us Mocholi, which is basically a rice wine. I only had a few sips and ended up with a headache within the hour it was so strong. Then we went back to the first house that we were at and had dinner. Eel-soon is an amazing cook, and had cooked everything vegetarian in my honor. The guys I was with weren't very excited about that and made a joke about not bringing me back there. Of course, Eel-soon took that as a clue to make more food. We sat down to dinner, and were at the table for about 2 hours. They kept on asking my friend "Do you like......" If he ever said yes, they just went and brought out that food. It became the funniest joke. We kept telling them to stop asking the questions, but it just kept going and going. There were only five of us there, but there was at least three times as much food on that table than I have in my whole apartment! After dinner we went out to look at the full moon through the telescope. It was an amazing experience that very few people get to have. I can't wait to go back again, which may be in just a few weeks.

My Korean classes are starting to get harder, and I am having a harder time finding time to study. There is a ton of work to be done at school right now, and I am just getting by day to day. Also, once I get my next pay-check I will be looking for the best price on tickets home for Christmas. I have about 10 days that I can be home, and the prices are looking like they are going to be around $1800. I'm not one hundred percent sure that it is worth it, but I am planning on doing it none the less.

I am sorry I missed Halloween. If you have any pictures of the kids I would love to see them.
Love you all.

This is my class. The girl in the front on the left hates to smile for pictures. They took a gazillion pictures that day, and she didn't smile for any of them. Before this picture, I took her aside and told her how beautiful her smile is, and that I really wanted her to smile for this picture. "Wont you just do it this once for Stacie Teacher?" I was so excited when I saw the picture and she was actually smiling!

I didn't post last week because it had been such a horrible week and I didn't want to tell anyone about any of it. Since then, things have been going much better. I am going to the church cafe on Wednesdays by myself now, which actually ended up being a good thing. I have gotten to know a lot of people from there. There is a real church that is associated with the cafe, but it is a long ways away and there is no easy bus route to get there. Last Wednesday I was told that there is a shuttle that goes from the cafe to the Church on Sunday morning! I went this morning and it is a good place. I met a lot more people, and hope that I continue going. Today the person driving the shuttle had to stay for extra activities a few hours after the service. I was showed where to get a bus and how to get home. It ended up taking 2 hours. Hopefully I can take the shuttle back again on most days.

I went hiking with a guy from church and his friend on Saturday. It was absolutely beautiful. The leaves are at the peak of color. Of course, I forgot my camera. Travis's friend (Travis is the guy from Church) is 76 years old. We hiked in the mountains for 5 hours, and he kept up like he was a young whippersnapper. I was very impressed.

Next Friday we will have our Halloween Event Day at school. All of the kids will be dressed up, I will be dressed up, and hopefully I will get a lot of pictures.

I appreciate all the messages from home. They really help when I am feeling lonely. Love and miss you all.

I was back at school for four days this week. I also started my Korean classes. My new Korean name is 이슬비 (Isil-bi). The first couple of weeks we are only learning the Korean Hengal symbols. This is the easy part, because I already taught them to myself. I'm not sure how it's going to go once we start getting heavily into vocabulary I probably only know about 15 words right now, and it has taken me a long time to learn them.

Namsangol Hanok Folk Village

Last weekend I went to Namsangol Hanok Folk Village. They have many traditional buildings that are fully furnished. The top two pictures are some of the furnishings. Since I went on Chusok, there were a ton of activities going on. All of the little kids were dressed up in their Hambaks. The picture on the left is a girl using a rope swing. The sign below is the History of the rope swing. Basically the rope swing was used by girls because they were not allowed to leave home, but the swing allowed them to see over the walls around their property.

These kids are helping to make rice balls. I’m not sure how they get this dough stuff from rice. I think that you cook it once, and then boil it again. It turns into this big ball, and they use these big hammers to pound it out.

North Seoul Tower

While at Hanok Village, I met a teacher from another part of Seoul who was also there by herself. We ended up walking up to North Seoul Tower together. It is on top of a huge hill. You can either walk up a gazillion stairs, take a cable car, or a bus. Of course, I chose the stairs. When you get to the top, there are these “lock trees” that people have left there locks on. There are also locks covering the fences everywhere. There have to be at least a million locks. I had to wait about an hour to go to the top of the tower, but it was definitely worth that and the 7000 won that I paid. All around the tower, the windows show how far away cities in that direction are. The views are absolutely breathtaking.

