(our last week night outing before school started again. it’s much harder to stay out all night on a week day when you actually have to teach the next day…although i guess it is likely to happen again anyways)

School is back in session!

The pros:

• I’m not so bored just sitting around all day
• I’ll probably be better at blogging because my time is more structured
• All the teachers are back so I have more friends at school
• I feel like a celebrity again
• These kids are hilarious
• My new classroom is awwwesome

The cons:

• I forgot how much energy teaching requires sometimes
• My patience level decreased from lack of usage and therefore I am more irritable.
• 4 back to back classes every morning, every day. And then daycare in the afternoon.

Clearly the pros outweigh the cons, so I’d say it’s been a pretty successful first week. I did almost have a freak out in one class (4th period, 4th grade.. bad combination) so I just need to remind myself to not take myself and the class so seriously. Sometimes kids are loud, sometimes they don’t listen, sometimes they will pull each other’s hair out. Deal with it, it’s not the end of the world. So with that mantra in mind, maybe next week will be a little smoother. It’s also exciting because some of my daycare kids are in 3rd grade now, so I get to teach them in class anddd daycare. It’s fun to see them in a real English class setting and see that they’re a little bit further ahead on the English front than most of their classmates. Makes me feel like my daycare classes aren’t a complete waste of time.

Tonight I’m off to another teacher’s dinner—which we seem to have a plethora of lately. Last Friday was a farewell dinner for the teachers who transferred to different schools, and this week is a welcome dinner for the teachers who are new to our school. That combined with a whole lot of eating lunch out with everyone (for various random occasions) has equaled a whole lot of free, delicious Korean food for me. If every week goes by as fast and smooth as this one, I think it’s going to be a successful year.

#1. My bus driver is probably the funniest Korean I know. Besides his funniness, he is also genuinely awesome. Usually he is the driver for my 8am and 5pm busses going to/ from school. He has this cute little smirk, and he is the only bus driver that always makes eye contact with me and says ‘Anyong haseyo’ every time I board. Once he sees I’m about to get on, he always smirks and does a little bow, and then says hi. Also, he never starts driving until I am to my seat, which most drivers are never courteous enough to do. Whenever I get off, we make eye contact as he looks up from his mirror, I say ‘kamsameeda’, he bows a little and smirks, and then I get off.

Welllll the other day, he totally slammed somebody in the bus door! He pushed the “close” button too early, and it caught this lady in the door and she couldn’t move for a few seconds. After he reopened it and she broke free and walked alongside the bus towards the front and I was suuure there was going to be a chew out session. Instead she just laughed a little and waved, and then I looked up at the driver and he was laughing SOOOO hard. He thought he was the funniest person ever.

I thought it would be kind of a wake up call for him to be more aware of people exiting the bus, but since then he has done it 2 more times!! Each time laughing harder and harder. The 2nd time I thought was maybe an accident, but by the 3rd time I realized that he totally does it on purpose! I mean, he probably gets pretty bored just sitting there taking the same route each day, so it’s like he’s developed this little game for himself. He closes it just late enough to catch a piece of clothing or a leg, never like square on the shoulders or something. And the second they get caught, he gets this HUGGGE smile and starts cracking up. My love for him just keeps growing. What a funny dude.

#2. There is this old guy that wanders around the school all day, and honestly I have no idea what he does. He must be some sort of maintenance guy, because I know he is not a teacher, and sometimes I see him carrying random objects around. Well I have NEVER heard him speak a word, and he is also a bit creepy looking. He kind of hunches over when he walks around and looks accusingly at all the little kids when they run by. I’m not scared of him, but I’ve just been really confused because he never talks to me and usually looks away as soon as I enter the room. I kind of just assumed he hated me or was annoyed that I was a foreigner invading his school.

Well today he came into my classroom, and out of the blue just started talking to me in English. WHAT?!? I thought he was mute, let alone had the ability to communicate in ENGLISH with me. He said, “Yesterday you left the window open” and I was so shocked I could barely respond. I apologized, smiled, and then kind of assumed he would leave after that. Instead he just stood there for a minute looking around my classroom, and then started to talk (in broken English) about how he wished he was better at English and he learned it in middle school but now he’s over 60 years old so he’s not as good at it and that it’s hard but he’s going to try and hopefully I can help him a little. What a precious old guy!!! Totally made my day and I got all teary when he left. Moments like that just make me fall deeper and deeper in love with this place. 

