Christmas edition!

I know, I know, I've been ridiculously lazy about posting (sorry,) but here I go. I'll start by letting you all know how our Christmas went here. On Christmas Eve, we got off from work at the usual time, 10:40pm, and then we had some Christmas galbi (meat) with many of our co-workers at a fantastic restaurant called simply "the shovel." (This restaurant brings food out to you on grills that closely resemble snow shovels...made of cast iron.) After filling our bellies with cut-up strips of some lean, delicious meat, Kait and I headed home to our little Christmas tree. We got the Christmas tree itself from some friends of friends whom we have yet to meet; it is a little plastic tree about 3 feet tall, but it didn't have a base when we got it. In order to improvise on this, we used an eight-pack of canned kidney beans that we had recently purchased from Costco. We simply cut one can out of the plastic wrapping, and placed the tree in the newly made hole - voila, a tree stand! Anyways, once we got home, we each opened one present each, as we decided to before hand, and each were from the stocking that the Callahans sent us (thanks again!) I got a wallet, and Kait got some Swiss mix and socks/legwarmers. (Yep, you guessed it. Kait opened 2 presents.) Other than that, nothing terribly exciting happened on Christmas Eve.

Christmas, however, was pretty epic. We started the day by opening the rest of our presents. Kait got, makeup, a light jacket/sweater, facewash, a blanket, and a cofee grinder, and I got chapstick, a cell phone, and a gift card to a book store. We both got vanilla extract, herbs, dried cherries, chapstick, popcorn, and chocalate. Plenty of good loot overall.

After opening presents, we prepared to have people over to our house for some coffecake and egg brunch with many sides of fresh fruit. While we ate, we put on "It's a Wonderful Life," my personal favorite regarding Christmas movies, though the original "Home Alone" comes in a close second. (I think some of us will be quoting the latter for a few months at least.) Meanwhile, we were also preparing our dish - sweet potato french fries - for the company dinner that we were going to later in the day.

Before that, though, we went ice skating at Su Sung Lake, though in an arena - not on the lake itself because it was not anywhere near frozen. Though it was a fairly small arena, there were a lot of people, and my skates were three sizes too small for me, we all still managed to have a very good time skating away for a brief while before dinner.

We went to dinner at a place called Hof 'N' Joy, located very near the company's main school. It was a very large room that had enough tables and such to seat 60 empolyees who attended the party. Before long we dined on delicious turkey, stuffing, potatoes, salads, and more side dishes to really remember. But it was all very good. After dinner we played "bad santa," which is where everybody brings a gift to give someone, but once the game starts - and a gift has been opened - then someone may steal that gift rather than open a new one. Even though this game went on for a long time, it was very entertaining, and a great way to spend time with friends.

After dinner, we decided to head back to our neighborhood with one of our co-workers/friends - Carolyn - to play some cards together. This is where my night got really interesting: I drank the bottle of wine that I walked away with from the party. However, let the record state that I offered to share the bottle with the other two card players present, but they graciously declined. Overall, it was a very fun and fulfilling day, cram-packed with interesting things to do, and wonderful people to be around.

Other than that, there are a few other interesting things to note, which I will go into below:

Interesting foods eaten:
-Duck gizzard. Yes, you heard me, duck gizzard. We ate this after we visited some burial mounds at a museum located in Daegaya, outside of Daegu; we went there with our friend Lee.

-Chicken ass:
No, I am not even kidding. And I don't mean the meat around the aforementioned area either. I mean, the actual....well, you get the idea. If you asked me how it was, I could only say that it was very, very crunchy. If I could invent an adjective, I would say "cartilagy." We actually ate this by accident when we went to a local pub. We pointed to one dish, but the server apparently misunderstood, and gave us some potatoes and chicken ass. Once we saw what we got, we were in denial about it and commenced to eat some to try this new food, but we later came to terms with it and are now coping. At least we had some beer/soju to wash it down with...

-Pizza: Although this may not sound different, when you put corn, pasta noodles, and potatoes on a pizza, it adds to a whole different experience.

-Interesting occurrences:
"Hello": Often, we will walk down the street, and random Koreans whom we have never met nor seen before walk up to us with an excited look on their faces as they say "Hello" or "Hi." When I say hello back - I always make it a point to do so - they get even more excited and start giggling (if they are girls) or talking excitedly amongst themselves.

-"Handsome guy": Like the above occurrence, I often get people who just walk right up to me - perhaps even within my personal bubble - and say, "Handsome guy!" The different part about this is that the only people who say this to me are males.

-The Mokiotang: (spelling?) This is basically the public shower and bath room in the gym that we go to. At first glance, it is not that different from a regular public bath house, but once you have gone in fairly regularly, you begin to notice various things that seem odd to someone from the American/western culture. The main thing that I have inevitably noticed is scrubbing. Now mind you, this is always a normal occurrence in any shower room, but when someone is doing it to someone else, then it becomes - to me - abnormal. For example, there are maybe three or four employees working in the locker room/bath house at most times. Usually these are elderly, or at the very youngest, middle-aged men. You can pay one of these men to scrub your body with a course rag while you lie down on a padded bench in the shower room. Oh, and you are generally lying face up. The employee scrubs you from head to toe - at least mostly - to get you clean, a completely normal occurrence that happens every day. Also, sometimes I see what appears to be father and son in the shower room together, and they are scrubbing each other as well; I have seen this up to the point that the son is a teenager.

-Holding hands: Males have no problem showing public displays of affection here, be it at a young age - like when they are in my classroom - or older - such as after they have come out of a bar. Anything from hugging to holding hands to placing an arm around their friend's waist while walking down the street is completely commonplace and provides no need for anyone to raise an eyebrow. It is a very interesting facet of this culture that I have noticed in that homophobia is relatively non-existent here - to my eyes at least. People don't have a stigma held against males showing pda, so there is absolutely no reason to avoid it.

-Politeness: There are really a lot of polite things that people do here that I wouldn't really think to do in the states. For example, I was on the subway about a week ago, carrying a shopping bag full of Christmas gifts in my hand, and I was standing next to an older man; I was standing because no seats were available. Once a seat opened up between us, we each looked at each other, and I gestured that the man could sit down. Then, what surprised me was that he gestured for me to give him my bag so that he could hold it for me on his lap. I just thought that that was such a subtle example of politeness, but I don't know if he was thanking me for giving him the seat, or if he always does this for people no matter what. It is possible that he was thanking me for recognizing the hierarchical structure upon which Korean culture is generally based. (Ie: older men should be respected by younger men, a pretty simple principle.) So maybe that was his way of saying "thanks" for my recognizing the structure. Or maybe not. I do know, though, that other people have had this experience as well. Back in the states, if someone offered to take my bag for me, I would be worried stiff that they would run out the door with my goods, but here, the though scarcely crossed my mind.

-Servers: When you are at a restaurant, the servers don't come by periodically to check on you - at least not normally. They have a button on the table for you to call them whenever you need them, or you can just raise your hand and say the Korean equivalent of "here" to get their attention. I think it's actually kind of nice not to have someone constantly coming by just to ask how are meals are and such, and I have all the power to get help instantly if something isn't quite right. Something tells me this may be an area of reverse culture shock when I go back to the states.

There are probably other things that I can't think of presently, but Kait can't think of anything either, so I think I got the major occurrences that are really different here. I hope everyone reading this had at least as good of a Christmas as we did, and that the new year will be a good one. Best wishes,

Ace

Well, I’m afraid that I’ve put off updating this for so long, I’ll never get caught up! I’ll try to (somewhat briefly) go over some of the highlights of the past three weeks.

The weekend before last, Ace and I headed about an hour and a half away to spend the weekend at Golgulsa Temple. The temples here have programs that let you spend the night and eat traditional meals, meditate, chant, bow, and do martial arts with the monks. The site was just gorgeous- they have Korea’s only cave temple, and the hills were ablaze with fall colors. Girls and guys slept in different quarters on mats on the cozy heated floors. We toured the place, ate a dinner of rice, tofu, kimchi, seaweed soup and veggies, practiced Sonmudo (a rare meditation/martial art) and were in “bed” by 10. We woke at 4:30 to a monk chanting and whacking a wood block, chanted, bowed and mediated for an hour, then did a traditional breakfast meditation. It was the same meal as the night before, but with incredibly precise rules and absolute silence. No grain of rice or bit of spice was wasted. We saw a few sights in the area, had chrysanthemum tea made from their garden and talked with the monks again, had lunch (same as the other two meals) and took off. It was a really good, interesting experience, but it was definitely more tiring and less peaceful than I’d expected! I think my favorite part was just getting to spend so much time in such a naturally beautiful area.

The next weekend we did salsa class Saturday night and hit the local amusement park, Woobang Tower Land, on Sunday. We went with five good teacher-friends and had a blast riding all the roller coasters and checking out Woobang Tower (like the Space Needle, except with Sky Toilets and bungee jumping off the top!) I’ve got tons of great pictures from the temple stay and the amusement park, so check them out on the photo site!

