On the Flipside: A Korean Adventure (2): Waygook everyday life: May 1-12, 2013

As sad as it was to say bye to my friends, Larissa, Teresa, and Molly, I really can't complain because it has barely been two weeks and we now have more visitors coming! This time round Ian and I will be Korean tour guides for my parents, my aunt, my uncle, and one of my cousins. They arrive on Monday afternoon, and I am lucky my principal is letting me leave early from school to go meet them at the airport. We have lots of things planned for their visit, including a long weekend trip to Sokcho, a small town on the east coast where Ian and I went for Chuseok (Korean Thanksgiving), among other sight-seeing and shows. I can't wait to show my family around and introduce them to our Korean life. It is going to be a busy next two weeks, but I am very excited!

Besides being busy with visitors, we have also been busy at work. This is the time of year when we are told to have "open classes", meaning our supervisor, principal, vice principal, and other foreign and Korean teachers from other schools are invited to come and watch one of our lessons. Oh and this class is filmed and the video is sent to the Incheon Metropolitan Board of Education. I am lucky, as my school isn't putting a lot of pressure on me, but I have heard of other schools that really stress the importance of this open class. Ian will have his open class this Thursday, and mine is the following week. We are very busy planning everything, because not only do we have to have an open class but we are required to observe several others as well. Needless to say, our work life has been busier than usual.

Having such a busy schedule recently, made me really appreciate the unexpected holiday we had on May 1st. We only found out a few days before, that Wed. May 1st was a holiday for foreign English Teachers, as we are part of a union. At first, I felt a little guilty because my co-teachers had to come into work, but then a friend reminded me about winter break and all the solo desk warming we endured, and that made my guilty feeling disappear. So to make the most of our day off, Ian and I met up with our close group of friends and headed to the Seoul Zoo. It was a very large zoo with a wide variety of species and to top it off the price was right - the entrance fee was 3,000 Won (~2.70$). It was definitely a great break in the middle of our hectic work week.

On Friday May 3rd, my school had a Sports' Day, where the whole grade was divided into two teams and they played games outdoors all day. I sat on the sidelines cheering my students on. It was such a fun day, mostly because they didn't play regular sports, but rather they played these funny games and activities. The students had been looking forward to this day for weeks and I think they really enjoyed it.

Last weekend (May 3-4), two of our friends, Adam and Ryan celebrated their birthdays. On Saturday, we went out in Gangnam, Seoul. Ian and I actually hosted almost everyone at our place before heading to Seoul together. This doesn't sound like anything too exciting, but for us having six other people in our tiny apartment was quite the accomplishment! I love having people over and hosting, but it is just too hard with the small space we have.

Yesterday (Saturday May 11th), after watching the leafs win (GO LEAFS GO!) we met up with one of Ian's co teachers, Mr.Lee and went to a wedding for one of the math teachers at Ian's school. This was our second Korean wedding. Similar to the previous one we attended, this wedding was very short, it started at noon and we were done by 1:30pm. Weddings in Korea are always interesting to watch, and I am happy we got to go to this one. Some highlights included the groom walking down the aisle to the Pirates of the Caribbean theme song, the bride and her father walking under drawn swords to reach the alter, and the sword being later used to cut the cake. Ian and I were the only foreigners at the wedding and many people simply came up to say "Hello, how are you, nice to meet you!"

Later that night, we headed to Seoul for the Lotus Lantern Festival. This was a parade through the streets near Insadong. There were many lantern floats, music groups, and people marching with lanterns.

Here are some pictures from the past two weeks :)

Bears play fighting at the Seoul Zoo.

Sports' Day at my school. The younger grades wear bright yellow gym uniforms. I was told because yellow represents children, and in Korean children are sometimes nick named chicks. They are warming up, doing a choreographed stretch that all elementary schools are taught. One of my co teachers told me this exact warm up routine has been around for around 50 years.