***

Well sorry this post is long and wordy and I don’t have pictures of these awesome dudes to entertain your eyes, but I will work on it. I’m sure I can get a secret shot of them somehow… I just had to share my love for these guys to the world. This Korean adventure is full of big fun events that are easy to explain, but it’s the cute little interactions with friends, teachers, and students that I’m learning to appreciate the most.

I ran a 5k last weekend!!! The weather has finally started warming up and running outside is actually bearable so I decided to sign up for my first race of 2010. Our little group of friends in Dongducheon is part of a larger group of friends from all over Seoul called TEAM DIRT. Its purpose is to raise money and awareness about an eye disease called Choroideremia.. sooo by running together and playing, we’re also supporting a good cause. Everybody in the group is lots of fun and it’s nice to get to know people from other areas too.

After the race we hung out at the stadium for a few extra hours waiting for the people who ran the longer stretches (like half marathon and FULL marathon!) to finish and then went out for dinner and then for a long night out in Ilsan. The picture of Clint, me, Jono, and Jon with all the Koreans is to document our winning of the red vests and volunteer badges. For some reason we decided it’d be cool to fake we were race officials, so we found random kids on the train who had been volunteers and rock-paper-scissored them for the vests and badges. I lost to my guy twice (the one about to bite the water bottle…) but he still gave me a 3rd chance to beat him-which I did. I figured it made me look more official so I had an excuse to look gross during the rest of our Seoul adventures that day.

Anyways, it was a fun race and it inspired me to get back into shape now that its spring and perhaps become a true runner. My official goal is to run a half marathon by the end of 2010… This is HUGE considering I’ve never run more than 6 miles at a time in my life. Soooo I better kick it into gear—this year is already going by fast!

In case you started to forget (because I almost have), I ammmm still a teacher. The kids came back for about a week, but there were no English classes so I just played games outside with them, got bombarded by the 5th grade fan club during every break, and had the usual daily daycare. Now they’re gone again for spring break until beginning of March. I do not understand the Korean school system at all but I’m just going with the flow and trying to make the most of all my spare time in my office. Once school starts up again on March 2nd I’ll be teaching every day for a solid 5 months, so I better rest up while I can!

Also, I got my hair cut and highlighted again (see picture 5..) I went to the same place as last time with the same stylist, sooo it’s pretty much exactly like last time. I love that place and Miss Kim, who is the only one there brave enough to touch blonde hair. She just pampers me with cappuccinos, fresh OJ, and beautiful Korean magazines. It makes me want to get my hair cut approximately every day.

I can’t stop taking pictures of the daycare kids because they’re always being adorable. We’re getting to a point where we can fully converse, even though we don’t speak the same language. One of them will go on a little Korean tangent, and then I reply in English, and then they reply back in Korean. We have all turned into mind readers.

This afternoon 5 of them dropped by my office and said “Teacher we don’t want to go home yet, can we stay here and play??” (Ok really it was “teacher, go home, no. UNO? pleeease?”) It was the single cutest thing I’ve ever heard. So we just hung out playing UNO and Hide and Seek until I figured they better head home before their parents got worried. I don’t need to be accused of kidnapping kids, like some otherrrr Americans I know. (How were they THAT dumb, by the way? The things people do in the wake of national disasters never ceases to amaze me.) While we’re on the subject… Poor Haiti! My heart hurts.

Winter and spring are warring over the month of February, so every day is a surprise. One day it’s nice enough for a sweatshirt and outdoor dodgeball, and the next morning I’ll wake up to ice and a blizzard and spend the afternoon making snowmen. It’s confusing, and impossible to be organized and lay out what I’m gong to wear the night before. Well… let’s be real, I never do that because I’m never that organized. BUT it’s still annoying! The nicer days remind me of the bliss of spring and keep me on my toes for when it will reallllly be here full swing. I won’t survive winter much longer.

