Valentine's Day

Aunty Kathy, I got your package today, and it's AMAZING! I'm so ridiculously excited to give the stuff to my students! I had a little party by myself when I opened it :D

So remember how I was told that it rarely snows in Daegu? They lied. It's been snowing all day (since 3) and it's beginning to stick. Our front steps to our building at polished marble. Yeah, that makes it's very dangerous to walk up them. No matter how careful you are, you slip. It was really bad.

Luc says: "Thank you Grandad for the letter, and sorry for the lack of blogging"

He forgot to put that in his last post.

Korean Lessons # 3 tomorrow. I should do some studying, but I kinda want to watch a movie. Last night we saw Sweeney Todd, which was pretty interesting. And we bought 30$ speakers, which are totally awesome, by the way.

Finally, a blog from Luc

It’s been awhile since I’ve blogged, but as Erin said before not much new has been happening. We’ve settled into more or less a routine. In the mornings we either laze around, or go somewhere like E-mart or downtown for some shopping. We do have time to do things in the morning, but it’s not enough time to undertake a major excursion like a city tour or a trip to the giant Buddha. After work we either grab a bite to eat, or head to E-mart because it’s open until 12:00. E-mart conveniently has a McDonalds, so if we want some cheap western food it comes in handy. After eating it’s usually like 11:30, but with our schedule that’s usually enough time to watch a movie before bed, and thanks to the speedy internet we download plenty of movies.

The McDonalds isn’t exactly like home, but pretty close, it’s Australian beef so it definitely has a different flavor. They don’t have exactly the same menu either. They don’t have a quarter pownder, instead they have a Bulgogi burger. Bulgogi is their standard beef meal, where they serve low grade beef with vegetables and rice (so basically it’s a stir fry). The beef isn’t that bad, it’s just not the best cut, but I like Bulgogi, it’s one of my favorite Korean dishes, though I haven’t tried everything yet. So a Bulgogi burger is a paddy with lettuce and some sauce that’s apparently supposed to mimic the taste of rice, so you are supposed to feel like you are having Bulgogi in a burger… I think… it’s not bad, but I prefer the Big Mac.

Because Erin and I haven’t been up to anything exciting for the past bit, I figure I’ll just blog about the differences I’ve noticed between Canada and Korea. In my first week here a friend asked me what the biggest difference was between Canada and Korea, and it got me thinking, I don’t know what the biggest difference is, but here’s a couple things I’ve noticed so far.

It’s cheaper to eat out. Well, maybe it’s not cheaper, but it’s definitely not worth your while to stay home. In the end it probably costs the same to go out as it does to make things yourself, but there’s not many dishwashers here… so then you end up having to do dishes. If you ask me, it’s far more practical to eat out. If you want Korean food, a meal will run you between 3000 and 8000 Won (about $3-$8). You don’t tip, and there’s no tax. Most traditional style restaurants will keep the side dishes coming until you stop eating them. These side dishes usually include Kimchi, pickled onions and a turnip type thing; other restaurants might have a beef thing that tastes like beef jerky, veggies or even some soup. With the cost of eating out, it’s no wonder that there are so many restaurants; people must not do a ton of cooking for themselves. Western food is a different story. It’s definitely a luxury. The prices aren’t that much different than prices at home, but when you can pay $3 for a meal it’s a shock to pay $20, and they add a 10% tax at western places, that counts as your tip. I guess you’re still tipping less than at home, but it seems like allot when you get the bill.

A big difference here is the heating of our apartment. I don’t know if we’ve mentioned this before, but our apartment is heated through the floors. We have central air at school, but in the homes I’ve been in heated floors is how it’s done. It’s a bit inconvenient for us because only the floors in our bedroom are heated, but it’s really nice in the bedroom when the floors are on. Also, we don’t run on hot water tanks. The hot water system is similar to the one we have at the cabin. It’s hot water on demand, when we turn on the hot water it turns on the gas and we get hot water on the spot. It seems to me like allot more efficient system than at home.

