Weekend Life: December 7-9

Well, it is officially winter in Korea! We have had some big snowfalls and there is plenty of snow staying on the ground. The city looks beautiful covered in snow. The only downside is that Incheon doesn't salt the sidewalks or clear the snow on the streets. Environmentally speaking this is of course a positive thing, however, for everyone else walking or driving around it can become quite dangerous. This past Tuesday was the first major snowfall and my students went crazy, and I admit I joined them in the madness! I was in the middle of teaching grade 3 when the snow started to fall. Once one student noticed, it was only a matter of seconds before my entire class was running up to the window to get a good look at the snow. The rest of the day you could pretty much feel all of their excitement. I paused the lesson to teach new words like snowman, snow ball, and snow angel. When the bell rang everyone ran outside to play in the snow. It was an awesome Tuesday!

This past weekend was a very relaxing one which was a nice change. On Friday night I went into Seoul with my two closest girlfriends Isabelle and Emily for some shopping, dinner, and dessert. It was nice walking around in the snowfall, but one thing Ian and I found annoying is that everyone uses an umbrella when it is snowing (and not the slushy kind of snow, just the regular fluffy snow). It makes it hard to walk on the sidewalk...Later that night, Emily and I met up with Ian and her boyfriend Ryan in Bupyeong. This is where we heard about Ian's unlucky yet lucky stories. As I mentioned before, Incheon doesn't salt their sidewalks, so after several days of snow, it became very icy. On Friday night, Ian was running to catch a bus to meet up with a few friends in Bupyeong. While running he slipped and fell on the ice. Luckily he wasn't injured, so he quickly got up and continued running to the bus. He didn't manage to get far before he felt a tap on his shoulder. It was a nice Korean man holding Ian's cellphone (S3 Galaxy), ipod, and wallet!! When Ian fell, all three items had fallen out of his pockets! It was so nice that the man noticed and chased Ian down to return them. I think this story just really goes to show how honest the people here are and how safe I feel living in Korea, seeing how this stranger ran after Ian to return three valuable items.

This was also only part one of his unlucky/lucky night. Later that night Ian tried to take out money from an ATM. He inserted his card at 9:59 pm and at exactly 10 pm the machine turned off with no warning, eating his card. Yes, for some reason unclear to us, ATM machines only work until 10 pm. Ian didn't know what to do, as there was a telephone number but the person on the other end only spoke Korean. Thankfully, Ian waited with a friend and eventually a employee came to open the machine and return his card. Like Ian's parents said "it's the type of mistake you only make once." We have also informed our other foreign friends about the 10 pm rule with ATMs.

On Saturday, we relaxed, did some shopping, and finished season two of this show "Suits." That night we went into Seoul for Santacon. This is an event for foreigners to dress up as santa, sing carols, and do a pub crawl. It was a fun night! It was funny to see so many santas paired with the shocked reactions from the Koreans.

I have been listening to Christmas music non-stop at my desk and I am getting very excited for the holidays! I hope everyone else is also getting in the spirit :)

This is a group photo of the Incheon public school teachers at Santacon on Saturday night.