Before I talk about my holiday weekend in Busan, I'll update everyone about my open class (since everyone is dying to know). I was reallyyyy nervous for it but it went SO well! I was really relieved to have it be over. The parents told my supervisor that they really liked me and that they wish I wasn't leaving in August, so that's good! This next month is going to be a breeze with that off my back!
It was also really nice because after a super stressful week, we got a three day weekend because Monday (May 28th) was Buddha's birthday. I have very little knowledge about Buddhism but I was happy we got a vacation day! I took advantage of the three day weekend and headed down to Busan with 7 of the other teachers.
Saturday, we left early in the morning to catch our 8:45 train. It takes about 5 hours on the slow train to get to Busan. When we got there, we dropped our stuff off at the jimjilbang we were staying at (the spa/bath house place) and then went and walked around. Luckily, David, one of my coworkers actually lived in Busan for three years prior to moving to Suji and starting work at LCI. He was basically our own tour guide which was great and we were able to do a lot more things! Since we didn't arrive until Saturday afternoon, we decided just to go to the U.N National Cemetery located in Busan and walk around a little bit. We went to the boardwalk on the beach which was really fun. The atmosphere was a lot different from Seoul but I'm still trying to figure out how? Maybe Busan was more relaxed or something...
On Sunday we woke up and went to the beach! Ah, it was SO nice to be able to lay in the sand and actually be hot in the sun! The beach was full of foreigners and it was pretty busy but the water was pretty much an ice bath so not too many people were swimming. I did get a chance to go jet skiing by asking these random Koreans if you could rent the jet skis or what not, and they just offered me a ride. I made sure to ask for a life jacket (luckily, they spoke English) and then got a 10 minute ride off the coast! It was SO fun. I've only been jet skiing on lakes and that's way slower and the waves are obviously way smaller! So yeah, that was the highlight of my weekend! After the beach, we headed to one of the major temples in Busan, Yonggungsa temple. There were hundreds of lanterns all around the temple in all different colors. It was really beautiful!
On Monday, we spent our afternoon in the Busan Fish Market. I'm not a huge fan of seafood, at all really, but some of my friends wanted to try eel and crab. There are a ton of vendors there selling the same products so I don't really know how all of them ever sell anything, or how people choose who they are going to buy it from BUT they picked out a crab and two eels and we watched the guy kill them in front of us, then followed him upstairs where they cooked them for us. It was pretty interesting to see. I had a tiny taste of crab which was ok, but I actually liked the eel. It had the texture just like any fish would have and kind of reminded me of walleye (that may be because I haven't had walleye in a long time!). After we finished, we decided that we can't leave Busan without trying live octopus. It's not technically "living" because they chop off its head but the tentacles are still moving around so you have to be careful with your chewing so it doesn't stick to your throat! It really didn't have much flavor, but at least now I can say I tried it!
This week is going by pretty fast since we started work again on Tuesday. We actually get next Wednesday off too for Korea's Memorial Day which will be nice. We get a staff party on Tuesday night before that too as a celebration of open class being finished for everyone! I'm trying to do a lot more in June because who knows when the Korean rainy season will hit and I will be back moping around my apartment with no exciting news to share!
Happy memorial day to everyone back home, see you in 3 months Minnesota!
Love, Meghan
Pictures:
http://s1068.photobucket.com/albums/u451/mfaricy2/
Wednesday, May 30, 2012
Monday, May 21, 2012
The Month from Hell- May
I'm so glad it is almost the end of May. This past month has been the busiest since my whole time in Korea. I mentioned we had to decorate our classrooms, which had to be done by May 11th. It was a competition and I ended up getting second place, for 20,000W (twenty bucks) but that about averaged out to 1 dollar an hour for the extra time I put in.... but it actually turned out pretty cool.
This is the main wall for my Zoo theme. Luckily, I have one of the smaller classrooms, the only time this was a benefit!
I won't bore you with most of the details but May is the month for "Open Class" which is when all the children's moms come in and watch your class for an hour or so. This wouldn't seem so bad but a lot of stuff in Korea is for show, so instead of them coming to watch a regular day, we basically have all this fake stuff, that we never really do, but we do it for open class. In order to get the kids ready we have rehearsals... of course we don't tell the moms that! So on top of all the work that we have to finish each week, we've had to use any spare time to practice the games that we will play, the expressions that we'll be "learning" that day, except that they've gone over them 40 times before that... Anyway, it's the most important event all year, even bigger than Graduation was and about 10 times more stressful. My open class actually happens to be this morning, mine and Nico Teacher kick it off this morning and everyone else has theirs the rest of this week and next week. It will be really nice to get it over with but I'm still pretty nervous, hence why I'm up this early and have time to blog before work! After today it should be pretty nice, but then I have two birthday parties this week in my class which means getting NO work done at all! Not only does it take a long time to actually have the party, the kids have so much sugar in their system it's basically impossible to be productive after that! Then this week we also have to finish Progress Reports, which go out every 3 months to the kindergartners parents. We have to write 3 mini paragraphs about each kid (strengths, areas for improvement, and what the parents can do at home to help). It wasn't so bad when I only had 6 kids but 9 takes a lot longer!
So there is the month of May at work. Decorating, Open Class, and Progress Reports... June can't come soon enough.
On the up side, May has been a pretty exciting month for the weekends at least. Two weekends ago, May 12th and May 13th I got to visit one of my best friends from college and my old roommate Kayla in the city of Daegu! She came to Korea in February and this was the first time I got to see her. We had a lot of fun and it was great to see a familiar face from home! Rachel came with me, and we left Friday night and almost missed our train actually due to some misguided bus information, but luckily we made it just in time after running through the train station, budging in the check out line, and running to the platform. We had about 5 minutes to spare at the platform but better safe than sorry.
