Time flies when you're having fun!

Can't believe it's been this long since my last post. I've taken a whopping 170 new pictures since then! ha! A little crazy...guess it's good I have digital! (thanks Mom!)

Didn't end up going to the palace but I'm sure I'll make it there in the near future. I did however go see Fame (English!!) and ate Pizza Hut! I also bought a new phone. I ended up buying a contract phone with SHOW (one of the top three cell phone companies) under my Korean friend's name. The bill still gets paid out of my bank account so no fuss with that. It was quite a decision and struggle to get one so I'm glad I finally got one. I also chose a sweet phone that i will pay off monthly with my bill. Its dark brown with gold! Bling! Features of the LG Cyon: watch TV, listen to Radio, Mp3, Eng-Kor and Kor-Eng dictionary, subway map, camera, and sweet games to pass time on the subway. It's all-in-all amazing!

SUSHI with PLUS!

Went out for a nice sushi (the sushi with no rice) dinner with the school and the owning company (Woojin) to celebrate having 80 students. (We'd already passed 100, but we missed the 80 celebration so they found a reason to celebrate!) The big man GM was there and a total of about 25 of us! It was so fun. There was toast after toast after toast of "So-Mec" which is soju (yummy Korean rice alcohol) and beer or "mecju" mixed together. Basically, soju bombs. ha. Chugged and finished every time. Notice the bottles on the table. Needless to say, the night turned fun very fast. The pictures I've included are from the night starting with 10pm dinner (this was a Thursday night btw), moving to Karaoke until 3am, and then finishing at another bar at 5am! i skipped the last stop. ha. You can see some food was very different - even for Koreans. Many are just as freaked out as I was about the sea urchin that still moves.

I had no idea and picked it up with my chopstick and accidentally dropped it. Then went to go pick it up again and it was hard! I screamed and dropped it on purpose in fear! I was soo confused! Check out the video. The video is taken about 2 hours after it was out so it wasn't as alive and kicking but it was still moving! You can see me kissing the full fish (which is "pregnant" aka eggs spill out when you bite it.) Did not go for that one :/. Other dishes included a full fish in a sweet sauce which was good. The sushi was on ice and delicious! The final course was these beautiful sushi cones. I could not stop eating!

Then it was on to Karaoke, or the "Nori-bong" translated "singing room." How fun is this?!

I love karaoke-ing so much I think I'm going to start this in the US. For real. It's amazing. I would do it everyday if I could. This nori-bong even had a little US pride with a Statue of liberty carving in the wall! :) I took it as a sign. ha

On Saturday we had an event at the school for promoting. It was really cute. We showed Ice Age 3: Dawn of the Dinosaurs with Korean subtitles. The students brought friends. We provided snacks. At the end, Dominic and I asked quiz questions and handed out candy to the students with the right answers. It was fun and I got some pics of the students! Finally! They probably look really small. I plan to get more soon. I loved it when I walked in the room and a bunch of kids shouted "Teacher Sarah! Hi! Hello! Hello! Hello!" Afterward I got a snapshot of some of my students. Max chose to model. hehe. He was the student that gave me a pack of stickers and an American flag fact card on the first day of school. When I take attendance every class and ask, "Hello. How are you Max?" he's my only student that actually asks about me: "I'm fine. How are you?" with a great big smile. He's a sweetheart (but of course can be a little booger too!)

This past week, my good friend and sorority sister, Laura (who's teaching in China), came to Korea for their holiday break with her other China teachers. Luckily, her week here overlapped with my holiday. We met for lunch one day in Seoul to eat some Italian food and talk. It was a lot of fun to compare our experiences. I think she's interested in coming to Korea next which might be while I'm still here. Later that night (Thursday night of my 3-day weekend) me, some PLUS teachers, Laura, and Laura's friends all met up for a late dinner and a night out. First we went to a bar and took over a whole section with the 15 of us. They made strong drinks there for a middle price. We stayed there for a few hours and the conversation was great. There were people from all over the world speaking the same language sharing ideas about life. It really makes me excited about having more of these conversations while I'm here with the people I meet. We left the first bar at 3am to head to the nori-bong of course! we had more liquor there and a really great time. All English songs - yay! At 5am we weren't about to pay for a $40 taxi when we could just wait another 30 minutes to catch the subways. That's the great thing about a city that never sleeps. Literally. There were still tons of people out and places open! We came across two couples having a picnic of soju and beer on the street with their parked car playing music. We crashed their party and danced but they loved it too. We then headed to a hookah bar which I was soo stoked about but they for some reason wouldn't start us a hookah at 5am! wtf? ha. just kidding. Anyway the place was so cool with drapes and water and candles and flowers. I must go back another day at an earlier time. After that I just headed home. Of course sitting on the subway at 6am for an hour, I fell asleep. Ended up making it home but had to transfer trains twice, wait forever, take a cab to my actual apartment which got a little lost. I got home at 8:30am. HA! Definitely a new record. Needless to say, I slept in.

Saturday was Chu Seok (Korean Thanksgiving) with GaYeong's family. I met her family at a subway station and we continued to her uncle's. They had two dogs, one an angel, one a devil! The devil growled any time you even looked at it even though it was wearing a frog suit. ha i was scared. The angel had her nails painted which I found humorous. We ate a ton of food. The pre-meal snack specific to Chu Seok is songpyeon (a Korean rice cake.) It was delicious. Most people make them and if your expecting, you're supposed to make them pretty for a pretty baby. Instead of team time, they have a fruit course which is delicious and much more healthy I'm sure! I love Korean pears, the grapes are a lot of work but yummy (take the peels off and spit the seeds) and this orange fruit (yut?) is so sweet and I can't really compare it to anything. After the meal, the men went to watch comedy TV (sound familiar?!) and the women played a traditional Korean game, Yut Nori. They had a homemade set. At first, they were laughing at me and my confused looks but after I got the hang of it, it turned out to be really fun. We put money on the games and at the end of day, I lost 4,000won (aka ~$3.80.) The winner bought ice cream and we went to hang out at the park. We took some fun pics there! Including jumpy pics! We headed back to GaYeong's for dinner and TV and then I passed out!

Sunday we woke up and ate breakfast. I played with Ricky, her cute dog! We went to church at 11:30 for 1.5 hours. It was pretty hard to stay awake for a 50 minute sermon all in Korean. I was good reflection time for me though. Afterward I was amazed by the car elevator used to park cars! Maybe they have it in bigger cities with no parking in America but I'd never seen it!

Unfortunately, Ga Yeong had to go to work that day so it was me and her older sister Sun Yeong. We headed to the famous shopping district Myeong Dong! Yay! SOoooo many people! There was a Dale Chihuly art exhibit in one of the department stores. The colors was amazing! I bought a bunch of clothes at Forever 21. I know I know, it's in the states BUT I found out - it's a Korean brand! The fashion at F21 is just like what everyone wears here! i love it so much! i want every outfit I see on the streets. and the shoes.......AHH! omg I wish my feet were smaller. I saw a store called "Rainbow Optical." First rainbow I've seen in a while. I'm pretty sure this one was screaming dad :) Later, Ga Yeong was able to meet us for dinner at a famous dumplings place - so famous we had to stand in line! They were delicious. I finally headed home after a packed weekend to rest up.



School is going well and that's all the energy I have to write about that now. :)