PHOTOS!! And adventures of today!

Here's a better link to my photos... this way you don't have to be a member:
http://www.imagestation.com/album/?id=3728370093&code=12511927&mode=invite&cmp=EMC-AlbumInvite

Today was a semi-eventful day! I taught 3 classes and in all of them, I am teaching about Halloween! It's alot of fun, plus my students love the fact that they get candy! I found Starburst hard candy at a bigger grocery store here, so they are even sorta getting American candy.

After my classes were done (which was 2:40pm), I had to go to the post office to mail my ballot in (super express mail is kinda expensive from here). I mailed my ballot all by myself, which may not sound like an accomplishment to you, but it sure is for me. For one, it means that I found the post office. And secondly, it means that I communicated in broken Korean (with the help of my Korean Phrasebook) and managed to tell the postal worker that I needed my ballot send as fast as possible!

After the post office I headed to SK Telecom to recharge my apparently prepaid phone. I managed to do this in less than 5 minutes, which is awesome because of course I don't have the Korean vocabulary to do that either :-)

That was about all the excitement, though I have been working hard on my photo album, so be sure to check it out! Hopefully soon I will get this blog caught up, but I'm going to try and continue posting current news as long as what has happened in the past...so stay tuned!!!

Photos

If you click on My Profile on the right hand side of your screen, it will bring up my full profile. On the left hand site you will see a link that says My Website this is the link to my online photo albums! Enjoy the pictures...they make my blog more understandable!

Chuseok - Part 3 - Tuesday

Tuesday!!!

Tuesday was the actual day that Chuseok was celebrated. For us, this meant that we could tour the palaces for free! And play traditional Korean games.

We started at noon at Deoksugung Palace, which is in the heart of down town Seoul, across from the City Hall. The Palace was incredibly beautiful, and that fact that you could see Seoul's skyscrapers behind it made it even more awe-inspiring. At this palace, we first played the Korean games. One involves standing on a board and trying to knock the person across from you off (like a small teeter-totter). The others played the game first and by the time it was my turn, there was a huge Korean audience watching. I later found out that this wasn't really a game that was played but...back in the day, women weren't allowed to go out into the streets, they had to stay confined to their house. By doing this outside, the women could catch glimpses of the outside world. We also played a dart throwing game that was rather entertaining. Another traditional game involved a top and a whip, but it looked way to complicated to try.

Then we went off to look for another palace (Changbukgong, I think), but this one was quite difficult to find. We stopped for lunch first (unfortunately due to the holiday, McDonalds was the only thing open that we could agree on). After lunch we started looking for the palace. After walking in the wrong direction for about 15 minutes, we found a map and realized we were lost. Eventually we got our sense of direction back and headed to the palace. On the way to the palace we found a street festival going on to celebrate Chuseok.

At the street festival, they had men making bread the old fashioned way (my pounding it with a large wooden mallet), and women making grain the old-fashioned way. We also got the opportunity to play the dart game again. The Korean people there wanted us to stay and watch the rest of the festival, but we were determined to find the palace.

Well...once we got to the palace, we saw a bunch of people outside. While trying to figure out what was going on, Alicia and Liz found the board game again and tried to play it. I went to the ticket booth and saw that they wre still charging and entrance fee... we were pissed 'cause it was supposed to be free, so we decided to leave and head back to the street festival. Once we got back to the street festival, there were things going on on the main stage. I got to see a traditional Korean arm wrestling tournament (ok...don't know how traditional it was, but it involved a lot of really drunk old guys). It was hysterical. One guy was sooo drunk that he had to be dragged off the stage. We later saw him peeing in an alleyway! We stayed there for about an hour, then decided to check and see if the bookstore was open. We tried to go to the Kyobo bookstore (one of the biggest bookstores in Seoul), but it was closed for the holiday. So, we pretty much got off the subway, walked to the bookstore, then continued walking to the next subway. We did get to see a statue in the middle of the street and a cool building in downtown Seoul though (I took pictures, they'll be up on my photo website soon). Then we took the subway back to the hotel. The search for food didn't look like it was going to be fun, as most things in our hotel area were closed. Not wanting to be forced to resort to McDonalds or Burger King, we decided to hunt around. Luckily I remembered there was a sandwich place not far from the subway station---and it was open! We decided to eat there. I also ordered some cheesecake - which I then proceeded to drop on the floor. So alas, no cheesecake for me. We then went to the Family Mart so I could by some M&Ms (to replace my cheesecake) and some soju and beer. Then it was back to the hotel to watch more movies.

Chuseok - Part 2 - Monday

I know...this has been long in coming, sorry about that.

Monday:

Beth, Liz, Alicia, and I decided to check out Dongdaemun market. We didn't know for sure how many people there would be there, or how many street vendors would be selling stuff, since it was the day before Chuseok. Luckily, things worked out for us. There were quite a few street vendors still there, and hardly any tourists. We wandered around the market for a while until we came to Dongdaemun stadium (a soccer stadium) where they were having a flea market!!! It was great, a ton of vendors had things set up. I purchased a poster to hang on my bare walls. After spending about an hour and a half there, we decided to move on.

We went to Hyehwa arts district to see what it was like. Immediately as we exited the subway, we could hear music being played. There was an ampitheater with a guy playing the guitar in it. We sat on a beneath a tree and listened to him play for a while. Then we decided to check out more of the Hyehwa district. Once we left the park, we didn't run into any other people!! It was crazy...downtown Seoul, a city with a population of 13 million people and we walked about 4 blocks hardly seeing anyone else. The good thing about that, however, is that Beth and Liz got the opportunity to "borrow" RENT posters that were hanging.

After Hyehwa, we headed back to the Sinchon area--near our hotel. We decided to hit up Starbucks for a little caffeine. I got a yummy croque monsieur (french grilled ham and cheese sandwich) and drank a little coffee. Unknown to me, we were then going to go out to dinner. Had I known this, I wouldn't have eaten the grilled ham and cheese, but anyways, we then began our search for a restaurant. We finally settled on "The Happy Table." I split chicken fajitas with Beth. The Happy Table had a lot of different pasta meals, and fajitas... a random combination of foods, but it was very good. Of course, we did a little shopping on the way to the restaurant. My new favorite stores are The Face Shop and Missha which both sell about the same things... but I love them anyway.

Then it was time to head back to the hotel--for another early night, after the exhaustion of the day.

~~and now it's time for class for me... more later ~~

Test

Ok,

So last Friday I wrote this big long summary of everything that I did for the rest of Chuseok, and for some reason it wouldn't post to the website. Therefore I'm going to conduct a little test to make sure that I can post from work (which is where I am).

Stay tuned for more information!