This last week flew by, as usual. Things are going well at school- we’ve successfully survived a few milestones, like our first manager observations and parent open classes. I’m definitely learning every single day, trying to improve my very imperfect techniques and trying to figure out this whole discipline thing. Knowing when, where and how to draw lines and react to all the situations that come up in the classroom is definitely not something that comes easy to me. I’ve been unhappy with how I’ve handled certain things, but I think I’m definitely learning from my mistakes. I can’t help but envy my coworkers who have had more experience with kids (babysitting, siblings, church, whatever) and are totally comfortable with laying down the law for the little ones. I think that I’m getting better at finding a good balance between a friendly and laid-back atmosphere and a strict no-nonsense one in some of my classes, but I still have such an incredibly long way to go! I have to remember that teaching isn’t something that many people are born great at, that it’s something you learn how to be, but it’s hard; I want to be a great teacher, now!




I kept myself pretty busy during the days this last week, but when I’m not running around, I’ve got a pretty good routine going. This is a pretty average day for me-
*9:30 or 10- get up, have some tea, eat some oatmeal and read the news on the internet.
Bustle around, clean up the apartment, poke around emailing and facebooking for a few.
*11ish- head to the gym. I usually to 40 minutes of cardio (spinning class, elliptical or treadmill) and 40 minutes of weights.
*1ish- head downstairs to the locker room/public baths- maybe sit in the hot tub with some naked ajumas (Korean older ladies) for a while, shower and change.
*1:30-2:30- sit in a coffee shop next to the gym, study Korean
*3:00- back at the apartment, chat with Ace, eat, make sandwiches for dinner at work.
*4:00- go to MoonKkang, prep.
*4:40-10:20- teach six classes
*10:20- wait outside to meet up with other MoonKkang teachers in the area. Sometimes we go out to eat in the area, sometimes Ace and I just head home to relax, drink tea, and watch an episode of a favorite show or a movie we’ve downloaded.
*1:30ish- bedtime, when we’re being responsible.

This Friday I had the awesome opportunity to learn a traditional Korean tea ceremony. A very generous Korean etiquette and tea ceremony teacher offered to teach any MoonKkang teachers that wanted to learn for free. I went to her lovely apartment with 6 other MoonKkang ladies (the guys have to learn next Friday- their rules are different) and she dressed us all up in traditional dress (hanbok). We spent two or three hours learning all the precise ways to bow, sit, warm the cups, make the tea, pour the tea, etc. It was really interesting and fun, and also a great photo op- there’s not very many opportunities for foreigners to dress up in hanbok! She’s offered to teach more classes in a few weeks, and I’m definitely interested in doing some more.
Saturday Carolyn and I went shopping downtown for some winter clothes- it’s starting to get really cold here! Shopping has usually been a frustrating experience for me here, as most stores don’t let customers try on tops, but we were lucky and found a place that let us try on their sweatshirts. Then we went to a delicious dinner and salsa class with more friends, then headed back to our neighborhood for a few games of pool. Today Ace,Carolyn, Grete, Brent, Krista and Mary met up with the Korean teachers from our branch for some bowling and dalk galbi (yummy spicy chicken and veggie stuff). It was the first time we’d all hung out together outside of work, and it was really nice- they’re all really fun women. I’m really hoping to make some closer Korean friends; there’s so many nice teachers in the area it’s really easy (and fun, of course) to just hang out with them all the time, but I’m sure I’d have an even better experience if I could spend more social time with some local friends.
Well, I’m all caught up for now, and it’s getting dangerously close to the 1:30 mark, so I’ll call it a night. Love to you all!
Kait

Gyeongju, Palgongsan, salsa

A little while ago, Kait and I went to a nearby town called Gyeongju, a little city on the eastern side of Korea - right in our neck of the woods. It only took us about an hour or so by bus. Although we didn't explore all of Gyeongju, it definitely left us with a great deal to come back to. We only made it a day trip, but while there, we saw some impressive burial mounds that belonged to ancient rulers who were essentially in power of Korea by unifying it a few centuries ago. The mounds were very large, perhaps 60 feet high sometimes, and we got to go inside of one that has been converted into a very small museum containing some ancient artifacts of the period. After we were through here, we stumbled upon what will in the spring be a vast lotus blossom field that abuts an old site where royalty used to entertain. (The lotus field was all brown and withering, but I think it will be really beautiful in the spring/summer.) The site regarding royal entertainment contained the remnants of a vast building that was next to a small, man-made lake.

Later, we went to the Korean National Museum to peruse among even more artifacts from different aspects of ancient culture. We found a giant bell that is supposedly one of the best built bells in Asia/the world because if you "ring" it, you can hear it for several kilometers. We did not stay here long, though, as I think we got a little "museumed out." But we did make our way to another ancient site, a small zen garden that contained a three-story building that was originally (they think) nine stories high. After we were through here, it was just about time to go, so we took off to return our rented bikes, and headed downtown to look for some food to eat. We found a place called, "Mr. Pizza," so we decided to check it out. (I think this was the first time we ventured to try pizza since we were in Thailand.) When we looked at the menu, we learned that the chain was especially marketed to women, as it said something to the effect of "Love for women. Mr. Pizza really knows how to please a woman." Then it went on to talk about how healthy the food was, and therefore, it was good for women. (But not men?) After Kaitlin - but not I - got all of her healthy nutrients from the pizza we ate, we headed back to the bus to go home.

Our next travel destination was even closer to home; we took a "quick bus" (a faster version of a city bus, one with less stops) to a nearby mountain called Palgongsan. We had been there once before, but we arrived too late in the day to make any real dent in exploring the mountain. This time we left Daegu much earlier, but there was a catch: some kind of festival was taking place, and there were a TON of people going to the mountain. Only one of us had a seat on the very crowded bus, so we took turns on who got to sit down. We did this because the bus ride was fairly miserable. I'm not sure if it is the way the braking/gas pedals on the buses here are designed or if it the way bus drivers drive, but every time the bus driver hit the gas or breaks, there was a jolting difference in speed. This combined with the massive traffic up to the mountain made the bus ride very stop-and-go. So you can imagine that we were very happy once we finally made it to the top, glad to be on solid ground and in a nice, cool breeze. After taking a brief repose, we went to the festival and ate a nice variety of food: schwarma (kebab), corn on the cob, big pot-stickers, and waffles smothered with some kind of sweet, sticky sauce; our bellies were very happy.

Once we were done with our dining experience, we ventured to find the cable car to the top of the mountain. (We definitely want to hike up it at some point, but we will wait until we have even more time, as it is a long hike.) Once we found it, we had to wait in line for a good 45-60 minutes before we could actually get on the cable car, but it was worth the wait once we got to the top. It was a beautiful view overlooking several small mountains ranges, and we could even see the standing Buddha's head peeking over one of the tree lines. However, once we decided to head back down the mountain, we once again had to wait in line for the cable car for about an hour.

Then, at the bottom, we had to wait in line again to get on the bus, and it was while waiting in line that we saw a peculiar site. There was a woman that I figured was kind of like a manager for the buses, and she directed the mass amounts of people onto the buses, organizing us into two lines: one for people who wanted to stand, the other for those who wanted to sit. Anyways, there was a man who apparently cut in line or something, and tried to get on the bus, and the woman started yelling and screaming, pushing him away from the bus, but the man kept persisting. After about a full minute, maybe two of this, the woman asked the bus driver to close the door so that she could push the man aside. Once this was done, we got onto the bus, and once the "standing" line started moving, I guess the guy tried to get on again, because we heard more of the same yelling and commotion. I figure that the woman finally relented because the man finally made it onto the bus. But it was really quite the spectacle.

Other than that, our salsa class has been going very well. We are learning the Cuban style - similar to a class that we took in Corvallis, so we came in with a good base understanding of a lot of the moves and rhythm. We enjoy the atmosphere there, and the pace of the class is moving along very well. Plus we get to hang out with a lot of our friends and some other cool people that we keep meeting as time goes by. Anyways, that's all for now, but we will keep posting as things keep happening.

Una Salsera Otra Vez!

Hi guys! I just wanted to give you a really quick update on our weekend, which was really fun and chill. Saturday night we finally made it to the Salsa for Foreigners class I've been dying to try ever since I got here. The class was taught by an American or Canadian woman who seems awesome. There was about 24 people there, mostly various English teachers but also a few Americans from the military base. It was a basic beginning class, but I had a blast anyways and was just so glad to be dancing again. There were a couple of leads who seemed to really know their stuff, so I had a great time dancing with them on the free songs. The teacher is starting up an intermediate class next week, and asked me to come to it- perfect timing!! Ace had a great time too, and remembered quite a bit from his Cuban and ballroom classes back home. We're both really looking forward to lessons to come.

The money we paid for the lesson also included a free drink, so we headed downstairs to a private Korean Salsa party to get our drinks from the bar. All the dancers were incredible- most were definitely competitive dancers. A few graciously allowed me to step all over their feet, and it was amazing! I forget how much I adore dancing, especially with such wonderful leads- it's the closest I'll ever get to flying :) All my friends decided to head out, but I stayed behind- the only foreigner in the club except for the 4 military people from the class. I danced a few more dances (in my heavy jeans, t-shirt and ballet flats- not ideal!) and watched some fabulous performances, then headed out to meet up with my friends. Anyways, I'm in love, and so so happy that I'm going to be able to keep up my dancing while I'm here. Next on the lessons-to-start taking list- lindy hop!