Since it’s NOT real spring quite yet, we took advantage of last week’s blizzards by heading out to Yong-Pyong, a giant ski resort outside Seoul. After living in Utah for 5 years, I didn’t have high expectations for what we were going to get out of Korean snowboarding. However, I was very pleased and surprised. There were about a millllion lifts and different runs, and they were actually good quality too. From the top it looked just like Park City, which was weird (because they’re like 6000 miles apart). Since it had snowed so much throughout the week we had good powder the entire time, PLUS it stayed sunny all weekend. It was pretty much the most ideal snowboarding conditions ever, and we found it here in KOREA.

Throughout the week we just make up random excuses to go out and have fun, including various venues such as Miller Time, virtual golf, and noraebang. Usually kai bai bo (rock paper scissors) thrown in with anything else can be pretty exciting. Tonight we’re all off to Seoul to start the weekend off with a bang. Nothing like an all nighter to prepare you for the rest of the weekend…

(please note that in 3 out of the 4 pictures below i’m flashing the peace sign. the asians have taken over my brain)

Andddd for the final installment of the trip— VIETNAM!!!! What a magical place. We flew into Ho Chi Minh Sunday night, found a hotel on Bui Vien (the Ho Chi Minh version of Khaosan) and then spent the next 5 days cruising around southern Vietnam. On Monday we met 2 tour guides named Day and Cuong. They took us all over the city on the back of their motorbikes and we were able to see all the main attractions within a couple of hours. Since they were such good guides, we decided to take them up on their offer to take us on a 2-day tour of the Mekong Delta outside the city.

Sooo the following day we jumped back on the motorbikes and they took us on a couple hour journey out of the city to the Mekong Delta. This is the area where the Mekong River makes its way down from its tour all over SE Asia and dumps out into the ocean. So there is lots of swamp land and cool marshes and a lot of neat little villages. It was a nice break from the rest of the trip because we didn’t see any tourists for a whole 2 days!!! They took us to all these interesting secluded places that nobody would ever get to see on just an average tour. We went to a coconut candy factory, down the river on a private little boat, ate fresh shrimp on a boat in the middle of the river as we watched the sunset, ate street food with the locals, saw some cool Pagoda temples, and just cruised around on the back of their motorbikes and soaked in the sun and sights for a whole 2 days.

By the end of it we were exhausted, and happy to be back to Bui Vien street, where we met up with John and Rachel for the last few days of the trip. It was nice to see familiar faces (they’re teachers in Korea too!) and we got a big hotel room for all 4 of us. Thursday we wandered the city together, did some shopping, and played at the park and stalked the locals. A friend we met in Bangkok told us about the “amazing water park in Ho Chi Minh” so we decided to beat the sun on the last day and just go play in the water. We thought since it’s technically winter there, and since it was a random week day it would be empty, but instead we were greeted by about 5 million little Vietnamese kids running and swimming and screaming all over the place. Not quite the serene day in the sun we were anticipating, but it was definitely entertaining.

Welcome to Ko Phi Phi (ko-pee-pee), the land of beautiful beaches, endless buckets, and all night beach parties like you’ve never seen before. This was the definite VACATION portion of the trip, where we did nothing productive or cultural and spent all of our time playing, swimming, soaking up the sun, drinking more fruit shakes, staying up late watching fire dancers and dancing plenty ourselves, and meeting crazy people from all over the world. The ferry ride from Phuket to Ko Phi Phi (about 90 minutes) was full of exquisite views of clear blue ocean, crisp blue skies, and dotted with lush green islands along the way. I couldn’t put my camera down for the last 10 minutes as we pulled into Ko Phi Phi because everything was just sooo pretty. As we circled around the island to the harbor, everything about the little island was bold, beautiful, and perfectly photogenic. 

We got off the ferry and found a hotel within a few minutes and walked the journey up the hill to get there. There are no roads on Ko Phi Phi, as everything is easy to get to on little walking trails throughout the little town. The mazes of pathways throughout the island are dotted with little tourist shops, restaurants from every corner of the world, scuba diving tents, street food carts, and bars and clubs galore. Our hotel had a nice view of the ocean from the balcony (the advantage of being at the top of the hotel hill), and getting down to the beach took less than 5 minutes.