Chusok Break

We have a five day break over Chusok, the Korean harvest celebration. There was a celebration at school on Wednesday where we all wore hamboks, played Korean games, made Korean toys, and made Korean foods. Of corse, my camera ran out of batteries halfway through the day. Hopefully I will be able to get copies of the pictures the school took. Once I have those, then you can see me wearing my hambok. For now, I just have a few of my kids.

The top left picture is my class. There are eight students, six girls and two boys. They all looked so cute all dressed up that day. The top right picture is the kids making SongPyon, traditional rice cakes. This is something that families do together when they gather for Chusok. The picture on the left is the kids playing Kangkangsulrae, which is kind of like playing London Bridge is Falling Down.

All of the teachers were given a gift set for Chusok. A normal gift set consists of a lot of toothpaste, and soaps. I think that I am set for toothpaste until next Chusok when we get another set.

(This is the toothpaste) Thank goodness...... my teeth never were very good at math.

Over the break, I have had the oportunity to explore Seoul. The first place that I went was 창덕궁 (Changdeokgung palace and secret garden). In order to go in, you have to be on a tour. They have three English tours a day, and I happen to walk in the moment that one of them started. It was an hour and a half tour, and it only cost 3000 won, or about $2.40. The palace and history behind it is amazing.

I can't post all of my pictures, so I am going to pick and choose some. This is the throne room and the throne. The building looks the same on the outside as most of the other buildings in the complex. The picture on the left is under the awning. The spikes there are to keep the birds from building nests.

A couple of the buildings were destroyed by a fire in 1917. Now they have a fire hydrant in the middle of this historical complex. It probably would have come in handy ninety years ago, but it just looks silly now.

At the very end of the tour, there was a 750 year old tree. What I saw was not exactly what I was expecting. In minnesota, usually the older the tree, the taller it is. A 750 year old tree? I was expecting it to be hundreds of feet tall. This tree was maybe 25 feet tall.

I will tell you about more of my adventures in my next posts. Love you all. I am really missing my family and friends over the holidays here when everyone else is with loved ones.

This has been an interesting week. I have been having people banging on my apartment door pretty regularly. They bang on the door, ring the doorbell, and go around to do the same thing to several other apartments. I never answer the door, because there is no way for me to talk to them, and I always keep my door locked, because they usually try to open the door. Lately I have been having the same person at my door a lot more often. I got a slip in my mailbox yesterday (a Saturday) that I think is for rent. I don't pay my rent, my school takes care of that, but from what I can tell my rent was never paid for last month. The person that has been at my door must be my landlord or property manager. Yesterday my gas was turned off. I can't cook, and I have to take cold showers. Hopefully when I go into school tomorrow I can get it taken care of.

I spent today in Itaewon, which is known as the foreigners capital of Seoul. A lot of people there speak English, there are a ton of American brand stores, and there are even some small foreign food stores. I was warned before I went there that it was pretty crude. Aparently it is very normal for a blond woman to be called a Russian Prostitute. Fortunately, that didn't happen to me this time, but being there is sure different than being in Bundang, the rich folk part of Seoul. On the way back, I got off the subway at the Han River and went for a walk. There is a path that is right down by the river. Most people were riding bikes, which made me really miss mine. I going on rides that last all morning or afternoon. I might have to see if I can find an afordable one to buy for the time I am here.

Next week is Chu-suk, which is basically the Korean Thanksgiving. We will celebrate at school on Wednesday, and have Thursday and Friday off. The school is renting a Hanbok, the traditional Korean clothing, for each of the teachers. I will have pictures next week for all to see.

For now, here are the pictures I have:

These first two are taken from the roof of my apartment. (These are for you, Bruce)

This one is just another of the mountains. It is on my way to school.

This is a very typical apartment complex from accross the Han. Most complexes have more than 20 buildings and stretch on forever.

I thought this was kind of cool. It is someone wakeboarding on the Han. Not something that you typically see on the Mississippi.

All along the Han, people would come set up multiple fishing lines, and just kind of leave them there. I'm not sure how those rocks are able to hold the line if a fish is tugging at it, but I guess it works.

This is just a bench at one of the subway stations. I thought it was interesting...not quite sure why it has handles on it.