Yesterday we had a very pleasant day wandering around downtown. Rich took us downtown to show us a shoestore that carries sizes large enough for our gigantic feet. We also met up with our friend Mike, who we met through this blog. I really enjoyed poking through the shops downtown and trying to get a feel for where everything is at. There is definitely a great shopping district here! Ace and I had dinner at a samgyetung place, which was a new meal for us- unfortunately for me, I didn't look at the menu close enough to realize I was ordering an entire small chicken for myself! Samgyetung is chicken soup, but when it comes out from the kitchen it looks pretty different from the canned stuff- it's a big cast iron bowl filled with broth and a few little bits of green onion with an entire chicken sitting in the middle. The chicken is stuffed with sticky rice, ginseng and these date-like fruits whose name I forget. It was nice chicken soup, definitely something I'll crave when I'm sick, but it was so much work to try to pick an entire chicken apart with slippery metal chopsticks! Anyway, it was nice soup, but definitely not one of our favorite dishes- we like the spicy stuff!

After dinner, we came home and I went about another project I've been dying to try- rice-cooker cooking. My friend Brent told me that it could be done, but I wasn't sure how it would go. Nonetheless, lo and behold, I created a beautiful and delicious loaf of zucchini bread in our rice cooker last night!! This has definitely opened up a whole world of possibilities- what's to stop me from making banana bread, rice pudding, brownies, german pancakes, or gigantic pie-like cookies?! I feel like this is a major victory for people with under-equipped, oven-less kitchens everywhere.

A Two-Week Update (Kait)

Hi everyone! Sorry I’ve been slacking on the blog updates lately. Last week was a very busy and happy one for us, as we FINALLY got our Alien Cards and were able to get internet, bank accounts, TV, a water cooler, and all sorts of other rad stuff we needed. We also got paid for the first time, so we even have some money in our nice new bank accounts, too  Ace has been thoroughly enjoying his Hapkido classes (I guess yesterday they learned about various moves that can kill/maim a man- yikes). I’ve been enjoying my Tuesday Korean classes a lot- I’m meeting a lot of really nice MoonKkang employees from different parts of the city and enjoying hearing about their insights and experiences. We’ve been learning the alphabet (pretty simple) and vowel combinations, as well as a smidge of grammar and verb conjugations. It’s all really great, and I’m thrilled that I can sort of read now, even though it feels a little silly to be learning various ways of conjugating “to sleep” when I can’t even ask where the bathroom is or count to 10.

Last Saturday we took our first day trip out of Daegu with some of our other foreign teacher friends from the area. Transportation is really quite good here, and it only cost us about 10 bucks and an hour of our time to get to Busan on the fast train. We went for the Pusan International Film Festival, which is one of the biggest in Asia. We managed to catch two films, but, unfortunately, we picked what had to have been the two most boring ones. They were really, mind-numbingly, horrendously boring. Almost everyone in the theater was asleep for the second one. However, we had a great time checking out another city and spending time with Megan and Grete and meeting some of Megan’s friends from Seoul. It seems like a really interesting city- plenty of stuff going on, and a little more foreigner-dense than Daegu. We also saw what supposed to be the best beach in Korea, which was a very pretty, decent-sized strip of sand with some pretty nice raw-fish restaurants along side. Can’t say it compares to Oregon beaches, but really, what does? Sunday I spend all day on report cards- can’t complain, though, because we only have to do them once every two months and they are our only out-of-class work.

Ace and I both signed up for our neighborhood gym this week, which is a nice place and even nicer because a lot of MoonKkang people (Korean and foreign) go there, and the staff speaks English well. I went for the first time today and really enjoyed it, even though it was somewhat different that what I’m used to and I didn’t really know what I was doing. I guess the staff will work with you to set up a personalized cardio and weight training plan for free, so I’m going to try to do that tomorrow. Cool! There was the usual weight stuff that you see at home, but as far as cardio goes there’s just a huge row of treadmills and one lonely little elliptical stuffed in a corner. There’s also a bunch of intimidating machines that furiously jiggle every part of you or blast you with heat, and even one NASA looking thing that swivels you around and upside down and lets you dangle by your feet. Why, I’m not sure, although I have a hunch it might be something that’s supposed to make you taller. The locker room was also an experience- I was on my own there, as all the foreigner ladies avoid the public showers like the plague. There’s your usual locker and mirror area with lots of naked people, but once you go through these frosted glass doors it becomes more like the Hamam I visited in Tunisia than anything else I’ve seen. There’s a big open tiled room with all sorts of heated pools dotted around, filled with naked people furiously scrubbing themselves. Basically, it’s just like the Turkish bath, but I didn’t get my own personal assistant to pummel me with a loofah and henna here. Which is ok with me. The showers are in the open, but I didn’t mind too much. I think the whole thing is pretty fun, to be honest :) They even give you clothes to wear while you work out so you don’t have to get your own clothes all sweaty.

I came straight from the gym to the little coffee shop I’m writing in now. I’ve been meaning to check the place out for a week, and I’m glad I did- it feels like coffee shops back home, and is the first nice one I’ve found in our area. I don’t think it’s really normal for people to study in coffee shops here (there’s no wi-fi, no outlets, and no one else here), but I’ve already decided this should be my official study spot. I’d better go for now though- it’s about time to get home and get ready for work. Today is Wednesday, which means we have speaking classes today, as opposed to reading and presentation classes every other day of the week. They’re really fun, but there’s a bit more prep to do, and I usually go in early- we actually get to teach stuff, as opposed to just handing out tests, correcting speech and making students regurgitate memorized material. Not that I mind having no extra work, grading, planning or other school-related stress. Miss you and love you all! K

Hiking

Last weekend, Kait and I went hiking in an area very close to our apartment; the trail head is just about a five-minute walk from where we live. So we started up the trail, at first not knowing at all where it went or how far, and we came across several breaks in the trees that gave us a very good view of Daegu. The view from above Daegu is an interesting one because the city is cram packed with generally uniform apartment buildings all over the city, most of which are very clustered together in different residential areas around the city. It just looks very different from the multi-faceted cityscapes that I have seen in other cities. Anyways, these breaks in the trees are very good places to just take a break from hiking and enjoy the view. While we were at one such break, an older Korean gentleman said plainly, "Nice viewpoint!" which was maybe a little surprising to us because most Koreans of his age do not speak much English. But we were glad to talk to him, so we carried on with a small-talk conversation. After a few minutes, he said, "Where is your destination?"
"We don't really have a destination," we replied.
"Why don't you come with me, then," to which we replied in the affirmative. So we followed the able-footed, 54-year-old Mr. Lee up the trails higher and higher. We learned that the trail made a large circuit that topped all the mountain peaks and ridges, if we so wanted to climb them.

Then we took a break at another small spot to sit down and have lunch. From the start, Lee shared everything with us. He let Kaitlin sit on a light blanket that he had brought along - I was content on a rock - and he gave her a small mat to sit on as well. "Ladies first," he said. The first food he pulled out was two triangular pieces of rice wrapped in seaweed; he offered them to us outright as if they had originally been ours, and he almost seemed offended when we told him that we did not want to eat all of his food, so we (I) had one, and we packed the other for later. Lee had other food to eat too. His lunch of rice/seaweed/veggies put our plain ham and cheese sandwiches on white bread to shame. Once we finished our meals, we sat in silence as he indicated that we meditate for about ten minutes or so, a habit that he regularly did everyday.

So we sat there, cross-legged, eyes closed, and with our bodies relaxed, thinking about whatever. I thought about my moderately poor attempts at learning the Korean language so far. I recognized how easy/dangerous it can be to allow yourself to become stagnant from the comfort of "getting by" or "surviving" with just speaking English, a common tendency among some of the teachers here. I just thought about ways to improve myself in this regard. Before long, we started once more on our hike. After a short while, I indicated to Lee that I was very interested in learning the Korean language, and he seemed delighted. I told him that my plan was to go to Daegu university and post a note somewhere saying that I would gladly have a free exchange of language learning, teaching someone English and learning Korean. Much to my satisfaction, he eventually said that we could learn Korean from him and we could teach his wife. I was so glad to hear this! He invited us to his house/apartment (sometime) and said that we could learn much that way. He started teaching us generally useful phrases, such as "glad to meet you." Once we finished our hike (about a five hour hike including brief breaks) we met Lee's wife, who was also in the forest, at which point we told her "glad to meet you" in Korean, to which she seemed delighted. His wife does not speak much English, but she can understand basic words if we talk slow, as she studied English a long time ago, but lost some of her usage since then.

Once we were out of the forest, Lee and his lovely wife took us out for dinner at a nice chicken restaurant. (We realized we were going out for food about a minute before we went into the restaurant, and we were like, "Are they feeding us?") So we had a wonderful dinner - with a good amount of beer to boot, and we celebrated our good day together and what we thought would be the beginning of a nice relationship between the four of us (not including Lee's children whom we have yet to meet). With smiles on our faces, food in our bellies, and gratitude in our hearts, we left the restaurant (after Lee paid for our dinner) and went back to our apartment to get ready to meet up with some friends later in the evening.