The disposal of garbage is allot more efficient here. We have three different garbage’s, Food Waste, Recyclables, and Other. Food Waste is like the compost, but all food goes in it. We keep our food waste in a bag in our freezer, and then it gets dumped in a big tub outside of our apartment building. Most pieces of garbage here have a symbol on them that tell you if the piece is recyclable. Glass (we think), bottles, paper and whatever has the recycle symbol on it goes in random bags that go into bins to be recycled, and the rest goes into special see through bags we have to buy. The fine for mixing up garbage is ~$500 and half of that fine goes to the person that told on you, so you have to think about every piece of garbage you throw out. Definitely a different mindset than at home, but Korea doesn’t have the space to waste on landfills like Canada does.

Well I don’t know how exciting this blog was, maybe next time I’ll talk about cultural differences. Those are endless; I learn cultural differences from my students every day. The other day I learned that they thought I was poor because I had longer hair and it’s not brushed perfectly. They don’t understand the concept of curly hair and they assume I had a perm. I learn so much just by observing them and by striking up conversations with them. The new curriculum is good for that, we can get into random conversations every day now.

Nanny: I just got Sherree’s e-mail yesterday. It had been directed to my junk mail as I’m getting more junk mail than usual lately, but I will write her back in the morning. Mom had told me about Carleigh, very sad to lose someone so young.

Amy: How’s my use of than/then? I feel like I’m screwing that up allot… I feel like my grammar and use of big words is worsening every day I teach because I have to make everything so simple…. Also, the Korean teachers teach the grammar, they know the rules allot better than us foreign teachers.

Mom: Erin wants Cover Girl, Volume Extract, Black.

Oh and I'm using Canadian change for an activity in class, so if anyone wants to send rolls of pennies they would come in handy. (Actually dimes work best, but that might be allot to ask)

Nothing New to Report

As you can see from the number of posts this week, nothing has happened. We went to Korean lessons (which, by the way, I'm beating Luc at :D), and went to work.

I've noticed that Loreal mascara, which is about $8 at home, is $22 here. It's high class here, sold in department stores instead of drug stores and Walmart.

It's been very cold here still. I don't want to get outside. At least the last two days have been sunny, but that's just deceiving, it makes it colder outside.

I think mom has forgotten to use msn, becuase I haven't seen her outside for a week, and I got a microphone to see if it will work with my webcam. You were all over me about it before, and you haven't been on to test it out!!

I'm glad it's Friday. There is nothing happening this weekend in the sightseeing department as of yet, but it is a friend's birthday on Saturday. Bev is going to Thailand today. Quite jealous, as it will be warmer than here.

Luc and I are two months into our contract. We're both amazed by this. Time has passed so quickly!

City Tour Bus

The City Bus tour wasn't quite what we were expecting. There are different courses, and there is no way to tell what course you're on until you get to the places. The course we took today seemed to be a mish mash of all the courses. So we didn't get to any temples, it was sad. Today was absolutely freezing cold, where it snowed and rained. It rarely snows in Daegu, today just happened to be the day. Luc and I think that every time we do tourist stuff, the weather doesn't act in our favour.

First stop was Nokdong-seowon Confucian Academy. It was started by a Japanese man who originally came to invade Korea, but respected Korean culture so much, started an Academy.

Second stop was Herbhillz. A weird park that has herb gardens, amusement rides, mini zoo, and magic shows. Not really sure what was happening there. We were there for two hours, and were to get lunch there. We tried, but kept getting either refused for some reason, or had to wait a long time. We then left the park to find food elsewhere and ended up in a restaurant that was an extension of someone's house. It was a little weird, but the food was decent. At Herbhillz there was an Ice Valley, which was pretty sweet as you can see from the pictures :D In the zoo, there were the most random animals. There were monkeys (one of which was fast asleep, and many flashes did nothing to wake him). THere were deer, raccoons, skunks, deer, bunnies, the largest mallard ducks I have ever seen (take ours and double it in size).

Then we went to the World Cup Stadium. It was a big Stadium, hurray. Beside it was the Daegu Sports Museum, which was alright, but it wasn't my cup of tea. Luc was a happy boy though.

Then last, we headed to the middle of nowhere. I thought the tour guide was taking us out there to kill us or something. We went to Otgol Village, which was Gyeonju's Choi (family name) head house. It is a little cluster of houses from hundreds of years ago where the family Choi (pronounced Chay) has lived. There was a head house, and a little building that was given to the family by the king.