The great thing about Ko Phi Phi, aside from being paradise, is that it’s a melting pot of young travelers from all over the world. Most of the people we saw and met were all in their mid 20’s, and for whatever reasons had just dropped everything back home and taken off to explore the world. I was surrounded by kindred spirits for a whole 2 days!!! Oddly enough, after we left Bangkok we didn’t meet any other Americans for the rest of the trip. Most people we met were actually surprised when I said I was from the U.S., as I guess it’s a rare sighting. Not sure why that is (although I have my theories), but I thought it was interesting. We did, however, meet plenty of Brits, Italians, Norwegians, and Australians to keep us entertained.

Ko Phi Phi was definitely pretty touristy and there were a lot of young, crazy people… so if you’re looking for a chill, empty beach you might want to go elsewhere. But if you’re looking for a bit of a party and the chance to meet a lot of cool people, then Ko Phi Phi is the place to be!

After 4 days in the big city, it was time to head south to the land of the beaches. Our first stop was PHUKET (pronounced poo-kett, although I know you realllly want to say it the other way). We flew in Wednesday night and stayed until Friday afternoon. It’s really famous as a tourist destination, but that was the precise problem with it. It was pretty and fairly cheap and our hotel was righttt on the beach front strip, but it was crowded and the market vendors were grabby, and the beaches were packed with old rich Europeans. It was nice to just relax for a day though, as we spent alll day Thursday just sitting on the beach, getting extremely sunburnt, and going for the occasional swim. We kept up on the Pad Thai and curry fixation (treating ourselves to a few realll restaurants… probably safer for the tummy and still under $5) and I set a world record for number of fruit shakes downed. Throughout the entire trip, everywhere had really cheap fruit shakes (ranging from 50 cents to $2) that were made from delicious fresh fruit. Pineapple, coconut, mango, banana, strawberry, watermelon…. pretty sure I tried them all.

Friday morning we mustered up the motivation to wake up early and go on a elephant trek, which was the craziest thing I have ever done. It wasn’t actually crazy in itself… I mean you’re just sitting there on this chair on the back of an elephant. But we were terrified!!! Our cart felt wobbly and our elephant was weird and our driver didn’t speak any English and kept getting off and letting our elephant take control and go wherever he wanted. It was fun and a really cool experience, but we definitely didn’t feel safe until we were standing back on solid ground again. Phuket was a nice stop on the way, but if I had it to do over again I’d just skip Phuket and go straight out to the smaller islands. I guess it depends what types of things you’re into…

The first stop on the magical vacation of Chrissy and Beenish was BANGKOK, THAILAND. Thailand is a place I’ve wanted to go for at least the past decade (I was a weird 12 year old), so living in Korea and having it be soo cheap to get there is like dream come true. Bangkok is a busy, bustling city with crazy traffic yet a weird lack of stress. Everyone just mozies around and does their thing, and nobody ever seems to be in a huge rush. Our main form of transportation was via Tuk Tuks, which are little carts attached to motorbikes that can take you all around the city for cheap. Bangkok was a good combination of cool touristy stuff, and a really fun time. We saw all the important sites like the Grand Palace, Golden Mount, Reclining Buddha, Angkor Wat-Bangkok version, took a couple river taxis for a nice view of the city, ate piles of Pad Thai (for like $1 off the street carts), got sucked into the tailor shops and I bought some work pants (impossible to find my size in Korea), got sucked into the jewelry shops and Beenish bought some nice (maybe fake?) jewelry, and of course we spent some quality time on Khoasan Road. Khoasan is like a famous backpacker road with a bunch of hotels, restaurants, markets, and street food filled with backpackers from all over the world. It was fun to walk around and meet people and hear crazy stories about what people were up to. We stayed at a hostel called the Lub d’ Bangkok, which was in a random empty neighborhood of the city, but suchhh a nice hostel! It was the cleanest hostel I’ve ever stayed at, with an in-house restaurant and bar and free internet! Our roommates there were a couple of Canadian guys who just started a backpacking journey around SE Asia, and we all made friends with a bunch of other people in our hostel (from the US, Japan, Amsterdam, the UK, etc…) who all became our little hostel crew. We had a good time exploring the city together, downing buckets on Khoasan, watching a Muay Thai kickboxing match, and just hanging out at our hostel eating delicccious noodles from across the street and exchanging stories.

After a week in Thailand, I’m very much in love with the place.

Here is Bangkok, Phuket, and Ko Phi Phi.

Much more to come, don’t even worry.