All in all it was a very good day: we got to explore a new area - very close to where we live - and we got to meet a wonderful couple who showed us the best of Korean hospitality. We very much look forward to seeing them again, and we will keep you updated on how things go. For me, meeting them was perfect because, even before I came here, I wanted to meet some native Korean people so that I could have a way to learn the language and to get some insight into the culture.

Aside from that, I am about to go to my second hapkido class, even though I am still very sore from my first. I haven't experienced enough to write much about, so I will let you know how this goes a little later. I can say, though, that I think it will be a very good experience for me. Also, Kait and I took our first Korean language class yesterday, which was a very good way to learn some of the basics just starting off. Once again, we will let you know how this goes. Ace

Picture Site is Up!

Hooray! Check out our photos at http://kateandace.shutterfly.com/. Hope you like them!
Kait

Chuseok

The last week has been an eventful one! Last weekend was Chuseok, which is Korean Thanksgiving. This meant that we got Monday off and had a glorious three-day weekend.

Saturday we slept in, then met up with our friends Godwin, Sarah, and Laura downtown. We spent the afternoon wandering between the various little parks in downtown Daegu- due to the holiday, there were lots of people hanging out in the parks and playing traditional games. We had a great time getting coached by little boys and old men on how to throw sticks into buckets, chase metal hoops around and keep a top going by slapping it with string. We must have been quite the spectacle, because we must have had a hundred pictures snapped of us. The guys (Godwin, Ace, and Godwin’s friend Mike) played a quick game of basketball with the tallest Korean guys I’ve ever seen. It was pretty cool to see how quickly and happily everybody accepted us into their activities, even though we couldn’t communicate at all. Later, we found a bookstore with a good selection of English books. I bought six! I was so thrilled to see a decent selection that I had to stock up. Right now I’m reading “Everything Is Illuminated” by Jonathan Safran Foer- it’s brilliant. It’s much better than the movie, of course.

We spent the rest of the evening getting a crash course in nighttime Korean activities- we ate (a lot, and in several different restaurants), drank Soju (the Korean national vice- like rice vodka, but not actually distilled from anything. MMM, cheap chemical liquor for only a dollar a bottle!), went to a really awesome hookah bar, played our first round of BilliBow (a cross between bowling and billiards- you hit a pool ball with a pool cue down a mini-bowling lane and knock over mini-pins- fun!), stopped in a local Foreigner bar, hit the NoriBong (a singing room- like Karaoke, but without the innocent bystanders- every group gets their own soundproof room!), and finished the night up in a dance club. WHEW! What makes this epic evening even more amazing is that, between the second restaurant and the hookah bar, it started pouring, so we all started sprinting for the hookah bar. Ace made it there safely, but when he tried to stop, he skidded on a metal grate- he didn’t notice anything wrong until he glanced at his foot and noticed it bleeding profusely. He got about 5 parallel gashes on his foot, and with the rain spreading out the blood, the entire area was just covered in red. It looked like something from a horror movie or something. But did Ace want to go home? Bah! He’s no quitter. So he spent the rest of the evening travelling to five other destinations hopping on his left foot and riding piggy-back on Godwin and Mike. A group of five foreigners in Daegu is spectacle enough, but when one of them is hopping through the bar district at one in the morning with horrifically bloody Kleenex wrapped around one bare foot, it’s pretty exciting for the onlookers. One of the funniest things was that when he was bleeding all over the hookah bar’s hallway, the only thing the doorman was worried about was that Ace take the flip-flop off of his other foot! Foreigners bleeding all over the hallway are ok, but absolutely no shoes allowed inside! Anyway, I was pretty worried all night, but we had a great time and Ace was a sport. His foot is healing up just fine now.

Sunday we (the same group minus Mike) took a bus about an hour outside of the city to a nearby mountain. It was gorgeous! It didn’t look too different from the forests at home- very lush and green, with lots of deciduous trees just starting to turn. I guess the mountains here are incredible once all the leaves are changing colors- everyone tells us fall is the time for hiking here. Anyway, we explored the mountain, which is a pretty big tourist area with tons of things to do. There were temples, an incredible hundreds-of-feet-tall standing stone Buddah, a climbing wall and lots of restaurants. There are tons of things to see there, but we only had time for a few. We ran into some other English teachers that Sarah and Godwin knew at the Buddah, and got to know them over dinner. Everyone here is so easy to get along with! We headed home and watched “Gone Baby Gone” at Sarah and Godwin’s, which was excellent

On Monday, our new friends that we met on the mountain had a barbeque, so we bought some chicken and some veggies and grilled up dinner on the rooftop at Josh’s apartment building. There were probably 18 other English teachers there, so we met a bunch more nice people. It was a really nice, chill evening- everyone grilled meat by the light of cell phones, chatted, smoked hookah and played guitars. We learned all sorts of stuff chatting with the other teachers. For example, have you ever heard of “fan death”? It’s an Korean urban legend that if you fall asleep with the fan on, it will deprive you of oxygen and you’ll die! This is accepted as Gospel truth by most Koreans and the Korean media. It has been cited by the Korean mass media as one of the top five causes of death! I’m not kidding! Please Wikipedia “fan death” for yourself. It’s there, I promise! Also, something that we discovered this weekend and found really interesting is that they’re terrified of Mad Cow disease over here, and won’t eat American or Canadian beef. All the major restaurants have signs posted advertising Australian or Korean beef.

So far, the rest of the week has gone really well. Ace and I got bicycles this week! We bought his used mountain bike at a shop on Wednesday, and after work on Wednesday night Sarah hooked me up with a free bike that had been left behind by an English teacher on her way home. It is, without a doubt, the coolest free bicycle ever. It’s a beat-up, cherry red cruiser-style one speed with a basket on the front and a horn. I’m completely in love with her. I named her Clementine. Thursday, we took our sweet new bikes out for a ride, and discovered this beautiful area that’s only about a 10 minute ride from our apartment. There’s a reservoir and a lovely little mountain with nice hiking trails on it- I guess the trails even connect to Mt. Apsan, which is the most popular hiking area nearby. We’re really excited to explore it some more this weekend.

Work is going well, too- we’re getting a little more comfortable and confident every day. Some days I teach the same thing 4 times in a row, which I think will get boring soon, but it’s fine, and the kids are mostly really nice kids. The students work so hard you wouldn’t believe it- the average student here has pretty much no life beyond studying. They usually go to school a few hours early for study groups, go to school for 6 or 7 hours, then spend all evening getting private lessons or going to extra academies for everything from origami to science and math to violin and piano, then come to our English school , sometimes as late as 10:30. Koreans pride themselves on working harder than anyone else, and they really do. The kids are made to understand extremely well how important an education is, and most parents are really involved in their kids’ education. The Korean teachers at MoonKkang spend a large part of the day talking on the phone with parents, filling them in on how their student did that day at school.

Well, as always, this has turned into a marathon blog. I guess I’ll leave it be for now! I’m working on getting a photo site set up so you can check out some pictures if you like. I’ll let you know as soon as I have the URL for it!

Love you and miss you all!

Kait

My birthday (ace)

I'll start by saying that my birthday was a very good one. After only spending 6 days in this country, I had about 14 people show up to my birthday party. There is a very large group of people who all work at our school, and a large number showed up for my birthday, which was really nice. We went out to a restaurant that serves a spicy, veggie-laden dish which was really good. Other than that, I pretty much worked earlier in the day and chilled out before that.

I have to say that I am really going to like Korean food so far. It is definitely very different from western food or even Thai food - the spices are completely different - but I think it has a very good flavor. Kim chi is also very much growing on me. Also, our schedules here are very different, but I think I'm getting used to that too. We work in the evenings and have the whole first half of the day completely free, which is pretty nice. So we usually end up being very productive during the first part of the day, then we work in the evenings. The only problem with this is that sometimes we are hungry after work - at about 10:30pm or so - which is a pretty bad time to eat. But that is something we are getting used to. I just like to cook up a nice lunch when I can, and I usually cook up more than we can eat so we can take it to work. Anyways, that's all for now, as we are about to hit up a bookstore that caters to English teachers; we are going to look around for some research about Korean learners and about teaching methods in general. We wish the best to all of you, and we'll update things as soon as we can!

Internet, bank accounts, and cell phones

So I guess getting internet setup, bank accounts, and cell phone accounts are all dependent on getting our alien registration cards, which coincidentally take about three weeks to process. (This is the government's fault, not our school's.) So for now we are either going to "PC" rooms - where dozens of Koreans play computer games, eat, smoke, and even sleep to pass the time - or we are leeching off of a local business' internet here in our apartment in order to get by. I guess only my computer can pick it up, and I have to be sitting on the bed in order to get the signal. But honestly, that is not a big deal at all. I am just glad to have internet! Knowing that we have this access to it, we will likely start posting our photos online somewhere so that you all can look at them. (More details on this as we figure it out.)

Earlier today, we had a lunch with all the other teaching newbies here at our hogwan. Our personnel manager gave us the run down on many of the specifics of our positions/contracts and gave us many helpful tips about beginning teaching. Also, we have a fellow teacher who helped us out with buying cards for the subway, buses, taxis, and other forms of transportation; these cards will save us some money as individual tickets are more expensive.