We would like to do the tour again, but see if we can find out where the tour is going. You have to make reservations, but there is no place that asks to specify, no place that tells you.

After the tour, Luc and I booked out tickets to Seoul. We are taking the KTX, so it was more expensive, but you go ridiculously fast. We are going to Seoul Feb 7 at 11am, and leave Feb 9 at 9pm. It's just over two hours train ride. We don't have anywhere to stay yet, but apparently there is a tourist info place when you get off the train that will help us. We could always stay at a "love" motel. Which is a room, with a circular bed. Yeah, we'll find somewhere a little nicer I hope. No idea what we're going to do there, or anything, but we'll arm ourselves with our Lonely Planet, and take it as it comes.

Koy's Resume

Uncle Dave, need a new piece of equipment/employee all in one?

Tomorrow, Luc, Bev and I are going on tour of Daegu's temples for the day, I'm pretty sure there is going to be a lot of pictures to follow.

Money

So today I was having a nice little freak out. I was trying to transfer money. I don't know if I talked about this already, but in Korea, there is a bank called KEB. KEB = Korean Exchange Bank. Our main bank account is through Daegu Bank, and that's what we get paid through and our bills come out of. But you can transfer money into your KEB account and it will automatically send it directly to your home account in Canada. I was attempting to do it for a couple days on the English machines, and it was not working. I was getting very frustrated. Today I tried to do it on the KOrean machines, and was getting it. Then I apparently typed in that I wanted to send 1 million won; but I didnt, I only wanted to send 100,000 (100$) to make sure it was going to work and send to my home account. I hit the cancel button when it said I was going to transfer so much, but APPARENTLY, the big red button (versus the green) means continue. Aye Karumba. So now, I have little money until we get paid in two weeks. But the transfer worked. I was very upset this afternoon, I kept thinking the money would get lost somewhere and not end up in my account. I feel so relieved. So I sent my first thousand home. And making lots of money off of it :D

So stressful.
So tired.
So much Korean.

Getting observed tomorrow or Friday. EEEEEEK. I don't like it when people watch me doing something and marking me on it. It makes me overthink and bumble. Teaching in front of the kids is absolutely no problem, when a manager or two is in there with me, not my cup of tea.

So nervous!!!

P.S. It's ridiculously cold here. I thought my feet were going to fall off, my eyes were burning, icicles took the place of my fingers. It was so nice and warm today in the apartment becuase of the sun, but as soon as your stepped outside, you were done with. It says it's -4 outside, but I don't think so, it's definately colder than that. Luc and I were made fun of. I'm acclimatized to Victoria, and even that is cold for me! Wanda is from Saskatchewan, so I don't even think that is fair.

Korean Presents, Korean Lessons

Another day in Korea. Luc's watching the hockey game, and I was talking to mom over the webcam. I'm getting to the microphone, I swear it.

Annyong Haseyo! Yesterday, Luc and I started our Korean Lesson with Ben. He's from my branch, and he's definately not fluent, but he knows more than us. We were the only ones there. I felt kind of bad, becuase he was expecting a lot of people, but it was like having a private lesson without having to pay for it. I think a lot of people forgot. I'm glad we're going to these. They are only once a week, so we have to remember to practice. The little bit we do know, we keep looking at the gazillion signs that are around and trying to figure them out. We also bought a book, Survival Korean, that I am learning from. I've only done the first two hours, in like, a half an hour, but I'm getting there. I wish I was good at picking up languages.

So today, your Tuesday, presents arrived in the mail. There is a lot, and mom is going to be dividing it up for everyone. She was holding it in front of the webcam to make sure everyone had the correct objects. It only took a week and a half to get there, that's not bad at all I think. I was nervous, becuase the options for receiving a package sounded like if it was not going to be delivered right away, if mom or dad weren't home, they were going to send it back right away. Korea Post is silly.

Aunty Janet, I hear that you STILL have not received your Christmas card. That is so lame! Aunty Jo, when did you FINALLY get yours? I'm so sorry about that!

Dancing the Night Away

Last night was a good time had by all. After spending the entire day inside doing nothing but playing video games and reading, Luc and I were ready for a night on the town. Little did we know what we were doing. We went downtown and found some friends getting out of a restaurant, and they invited us to a bar we had never been. Since we were meeting Whitney later on (we were early), Luc and I thought we would kill some time. THe bar we went to was called Itaewon, and the walls and ceilings were covered in chalk from people writing things over the years, it was really neat. It was very smokey in there, and I was kind of glad when Darryl called and told us he was going to come get us.