This past weekend was also really fun. I didn't do much Friday because work has been so exhausting lately and Saturday we were planning on going hiking. The weather has been in the high 70s, low 80s so it's been really nice (except for my classroom turning into a sauna). So Rachel (Canadian Rachel, one of the new people), Christine and I went hiking. We took a wrong bus though and ended up at a different starting point than we ususally do. We figured it must connect somewhere but it never did, so we ended up in Suwon (a neighboring city) and had to take a bus and a taxi back home! haha oh well... That night we went into Seoul because there was a parade going on to kick off Buddha's Birthday. Christianity is actually the main religion here but Buddhism is second. Buddha's Birthday is May 28th but the parade sort of kicked off the whole week and warning off evil spirits or something along those lines? It was a fun parade though, there was lots of cool lanterns, some people playing instruments, the usual. There wasn't any candy being thrown which was quite disappointing though!
Sunday we went to the Korean amusement park Everland! Almost every week I have a student that says they're going to go to Everland that weekend, or went to Everland. Everland, Everland, Everland. I decided it was being added to my list of things to do. It's definitely not as big as Disneyworld by any means, but maybe a bigger version of Valleyfair? Maybe the same size? I'm bad at estimating those types of things... But we got there at 9:30, the opening time, (after an hour bus ride) and the line for the Safari Tour was already 50 minutes. I thought it was worth it though because we got pretty close to the lions, white tigers, bears, AND a LIGER! Yes, a mix between a lion and a tiger that I thought was a fake combination made up in Napolean Dynamite.
http://s1068.photobucket.com/albums/u451/mfaricy2/
Well, have a great week everyone! It's my brother Ryan's birthday May 23rd and mine and Danny's anniversary on May 24th, so good thing this week is busy so I won't be so homesick! I need to go get ready for work. Wish me luck on my open class!
Love, Meghan
Sunday, May 6, 2012
Half Marathon
Since the middle of February, my friends Christine, Heather and I have been training for a half marathon. I have never ran one before but I've always wanted to so we signed up for the Yongin Half Marathon which was last weekend, April 28th. I was a little worried for it, I had two pretty big sinus infections the whole month of April that wouldn't go away, and it had been pretty chilly weather for all of our training but it was supposed to be hot the day of. Regardless of all the little factors, I finished in one hour and 59 minutes! My goal was 2 hours and 15 minutes so I'm pretty happy with my time! It was a beautiful day and it was a great experience. There were probably 500-600 people running it? That's my guess but I'm horrible at guessing things like that. With whatever the total was, I saw about 20 foreigners, if that, and maybe only 5-6 foreign women (including me and my two friends!) It was fun to do but I'm pretty glad it's over, it was really time consuming to be running such long distances!
On another time consuming note, work has been crazy lately. We got new wallpaper, as I mentioned in the last update, and it's been way more time consuming than I thought. I stayed late every day last week and came in early and I'm still not finished! I really want May to be over to be finished with our open class (mine's May 22nd!) and this whole decorating thing. At the same time, I don't want May to be over because with the rainy season in the summer in Korea, who knows how many really nice weekends we'll have left and there's so much more I want to do/see that involves being outside! I should have done more in the winter even if it was cold! This past weekend we all kind of took it easy. I went shopping with Rachel, my first time since I've been in Korea and I might have splurged a little too much but oh well. Then we walked around on Sunday and watched our other friend's flag football game. Next weekend I'm going to visit my old college roommate Kayla who came to Korea about 2 months ago who lives in Daegu so I'm really excited about that! The weekend after that, we're going to go to Everland, the amusement park here and the weekend after that we're going to Busan for our 3 day weekend. That leaves just June left to do other touristy things! I'm kind of freaking out! Hopefully the rain will cooperate and will wait to start until July and not cut into June but we'll see.
Otherwise, all is good here. This past Saturday was "Children's Day" in Korea so we took our kids on a nice little hike Friday to celebrate and they got these really funny visors for presents from the school. They didn't get to open them until they got home which was a bummer because I was really hoping that I could get a picture with them all wearing them! I don't know why America doesn't have a "Children's Day"!? Korea also has a "Teacher's Day" which is May 15th, so I better be super nice to my kids the upcoming weeks :)
Tootles,
Meghan
On another time consuming note, work has been crazy lately. We got new wallpaper, as I mentioned in the last update, and it's been way more time consuming than I thought. I stayed late every day last week and came in early and I'm still not finished! I really want May to be over to be finished with our open class (mine's May 22nd!) and this whole decorating thing. At the same time, I don't want May to be over because with the rainy season in the summer in Korea, who knows how many really nice weekends we'll have left and there's so much more I want to do/see that involves being outside! I should have done more in the winter even if it was cold! This past weekend we all kind of took it easy. I went shopping with Rachel, my first time since I've been in Korea and I might have splurged a little too much but oh well. Then we walked around on Sunday and watched our other friend's flag football game. Next weekend I'm going to visit my old college roommate Kayla who came to Korea about 2 months ago who lives in Daegu so I'm really excited about that! The weekend after that, we're going to go to Everland, the amusement park here and the weekend after that we're going to Busan for our 3 day weekend. That leaves just June left to do other touristy things! I'm kind of freaking out! Hopefully the rain will cooperate and will wait to start until July and not cut into June but we'll see.
Otherwise, all is good here. This past Saturday was "Children's Day" in Korea so we took our kids on a nice little hike Friday to celebrate and they got these really funny visors for presents from the school. They didn't get to open them until they got home which was a bummer because I was really hoping that I could get a picture with them all wearing them! I don't know why America doesn't have a "Children's Day"!? Korea also has a "Teacher's Day" which is May 15th, so I better be super nice to my kids the upcoming weeks :)
Tootles,
Meghan
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