In pedagogical news, we just started teaching our first classes today all by ourselves. No outright disasters took place, for which we were grateful. But we both have many kinks to work out before we completely understand the curriculum we are supposed to teach. Luckily, we have an incredibly supportive staff; there are four other teachers that have been there for some time, and we have Korean partners (who teach our students during different periods) who give us many pointers as well. So we are very lucky to have a great network of other teachers to help us out, and luckily - for both them and us - prep time is almost non-existent as our lesson planning is done for us and is generally based on a canned curriculum. (I may express my thoughts on this via email.)

After work tonight, we met some of the other teachers who teach at schools just a few buildings away from us. Our hogwan has somewhere in the area of 160 teachers spread throughout Daegu, and our school is almost right next to two others. (Our schools are in large buildings that house other businesses, like gyms, billiards rooms, PC rooms, etc.) But tonight we were able to receive quite an earful about Korean culture from some of the teaching veterans, so it was nice to learn so many things all at once. It seems we feel more and more prepared as time goes by.

Ace

Update

Kait and I just finished our first weekend here in Korea, and we have had a very good time of it. Yesterday we scouted out the area around our house and found several useful stores that we will come back to in order to provide ourselves with some good groceries and household items. We also just got to know our area to a large degree (although we still have yet to find an illusive park that exists on the map, but does not seem to appear in reality...) Today we just went to the downtown area to look around and see what it had to offer. (We live in the S.W. section of Daegu, so we had to take the subway.) We only had one day to spend on foot, but we definitely saw a lot. But we know that we will want to come back often because we heard about a weekly salsa class that will take place, and a lot of our co-workers are into it already. We figured that would be a very healthy, productive way to spend our Saturday nights here in Daegu. (I have heard that a lot of foreign teachers drink their nights away while here, which seems pretty silly.) I also heard that one of my co-workers was in an aikido class, which would be a great way to get into shape and learn a nice martial arts discipline at the same time. I look forward to exploring these possibilities,and I will let you all know how they go. Lots of love,

Ace

First Impressions

Well, we’ve been in Korea for about five days now, and we’re working on getting settled. We’ve spent most of our time just walking around, exploring our area and trying to find groceries, apartment stuff, etc.

Our apartment is on the second floor of a little three story building in the southwest of Daegu, about a 15 minute walk from the nearest subway station. It’s a nice little place- definitely more space than we are used to having to ourselves, though that isn’t saying much J You walk in the door and our tiny little table/desk is on the right with our two little chairs. Our kitchen is straight ahead- we have a nice big fridge, a sink, a rice cooker, a microwave, a toaster oven, and a stovetop (no oven, though). Our appliances are living on the floor at the moment, as we have no counter to put them on! We don’t really know how to cook much from the grocery stores yet, so we’ve been living quite happily on sautéed veggies and tofu on rice. Our eating schedule is going to be a little strange, since we work from 4:30-10:30 most nights- it looks like we’ll be cooking nice lunches and packing sandwiches and fruit for dinner. Our bedroom is on the right, and it has a lovely little air conditioner. We also have a little TV room with a couch and DVD player (which doesn’t connect to the TV) and a laundry room with a washer (which isn’t set up) and some drying racks. All in all, it’s a cozy little setup, and it’ll be even better when we get the kinks worked out.

Daegu itself looks like a pretty normal big city- lots of tall, blah, uniform apartment buildings- but the surroundings actually make it quite lovely as far as cities go. A nice river runs through the city, and it’s surrounded on all sides by these lovely green mist-shrouded hills. They’re not developed at all, which makes for a nice reminder of the natural world when we’re surrounded by concrete. I hear the hiking is quite popular and quite good around here, so I’m really excited to give that a try. When Ace and I explored downtown, we didn’t find much of interest, but our coworkers seem to be happy here- they say there’s lots of stuff to do. Some theaters play movies in English, there are Cuban Salsa classes that some people go to (HOORAY! I can’t believe my luck!), and one of the guys is learning Ikeado, which Ace is excited to try. I’m really dying to get internet in our apartment- we have the websites for some local English newspapers and sports and culture clubs, and I really want to start figuring out what kind of things there are to get involved in. MoonKkang should be starting up it’s free Korean classes soon, which is going to be great- we’re dying to start learning. Almost no one speaks any romance language here, and all the writing is in Korean script, which we can make absolutely no sense of whatsoever. This definitely makes everything extremely difficult! I think we’re going to be highly motivated to learn quickly!

As far as work goes, I think we were pretty lucky to get such a good school. It seems very well established and in tune with the needs of foreign teachers. They have over 100 native-English teachers employed around Daegu! All of the teachers that we met on Friday seem happy with the working conditions, pay, location, etc. It’s really different from anything that I expected, though- it’s so completely different from the types of classes we were teaching in the CELTA course! There are Korean teachers that teach grammar and writing, and we mostly teach conversation-type classes. There is a very strict, set formula that each type of class follows- basically all we have to do is pick up the folder of materials that’s on our desk, go into class, and lead the class through the steps while keeping the children from killing each other. There is no prep, no grading, no nothing. The students are told all of the things they should prepare for our classes by other teachers, they do it at home, then they bring it to our classes and present it. The Korean staff takes care of all that stuff! The pedagogy seems a little odd to us- most of the classes I observed on Friday were presentation classes, which means that the students memorize a story as homework, then come into class, review it, then stand up in front of the class and regurgitate it. I think it’s in line with a lot of the Asian school systems (very memorization-heavy), but it’s a real shock coming from the creative curriculums encouraged in the CELTA course. MoonKkang is pretty strict about the way they want things done though, so I’m going to do the best I can.

This is my first time travelling without a really solid support system to take care of me, and Ace and I have both been pretty surprised about how “on our own” we feel. We got into Korea, got picked up and dropped off in our apartment, and then were left of our own to figure out this crazy new country where we don’t understand anything. We’re slowly starting to get our bearings (we’ve found a grocery store, figured out that we can check our email in the gaming rooms packed with chain-smoking guys playing online video games, we’ve figured out how to take the subway, etc.) but we’re still completely lost when it comes to so many things. We’re as good as mute, deaf and illiterate here! How do we order in restaurants? How can we get internet service at home? What is our address? What do we do with all the scary-looking Korean mails (bills?) that are in our mailbox? etc, etc. We definitely have all of our basic needs taken care of, but there is so very much to learn! (update- we found out yesterday that we have to get a foreigner registration card through immigration before we can get internet at home, cell phones or a Korean bank account- and getting the card takes three weeks!! L)


update- Tuesday morning

We taught our first classes last night! We observed three classes, then taught the last two with the teachers in the room if we needed them. It felt really good just to start learning by doing- I’ve been really nervous about teaching, but I know now that I’ve gotten started I’m going to learn so much more and so much faster than by studying the lessons or observing. Tonight we get our own students and teach all six of our classes- our first day of being real teachers! There are a lot of specific steps for each class (I teach five different types- reading, phonics, workbook, story, and speaking) and a specific way you’re supposed to go through each step, but I think once I get the hang of those I’ll be ok. After that, I think it’s just a matter of getting the respect of the students and then getting comfortable with them. They all seem like extremely good kids, but I’m going to have to figure out some sort of discipline system- they definitely figure out exactly how much you’ll let them get away with and then test those limits. I thought I’d just be teaching middle school students, but each teacher actually teaches a mix of lower elementary through middle school age. I’m actually kind of glad- the younger ones are a bit more enthusiastic. That’s it for now….wish us luck tonight!
Kait

(Ace)

Nugent Waterside:While staying at “Nugent Waterside,” the name of the complex where we studied for the CELTA, we had many a fond memory. This was especially true for the other trainees that we met there. With such a wide variety of English-speaking people, Kaitlin and I learned very much about the Britishisms that escape the American vocabulary. When we studied, we were either secluded in our rooms with our laptops, or if we wanted to use the internet, we went to the resource room, which was a large room with about eight computers. With the outside temperature already very hot and humid, this room became an undesirable place to stay for any longer than a few minutes, especially for me as I had a hard time adjusting to the climate as it was. However, it was also a haven where the trainees could get together and ask questions about lesson planning and assignments, as well as chew the fat with the others for a while you waited for lunch or while you checked your email. Our days consisted almost entirely of classes that the trainers put on, lesson planning, review of the previous day’s lessons, and our lessons. (We taught every other weekday.)

One particularly interesting memory is when some of the students and trainers found a gigantic fly with a body almost as long as a normal-sized watch laid flat, with very large wings to match. Of course, when some of us were bending down to get a close look at it, one of the students poked it with a pencil, causing it to fly almost in our faces. (The students thought that was pretty funny.) When it did fly, it sounded like a miniature bomber flying overhead. Cool.
Kaitlin and I – for the most part – thoroughly enjoyed the meals that were served; they were all various Thai dishes, from Phat Thai, spicy noodle soups, to rice with chicken and fish (with skin on) and Tom Yum soup. Others, however, began to complain, saying such things as, “Oh, we have rice AGAIN today!” or “Oh great, more noodles!” which Kait and I didn’t really understand because we thought that the dishes were pretty delicious. The only things that we had a hard time eating were actually the desserts. (I know. It’s pretty crazy when Kaitlin and I like desserts the least of all the food!) Some of the desserts were made from corn and beans, sometimes mashed into a gluey, sticky paste that didn’t really have much of a taste, but the texture was enough to turn us off a bit. Other than that though, the meals were, on the whole, very good. The only bad thing was that we were in a small compound with everything we needed no more than a two-minute walk from our bedrooms; combine this with how busy we were and how hot/humid it was, you can imagine how little quality exercise we got. (I went running in the heat once, and it took me about three hours to stop sweating profusely!)

