A quick recap of January!
After getting home from the Philippines, I had a little over a week more left with Danny. Unfortunately, I still had to work but we were able to meet for lunch most days and then have the 5 or so hours after work to see each other. I went out to eat more in that week than I think did the entire 4 months I was here! Of course I wanted Danny to experience Korean food while we were here, not my pathetic excuses for meals and I was able to try some new stuff as well so it was nice! On the first weekend back, we did a couple touristy things. The most important one being N. Seoul Tower which has a great view of Seoul. The place is also known for it's padlocks all along the fences by the tower. Danny and I decided to join the thousands of couples who had put a padlock there and bought a really cool vintage style elephant padlock. So now Danny and I are officially "Seoul" mates :)
During our free time we also toured one of the palaces, went to the art museum, and while walking into the war museum we had been intending to go see, we saw that Body Worlds was there and decided to do that instead! Neither of us had gone to it when it was in Minneapolis and it was only 15,000W so around 15 bucks. I had heard it was really cool and it definitely was. The most important part I saw was the smoker's lungs compared to non-smokers... ick!
My favorite thing Danny and I did while he was here was go to this cafe that had "Dr. Fish" which is where fish eat off your dead skin from your feet. It cost 2,000 won if you bought a drink, which were about 5,000 but then you also got free bread, coffee, and tea while there. It was a very strange and hilarious experience. We were the only foreign people in the whole coffee shop and the only ones doing the fish thing. Soon after we started a little boy and his older sister also joined but still. There were two pools, one with little fish, and one with smaller fish and you just dipped your feet in and the fish swarmed you. It took me a long time to get used to it without freaking out from how ticklish it was! It felt really good on your feet though! A cheap pedicure without the nail polish!
Danny left on January 11th and then I was back on my own, sadly. The rest of the month went by pretty quickly but wasn't too eventful. We had Monday and Tuesday, January 23rd and 24th off for Lunar New Year. A couple of us went back to Sokcho, which is where Seoraksan National Park is. The first day, Saturday, we went up the cable car and played in the snow which was really fun. It was pretty cloudy so we couldn't see a lot of the view but it was still beautiful to see all the mountains covered in snow! Plus this was the first time we had seen snow, as it hadn't snowed at all in Suji where I live so it was pretty exciting. I forgot how much fun just playing in the snow can be.
On Sunday, Rachel and I didn't want to go hiking, she had a pretty bad cough and I was finally getting over being sick so we decided to go to a hot spring instead that day, or what we thought was a hot spring. We were picturing a pool type situation but when the people from our hostel drove us there and dropped us off, it was a jimjilbang. Jimjilbangs are really big in Korea and they're just big bath houses, separated of course by men and women. Rachel and I had never been to one yet and weren't planning on it that day but we decided might as well try it now. We were the only foreigners once again surrounded by naked Korean women from as young as 5 to as old as 80. They had about 5 different baths in different temperatures, two saunas, and then these sitting stations where they had shower heads and soaps. By the time we left, I think that was the cleanest I've ever been in my entire life. It was really relaxing though and I broke the naked ice to go back to another one sometime.
On Monday we went to the big fish market in Sokcho. They had every kind of fish you could think of. I'm not a huge seafood person but I tried stuffed squid, which was squid stuffed with rice and other seasonings and vegetables. It wasn't too squidy tasting and it was actually pretty delicious. We walked around for a little bit more and then headed home Monday night, leaving Tuesday free to spend at home.
This past weekend, Rachel, Christine and I went to the 63 building. It's a creative name for a building that has 63 floors. It has a museum, an imax theater, seaworld, and a bunch of other stuff in it. To go to the top it was 11,000W which was the admission to the art museum which is on the top floor. The view was amazing and reminded me how big of a city Seoul is. The view was better than that of Namsan tower I thought and it was less crowded so if anyone was to have to pick one, I would recommend the 63 building. You know, for all those people reading this that plan to come to Korea sometime soon!
Work continues to go well. February will by my last month will all my classes I've had since I came here. They have semesters here and the new one starts in March. I'm going to really miss my kindergartners who are "graduating" to first grade! All seven year olds (remember that everyone becomes a year older during the new year) go to first grade when they turn 8. So my class, and 5 others are graduating from LCI kindergarten at the end of February, however with all the stuff they have to prepare one would think they are graduating college. Each child has to say a speech, which we basically had to write for them and they are really fake because what they are saying and their ACTUAL level of English ability do not coincide. Along with the speech, each class has to sing a song individually, then all the 7 year old classes graduating are singing a song together. So our month has been busy getting all of this stuff ready not to mention the other classwork we have. I chose the song "ABC" by Jackson 5 for my class to sing, and then the group song is "To Sir With Love". So far my kids seem to like both songs so hopefully that makes it easier to practice!
Only 7 months left until I am home!
Again, new photo site with updated Seoraksan photos and 63 building views of Seoul!
http://s1068.photobucket.com/albums/u451/mfaricy2/
I also put up the videos of our song contests, Halloween where my class got 2nd out of the 11 classes singing "Ding Dong the Witch is Dead" the Glee version, and then Christmas where we got first with "Santa Claus is Coming to Town"! So proud :)
Love, Meghan
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