Then we went to Jet Club. Total discotheque, with rap music. Couldn't dance to it, but everyone else could. I was glad we only spent about 20 minutes there.

Then we went to the notorious Old Skool. This is the favorite of MoonKkang employees. This time, they weren't playing as much rap, and MAN, did we have fun. Lucas was even dancing. It was amazing. That is something I rarely see, him doing it of his own initiative and for the sake of fun. Luc was ready to go at 3, I could have stayed longer, Whitney didnt want to leave with us becuase she wanted to stay until the sun came up. Shes going to be extremely ill in the morning I think.

I know I'm not feeling so hot this morning, and we're meeting Bev and Rod for a Kyobo and E-mart run. Take some IBProfin, and we're on our way!

I'm sad. I have gained 6 pounds the last month. Damn Korea and their delicious sweets on every corner, every way I turn.


Our cats spoon. Last night was like one big spoon. The cats between Luc and I. I wanted to get my camera, but I knew if I moved, they would move, and the moment would be ruined :D

Thank you!

Today was almost like Christmas for Luc and I! We got to his work, and there were two packages there for us. One from Luc's grandma, and one from mom! Betty, that was such an amazing letter, thank you for writing it. I'm going to try to get Luc on writing one back!! Mom, you know you're my dealer now, right? Reese's all the way. My candy buddy, Jeong Mi (we share chocolate back and forth), I gave her some reeses and she had this questionable look on her face. Then she was like "it's peanut butter!". She loved it. dangerous! I'm excited for popcorn. We found some here, but when we made it, it was sweet. I hate Kettle Corn. All I wanted was some buttery, salty goodness. Now, I have it!

P.S. The cats LOVE the temptations. I gave the Hearty Beef flavour a try. It's a hit. The cats were following me around thinking I had more in my hand :D

Thank you again, we love getting packages :D Hopefully soon, my books will arrive from Seoul that I ordered online.

More kitties

Koy, Boots, Koy. Boots has such a girly meow, but such a deep purr, I don't get it. Koy is a talkative cat, talks about everything. He reminds me of Smokey.

So the new curriculum went alright. I feel sorry for the kids now though becuase they have so many tests. But that's all part of the education game I suppose. I've been spicing it up by acting silly when describing things and that has made the new kids warm up to me.

Pictures

Just a quick post today as I thought I would share a few pics on my camera. Erin gets angry at me because I don't take enough pictures, but she takes enough for the both of us.

I got NHL Centre Ice Online yesterday and it's amazing. I can watch 4 hockey games at once, and any game I want. It even saves past games, so if I miss a Canucks game I can go back and watch them in the archives! It also puts highlight packages together for me, so it's like having my own personal hockey TV station.


I don't know how to move the pictures around.... but the first one is Koy ins his bed, second is the boys on our bed, third is the Seoul area from the airplane, fourth is us Skiers before skiing, fifth is the mountain, sixth is some of us after skiing and seventh is Koy giving Boots a bath (Koy is the younger one).

Reading Class

Today is going to suck. First day of reading class. NO ONE know's what is going on. this month I am also being observed by the manager, and Mr. Moon (who owns MoonKkang) will be dropping in unexpected to watch. This is going to suck.

Koy has officially slept a night in his bed. I was sooo proud of him! Boots slept uner the bed at Luc's feet until Luc accidentally kicked him becuasehe didn't know Boots was there. THe next time Luc woke up, Boots was staring at him, kind of like "I'm gonna EAT you...".

This weekend Luc is supposed to go out and do some shopping, present for people, and my Christmas present. When he finishes that, I'm going to send out a rather large package for everyone. Good luck to me!

My skiing experience

Don’t worry Nannie we have been getting your comments. I didn’t know if you knew how to check comments so I wasn’t replying to them, but I will start replying to them now. Are the other Willies reading the blog?