Overall, we were both glad to have taken the course, even though each of us saw some pretty major flaws with the methodology. But we learned a great many things that will help us once we start teaching in our own classroom. Perhaps the most useful thing – at least to me – was the overall flows of the different types of lessons. Although some needed to be modified to fit a particular lesson/focus, the provided an easy way to flow from one activity to the next in a very logical, systematic method that holds the students’ interest and keeps them on their toes.
Another great experience overall was simply interacting with the students. Many of us interacted with them very well, and we found that they were all very interesting people. You have to keep in mind that few of these students were actually children; nearly all of them were working adults. One of the students, Neng, was a taxi driver, and he was kind enough to go well out of his way to cart us around on the weekends for a nominal fee or for free. Another student was an importer/exporter, exporting Thai handicrafts and importing heavy machinery like caterpillars. Others were university students or employees of the university. Other professions ranged from health care professionals to small business owners to secondary school students. Overall, I personally think that the students were perhaps the best part of the course. I don’t think I’ll ever forget their kindness inside the classroom and out.

Once the course was over, we had a large party with all of the Thai students that we taught throughout the month. They were so kind; all the expenses for food, gifts, etc were paid for and arranged by the students themselves. They have such a high appreciation for all of us trainees (past, present, and future) that they throw a party in such a way at the end of every month. Apparently, they alternate who gives gifts for the trainees. This time, a jeweler who owns and manages three stores in Chiang Mai brought us all bracelets and necklaces from her business. (In the past, gifts have included belts and backpacks, among other things, I’m sure.) After the gift-giving, we all chowed down on the delicious, authentic Thai food that the students had prepared for us. The best dish was perhaps the spicy Thai sausage that someone had brought us. But the spicy green papaya salad was also to die for, as were a good number of the other dishes. Delicious! Thai food overall was exceptionally delicious.

After the course was over, some of the trainees (only those who hadn’t already flown home) went out to the bar to celebrate our newly-acquired certification, perhaps indicating a milestone in each of our lives. The bar we went to, called Riverside, had live bands that played a wide range of American and European popular songs. We were convinced that at least some of the band members were recruited straight out of a karaoke bar. One of the bands was so good that some of the songs that they sang/played were actually better than the originals! In any case, after several bottles of Sam Song, a Thai whiskey, Kaitlin and I had to say goodbye to the last of the crew that we would see before we left Thailand. After much hugging and blubbering, we finally made a quick exit to make it back to our hostel so as to get a good night of sleep before we went from Chiang Mai to Pai early the next morning. (The other two that were with us at the bar, Zoe and Rachel, ended up going to an all night bar to continue their late-night adventure.)
Pai had to be the best city we saw in Thailand by far. It was principally a tourist town, with an entire section of town covered with guest houses/hostels, shops of various sorts, and restaurants that catered to western appetites. One thing we were glad of was that we came during the “rainy” season, even though it rains more in Corvallis than it did during our stay in Thailand. (At least in Thailand, you wouldn’t go a month or more without ever seeing the sun!) This meant that there were very few tourists in Thailand, and, ergo, in Pai, so we had no trouble at all finding a place to stay for the nights we were there. (We found a nice bungalow made of a leaf-thatched roof and bamboo walls/floors.) Perhaps the best quality that Pai had to offer was that there wasn’t a terrible amount of things to do. Pai was such a small town that there was no point in spending a terrible amount of time exploring, and while we were there, we had zero obligations, responsibilities or duties. We got along very well by going to the local bookstore, buying a couple of good books, and sitting in a café sipping coffee, tea, or lassi (a fruit drink blended with a sourish yogurt. Delicious!) Before we came to Pai, Rachel, a fellow trainee at the CELTA program, recommended that we go to Joy’s elephant camp in order to get a wonderful ride on an elephant. So we woke up the second morning we were there and got a bicycle to ride out to the camp. (It was a really beautiful bike ride, with luscious vegetation and rice fields everywhere.) Before we got to the elephant camp, we saw an AWESOME looking tree house resort, so we stopped by and made a reservation after inspecting the tree house, some 30 feet or more above ground (more on this later). Once we got to the elephant camp and on the elephant, the elephant trainer took us down to the river for some fun. Once we were on the elephant’s back in the river, the trainer – who was on the ground at this time – decided to have some fun with us. (He seemed to have a good sense of humor.) Apparently, the elephant was trained with one verbal command to shake her head and body vigorously – with us on her. And so it went for what seemed like 25 minutes or so. Kait and I had a great time trying to stay on the elephant’s neck/back – with only a single rope to hold onto around her neck; we were largely unsuccessful. Needless to say, we got pretty wet, repeatedly, and the elephant seemed to enjoy herself too. But luckily, we got some GREAT pictures of the event, as the trainer was on the bank with Kait’s camera, snapping photos all the while. He caught us in mid air falling off of the elephant as her trunk went swooshing through the water. This was by far the highlight of our trip to Pai. After the elephant ride, we cleaned off in a hot spring pool back at the elephant camp and headed back to town for some lunch. We spent the rest of the day relaxing and taking in our lack of responsibility, rather guiltlessly I might add. Unfortunately, after dinner at a nearby restaurant, Kaitlin got a bit sick with a mild, yet exhausting bout of the stomach flu. Poor Kait had dizzy spells and exhaustion for the last day we were in Pai, and so was mainly bedridden. Poor thing. This meant that we could not stay in the tree house.

After a very windy van ride back to Chiang Mai the next day, we gathered our luggage from the guest house we had stayed at and left for the airport to catch our flight to S. Korea. Once we got there, we realized that our luggage was about 10 pounds overweight each, so we had to get rid of some of our winter clothes. (I had anticipated this and wore my heaviest shorts under my heaviest jeans.) Still a few pounds overweight, we had to pay a fee to get our baggage checked. Once we connected to Bangkok, we had to walk the distance of several football fields in order to figure out how to check in with Korean air and find our gate. Finally we got on our flight to South Korea.

We got our luggage and went to the arrivals section of the airport expecting to find our contact waiting for us…but he wasn’t there! So we called MoonKkang and let them know we had arrived, and they sent their man, Hyun, to pick us up. He apologized as he had thought that we would get in in the evening. (Usually this is the case, but since we came from Thailand, we arrived at 7:45am or so.) Hyun seemed very nice as he showed us to our new apartment. (Yay!) We have a washroom, a bathroom, a TV room, a bedroom, a dining room/kitchen (with much more room than Kait’s kitchen at her old studio), and the best part about it is that IT’S ALL OURS!!! We are still smiling about that.

Once Hyun showed us how to work all the gadgets in our apartment, we took a long rest after getting little sleep on the flight over. After this, we ventured to a local min-mart and stocked up on various toiletries that we had to throw away in Thailand to lighten our loads. Then we braved going to dinner at a Korean restaurant that had delicious BBQ-style food with various vegetables and meat. We sat down and asked the server for a menu, and she showed us a large one directly behind us on the wall, all in Korean script. After looking at this for a second or two, I turned to the waitress and said simply, “Um, we can’t read that…” After some amusing (if not comical) befuddlement on our part, we communicated through basic English words and gesturing that we wanted the same meal as the people sitting next to us. The table was set up with a hole in the middle, into which an employee placed some large, hot coals before placing a grilling screen on top. Soon, we got some meat and placed it onto the grill. After undoubtedly seeing our confused faces and glances to other tables, the proprietors came to our table in a very parental manner as if to say, “Okay children, let dad show you how it’s done.” We sat there, mildly embarrassed yet grateful for the help, as we learned how to eat Korean food. After we ate some delicious food (Kaitlin had mostly overcome her illness by this point,) we scouted out a grocery store about a block or two from our apartment and bought enough food to keep us until we could come back.

Since Saturday, Sept. 6th

We just had our first observations yesterday at Moon Kkang and we look forward to becoming part of the team. We think that Korea will treat us very well. The only real problem that we have had so far - and it was a minor one - was when we went out to dinner last night and we bought a meal and a drink. But apparently, the drink cost"more" than the meal. We think that since the price wasn't listed, the owners decided to take advantage of us considering that we couldn't speak the language in order to argue with them about the price... Oh well. We'll just never go there again! Up until that point, it was a very good night though. The two female owners seemed glad to have us and they joked around about our abilities with chopsticks.

Anyways, that's all we have for now. We are just in a large Korean computer gaming room where literally everyone is playing some kind of online game. We weren't even sure if we could just come in and use the internet! Crazy. We have been thinking of all of y0u very much lately and miss you all. We hope that things are going well, and we can't wait to hear from you. Lots of love from both of us!

An Overview (Kait)

Well, now that we’re finally removed from the city in our peaceful little compound, I feel like I can actually take the time to sit and recap part of our trip so far. We spent the first few days in Bangkok at Suk 11 hostel, this gorgeous and cheap hostel that couldn’t decide if it was an antique shop, a greenhouse, or a comfy hostel. We found Bangkok really interesting, but hectic and polluted (but not as bad as I expected) and were glad to head north on our train to Chiang Mai after we spent a few days hitting all of the tourist must-see destinations (the beautiful temples, the grand palace, the crazy markets peddling t-shirts, buddha statues, and hippie clothes to tourists, the canals, and the floating markets where everyone loads their fruits, curries and cheap trinkets into canoes offer them to the shoppers paddling by in their canoes).

Some other highlights of Bangkok were seeing the monks in their beautiful orange robes, the crazy fruit-stands selling all sorts of delicious tropical fruits I’ve never heard of, watching the majestic video tribute to the King that everyone stands for before every movie played in the theatres, and devouring delicious street-vender food and surviving, Bangkok-belly free. Good thing we both like spicy food so much- I guess most visitors don’t get sick from tainted street food, but simply because their stomachs can’t handle all the chilies. So far our stomachs have been handling it like champs.

Our train ride to Chiang Mai was very long (about 12 hours) but we enjoyed watching the gorgeous jungle and rice paddies fly by. We even saw a water buffalo and a man in one of those round, peaked Chinese hats plowing their rice paddy. A man from our guest house, Gaps 2, was waiting at the train station was waiting to pick us up at the station and help us with our ridiculous amounts of luggage.

We’ve loved our few days in Chiang Mai- it’s the second biggest city in Thailand, but it’s tiny compared to Bangkok and is infinitely more laid-back. It’s been described to me as “the Eugene of Thailand” because it’s really laid back, has lots of highly educated liberals and has tons of interesting cultural stuff to do (an old walled city to explore, Thai cooking courses, nearby hill-tribes to visit, elephants to ride, meditation retreats, national parks, expat hangouts, hiking, rafting, etc). We booked an overnight hill trek for just over 30 bucks each and had what I’d say are two of the most amazing days of my life.

Our guide picked up all of the other trekkers from their respective hostels around the town and we drove an hour and a half or so outside of Chiang Mai, getting to know each other on the ride. Ace and I were the only Americans- we were trekking with a music student from Ireland, an engineer and English teacher from Germany, a recent grad from Denmark and her yoga-teaching Israeli boyfriend, a younger guy from England, and a biology teacher and social service worker from Finland. Every one of them was fascinating, well traveled, well-educated and fun in their own way- just an incredible group who I enjoyed every second with. Our first real stop was the elephant trekking site, where we climbed aboard elephants and went for an hour ride through gorgeous, dense jungle. I got to ride our elephant sans-saddle and feed him bananas- he kept lifting his trunk above his head to snuffle at me for more snacks. It was amazing. I think we got the mischievous one, cause every time our guide wasn’t paying attention (which was most of the time) he wandered off the path and started munching on trees. We then drove a bit further and did a 2.5 hour hike up to the top of a mountain where the remote hill tribe we’d be staying with lived. The hike was really, really challenging- super-dense jungle, an extremely steep, narrow dirt path that crisscrossed back and forth over a stream via rocks you had to hop across, and heat that gave poor Ace some mild heat exhaustion. Fortunately around the time he was getting dizzy, the sky split open and we got monsooned on J It actually felt great, as it was still so warm and we got to be drenched with water instead of sweat. Our guide cut us bamboo walking sticks, pointed out wild reached the village and were shown our accommodation, which was a typical village house, a bamboo structure on stilts with open doorways and a fire pit in the middle (obviously no electricity in the village). The structures were amazing- the deck was made out of bamboo poles covered with a sort of leafy plank made from the outer layer of bamboo, split open and laid flat. Our beds were mats on the floor enclosed by mosquito nets. We shared the building with a hill tribe host family and spent our evening having amazing philosophical discussions and singing along with a guitar our guide rustled up. I also made friends with the adorable, happy little local kids by taking pictures of them and showing themselves on my camera. Our walk around the 25-or-so building compound was accompanied by a trail of kiddos hopping around us and holding our hands. The next day we hiked back down the mountain (VERY steep and slippery due to the rain) and bathed in a waterfall. Then we went for a very exciting white-water rafting trip (Ace’s first!) with our spunky guide, who kept slapping the water and screaming “Oh!! Alligator! Big alligator!” and who encouraged us to “paddle! paddle harder!” directly into the giant rock ahead of us. This was followed by a trip bamboo rafting down the river (I’m not sure if you can call it a raft if it doesn’t really float…it hovered a few inches below the surface while we sat belly-deep in the warm water) which was quite relaxing after all of the crazy rapids we’d gone down in our inflated raft. That was the end of our tour, and we drove back into town and sadly said goodbye to our wonderful friends.

The next day, after we’d taken a delicious shower, examined our blisters and gotten some much-needed sleep, we took a one-day Thai cooking course. It was amazing- we got to make like 9 or so different Thai dishes and devour them without having to wash a single dish. The course started with a trip to the market, where our instructor introduced us to Thai veggies, spices, noodles, and fruits and explained what to substitute for the ingredients found only in Thailand. Then we headed to the beautiful outdoor cooking school (which was haunted by a bunch of well-behaved but hopeful doggies who loitered under the tables) and started cooking. For each dish, the instructor explained the ingredients and cooking methods, then we headed to our individual woks and tried it out while he good-naturedly shouted instructions behind us. Let’s see if I can remember all of our dishes…green curry, chicken with cashew, tom yum soup, fish soufflé in a banana leaf cup, and fried fish cakes with spicy cucumber sauce for lunch (I couldn’t even put a dent in all those at lunch time) and then spring rolls with plum sauce, phad thai, and whole pumpkin with coconut custard which we wrapped up and took home for dinner. Everything turned out beautifully, and we even learned how to make roses from tomato skins and lotus flowers out of onions. Best of all, we got this great cookbook with all of those recipes and a ton more to take home with us. Anyone want to try any of these at home?? I’ll send recipes!

Chiang Mai CELTA Centre (Kait)

It’s our first night in our training center outside of Chiang Mai- I can’t even express how lucky I feel to have found this place! It’s absolutely perfect- I can’t imagine a better place to spend a month studying and relaxing. The website describes the rooms as “rustic” and “functional as opposed to luxurious”, and Ace and I decided to share a room, so I was basically expecting to be sharing a twin bed in a buggy closet somewhere. Not the case! This place is so much nicer than anywhere I’ve stayed since I moved out of Mom’s! The compound is this lovely, lush, plant-y area with stepping-stone paths all over and open-air study areas overlooking a beautiful pond boiling with the hugest catfish and koi I’ve ever seen. Our room is spacious and full of light, has carved wooden doors and what I’m pretty sure is a queen bed, a mini-fridge, two little desks, air conditioning AND a fan (!!), a flat-screen TV and a lovely, spacious clean shower! Amazing! It also felt wonderful to finally unpack all of my wrinkly clothes; I hate living out of a suitcase! So we’re already all moved in and feeling at home here. An extra bonus- the whole compound is covered with adorable little 2-inch geckos that hunt bugs on the ceilings and walls. Haven’t found any in our room yet, but I was thinking we should catch a few hang out in the room and eat any bugs that decide to live with us. All 12 people that will be taking the course have arrived, and it seems like a really fun, interesting, social group. We’ve got a few people from the U.S., a Scottish guy, an Aussie, a woman from New Zealand, a Hungarian girl, and a few Brits. I’m the baby of the group, and I’d say the oldest guy is in his mid-fifties. He’s done everything from owning a chicken farm and cattle ranch in Panama to owning a liquor store in England to writing a book. A lot of people have already taught in different areas of Asia (and I think one guy was teaching in Saudi Arabia) and are looking to get accredited. We’re really looking forward to getting to know everybody even better. After arriving at the compound this afternoon, we all got moved in and then 8 of us took the 40-minute walk into the nearest little town, passing people planting rice in rice paddies and people driving these cool-looking cattle (oxen? water buffalo?) along the one lane road. Going back was also exciting, as we took a sort of taxi-truck back to the compound, getting quite lost, hurtling along the tiny road, and getting hit by the motorbike behind us when the driver had to slam on his brakes. Fortunately, no one besides us looked too worried or surprised by this J We got back to our compound, had a very tasty dinner of curry and spicy mushroom soup, and sat around drinking Thai beer and chatting with Clarence, the owner of the compound. He’s a super-laid back, funny Brit who came here as an English teacher and is still here 40 years later. Class starts tomorrow at 10:30- I’m a little excited and a little nervous. This is probably the last free time I’m going to have in quite a while!

July 26th- Adventures in Bangkok

So we're having a really good time so far; Bangkok is indeed big, noisy and smelly, but it's not quite as bad as I expected. So I'll try to fill you in on what we've been doing the last three days- after the Komodo incident, Ace and I found our way back to our hostel area, took showers and then walked down the block and got Thai massages :) It was GREAT; an hour of wonderfully brutal massage for about 9 bucks :) I'm 99.9 percent positive the massage place also offered "other" services, but we avoided the "lotion" and "shower" massage options and stuck with Traditional Thai. I loved it- she spent about half the time pummeling and yanking on my arms and legs (ever had your ankle popped? Well, now I have!). Ace and I headed back to the hostel and went to bed. At 6:30. We were pretty jet lagged, I guess. We woke up early the next morning, had the fresh fruit and muffin breakfast at our hostel, and went to the river; we hopped on a tourist boat and headed up the incredibly nasty water to the main tourist-attraction area- we spent the afternoon scoping out the incredibly opulent King's Palace, the Temple of the Emerald Buddha, and Wat Pho (Bangkok's largest and oldest temple). I took a ton of picts and Ace has been taking tons of videos, so we'll get those online for you to see eventually. We hopped another tourist boat back down south, took the lusciously air-conditioned sky train back to our neighborhood, then had dinner at a beautiful restaurant by our hostel. There were orchids on our table :) Ace and I had curry, and the peppers in Ace's were so hot the back of his head was sweating. It was glorious. Then we hit up the nearby British pub, the Pickled Liver, and had shots of Thai whisky. We managed to stay awake until about 10:30 last night. I think the heat is really taking it out of us. Today our reservation at Suk 11 ran out, so had to move to another hostel- this one is YHA hostel Thailand. The rooms are unimaginably tiny, but we got an air-conditioned room and the staff is super helpful and friendly. We also went to the train station and bought tickets for Chiang Mai- I'm super excited for the scenery. Getting to the station was interesting because cabs instantly identify us as clueless sucker tourists. It took us four taxis to finally find one that was willing to start the meter instead of charging us a ridiculously high fixed rate. The way back was easier, though. The Lonely Planet guide has been so helpful- I think I've been approached with almost every scam the book warns about. After that, we went to the weekend market (a ridicuously huge market that reminded me of the souks in Tunisia, except with less harassment). So far, we've seen everything from amulets to dentures to adorable fuzzy puppies for sale in the markets. They were especially fuzzy because the vender kept combing them backwards to ensure their fuzziness. Then we wandered around for about an hour in a half in search of an English bookstore- Ace wanted to find some Thai lit in English. He finally found some sort of novel, so now we're back in our tiny tiny hostel relaxing before dinner. We'll probably go nab some food from a street vender. Tomorrow we've signed up for a tour throught the hostel, which should be nice- it'll be good to have someone who knows what's going on cart our tired butts around for a while. We're going to see the floating markets (people mill around in the canal or river in little canoes filled with fruits, veggies, and crappy souveniers), then a muy thai demonstration (martial arts), then some traditional dance I think, and some other stuff I can't remember. That's about it for now- we'll be heading up to Chiang Mai on Tuesday AM, so we're trying to get everything in.

Bangkok, end of day 5

We are back at our hostel in Bangkok after 5 days of MUCH walking around and seeing the city, including some of the notable areas outside of the city, such as the floating market and an elephant show. We have had a very good time overall, excepting a few moments when we got a little duped when it came to a cab ride. The first cab ride we got was pleasant because the driver was a true blue buddhist monk; we could tell by his ID photo. Coming back, however, our cabbie gave us a "ride to nowhere" by driving us around a bit, taking the long way before actually arriving at our destination. The other less-than-desirable thing has been the boat service, which we primarily noticed today. There are no set times for the boats; they just kind of wait for them to fill up at either end of the line, and everyone in between just has to wait until it arrives. So ferrying up and down the river - although cheap and mostly efficient - has been a very minor source of irritation. And the only other thing that has not been entirely perfect was when we paid for a tour for traveling outside of Bangkok to see the sights, but the guide merely carted us around so that we could pay for even more things as we went along, even though we paid roughly $30 each for the tour. Oh well, we did get to see a lot of good sights along the way, so it wasn't really that bad at all.

On the positive side - the heavier by far of the two - we have thoroughly enjoyed being able to go to street vendors for fresh "exotic" (yet commonplace here) fruit - such as mango, papaya, dragon fruit, star fruit, mangosteins, and many others that I can't even remember; street vendors also sell many, many varieties of delicious Thai food, including, but certainly not limited to pad Thai. We have eaten a variety of fishes, curries, noodles, soups, or sauces, all for very cheap. It usually takes about $3-$6 total to feed both Kaitlin and I at a given meal from a street vendor. Furthermore, we have been eating a many restaurants that are also very affordable; we can eat for $6 or we can splurge and eat extraordinarily well with only $12. I cannot emphasize how delicious things are here. The only issue with the food is that we often have a hard time finding a good deal of vegetables when we eat out; for example, today we went to a nice restaurant in Banglamphu, and we each ordered a salad. Luckily, Kaitlin's papaya salad seemed pretty veggie-dense, even though we didn't quite know what was in it ( but it was good). My salad consisted of shrimp and pork in a spicy lime sauce in one dish and all of the mixed veggies on another. The only issue was that all of the mixed veggies were deep fried, probably negating any nutritional advantages of being vegetables. Other than that, we have had literally no complaints about food. Everything has been great. We have even had a lot of fresh fruit drinks that are out of this world.

One possibly negative experience that turned into a very positive one occurred as we were trying to make our way on foot (which would have been a lot of walking) to The Grand Palace, but we got stopped by a seemingly friendly man who talked with us about the city much and hailed us a Tuk Tuk, our first one that we rode. The man said he worked for the post office, and to this day we don't know if he was truly helpful or if he was somehow connected to the Tuk Tuk driver or the travel agency he sent us to. He could have just been trying to help, but we would feel naive not to remain a little dubious. The Tuk Tuk ride was lovely and all, but it took us well beyond our intended destination. However, this turned into a very positive experience when we purchased tickets to paddle around in some duckies in the lake in Lumphini park, a great park that was just outside of the travel agency (we didn't buy any tickets there) where we went to just relax and not stress about the fact that we had so easily been derailed; also, we both are go-with-the-flow sorts of travelers, so the preceding event didn't really shake us that much, and we were still having a good day. Anyways, while paddling around, Kaitlin noticed something creeping along the bank of the pond, so we went closer to find what we thought to be a kimodo dragon, and it was eating a fish that it caught. Soon afterwards, another kimodo dragon came out of the water, obviously looking for a food via some kind of confrontation with the other, but the second kimodo was not sneaky enough as the first got away to eat his/her lunch is peace. As we kept paddling around, we found that the very water we were paddling around in was full of dragons, so we made sure not to run our fingers through the water...

So far I have bought two books written by Thais and translated into English; one is called, The Way of the Tiger, and the other is called Four Reigns. I have not finished either, but I will let you know how they are at a later time. I greatly look forward to reading them both because they will give me a little bit of insight in their own ways about the national identity that is Thailand.

One highlight of our day today was when we were walking around in Chinatown, we actually found a grocery store. I know there must be more around, and we very well could have walked right by some, as many things here are in Thai script, but on the whole, we think that many people depend much on the markets here in Bangkok for buying goods and stocking up in bulk products, and so grocery stores have not really been terribly important to people. We had a very good time going around the grocery store today just wandering around for about 30 minutes, looking at all the different foods (like cuttlefish crackers/snacks). Although we did not get too adventurous - as we were far away from our hostel and any pepto bismol - we did get some yummy tea drinks and all the pocky flavors we could find.

Places we have visited so far have been Wat Arun, The Grand Palace, the floating market, Wat Pho, Lumphini Park, The Temple of the Emerald Buddha, several shrines - often of other cultures than Thai, such as Vietnamese.

We have seen many interesting things while here in Bangkok. Coconuts fallen in parks, in dirty canals, in the main river, and just lying around - we have seen dentures being sold in the streets at markets, and we saw a man working on dentures as well just beside his stand; we think they are made using real human teeth, but we could be wrong. Often we find that the economic setup here is very different from where we came from. On one hot day, we went into a McDonald's - a McCafe, to be more precise - and we ordered a couple of icy chocolate drinks to help cool us down, only to realize that the price of the two drinks put together cost the same as our rent at Suk 11 (our first hostel) for one night! We vowed to avoid spending money at such "exorbitant" places from then on, although we have indulged in DQ ice cream and a movie in a theater since then.

The humidity here is very dense, but luckily we have had A/C in our hostels up until this point, so it has been very easy to get some comfortable sleep. As we walk along - or even as we leave our A/C rooms, we realize that sweating is inevitable, and eventually it becomes something you don't really notice. We both generally have a constant gleam as we go about our day-to-day activities. While eating some rice noodles today for my second lunch (the portions here are small, which I think is a good thing, even if you have to eat more times during the day), I found myself sweating even more profusely after seasoning the soup with a generous portion of chili powder and chili sauce. Kaitlin laughed at me for having sweat dripping down my nostrils as I ate.

We have ended our fifth day by returning to the hostel and taking care of our blisters from all the walking we have been doing. (Thanks for the athletic tape mom!) At this point, we feel we have sufficiently seen the city over the course of five days: we have mastered the sky rail system, the boat ferry system; we've seen the majority of major tourist attractions in this area, and we have seen more markets, street vendors - selling food and goods alike - temples, and shrines than you could shake a stick at. We feel very happy about these last five days, and we are glad that we were so prepared for everything, thanks to all the wonderful help and moral support of our families. So thank you all again for everything, and I will update again soon!