Last night we kicked the cats out of the room at the beginning of the night. It worked pretty well, I could hear Koy playing with the new toy we bought him, but he wasn’t attacking my feet while I tried to sleep (which he likes to do), so I managed to get to sleep pretty easily. Later on in the night they figured out that the bedroom door wasn’t closed properly, so they got in the room, but they were pretty calm by that part of the night. In fact, Koy spent most of the latter part of the night sleeping at Erin’s feet. Boots is coming around now, he’s only afraid of me sometimes, like when I’m blowing my nose, but usually he’ll let me pet him now.

It’s been cold in Daegu lately! They told me it was pretty mild here in the winter, and I guess it is, relatively. Though it has been getting to -10ish all week, and there’s wind on top of that…. so Erin and I have been avoiding going outside over the past couple of days. It’s weird that it’s been so cold this week, on Christmas is was a high of +10.

Skiing was a great time. I went with a couple other foreign teachers, two Korean teachers and a few Re-test teachers (they are Koreans who handle the detention room and do lots of odd jobs at the school). It was a two hour trip north and we took two cars, with each Korean teacher taking his SUV. For Koreans, a two hour trip is quite a long one, so we had to stop twice, to pee, smoke and maybe have coffee. The Korean teachers, Jae Won (my partner) and Chae Hyun put the whole thing together for us, they just collected money from everyone and they handled meals, coffee, tolls, lift tickets and rentals. It was like having tour guides!

I didn’t think I would be any good at it because I hadn’t skied since my days in Ottawa (yes that’s like 8 years, I didn’t think it had been EIGHT years). I got the hang of it pretty quickly though, it seems allot like skating for me, and soon we were skiing the hardest run on the mountain. There were only three runs though, and one of them was pretty short. They did have more than three runs, but the others weren’t open, it looks like they don’t get a ton of natural snow, even at the mountains. Most of the snow we skied on was that manufactured stuff, which is weird because I thought mountains only used that stuff on top of the real stuff. At this mountain though, it seemed like all of the snow was manufactured. In areas where there was no skiing there was zero snow. Under most chairlifts was nothing but trees and dirt, no snow. Very unlike what I’m used to seeing. So the snow quality wasn’t like us foreigners were used to, but it was still fun.

The weather was perfect for skiing; it was just before it started to get cold so the temperature was perfect. Also, it started to snow while we were up there, so we were skiing on a layer of fresh powder for a couple of runs. The other foreigners I was skiing with said they had never seen is snow so much in Korea. I have to admit it’s weird to come to Korea to ski for the first time in 8 years, especially when I lived in Kelowna, but now that I have skied again, I think I will be doing it more when I get back to Canada. I will post pictures of skiing when Erin teaches me how to do that.

Erin and I are sorry for the lack of posts lately, it was a very busy weekend with skiing, the amusement park and cats, and now we have this new curriculum to worry about. Everyone is pretty stressed out about it at school, and it’s pretty confusing because they keep changing things on us. I think we’ll be going to work early every day this week.

Cat fun

The last two nights Luc and I have not had much sleep. The first night Koy was bonkers, playing with everything and anything throughout the entire night. Last night, he actually slept for three hours against my leg before starting to go bonkers for about three hours, and then he crashed again. When Luc and I got home from work yesterday, we thought that we had lost Boots. We looked high and low, under the bed and even behind the washing machine. Guess where he was.... under the comforter.

In celebration of getting paid and getting cats, Lucas and I decided to treat our babies. We went to the pet store downtown (one of the only ones that actually has things for cats. Cats are definately not a popular animal with the Koreans). We bought them a scratching p ost becuase their claws are sharp and raggedy. Though Koy came up to it, and started chewing on the lose ends of the rope. I think he's getting the wrong idea. We bought them a bed, since our blinds fell yesterday morning, they are on the ground, we covered them with clothes so the cats wouldn't eat the string, and Koy seems to like lying on it. He hasn't yet taken to the new bed. We bought some cat treats, though they aren't like at home. We got cat nip flavoured, and they are just green ball things that he can play with and eat. We haven't given them any yet. I may get you mom to send me some temptations, like what Ginger Ale likes. We got a pooper scooper and a couple toys. The toys have gone over very well. We got some freebies, a can of wet foot, and "cat nuggets" , not sure what they are. I've noticed that we get a lot of small free things when we buy things here. When we're at the market, the old ladies will put in a couple extra oranges, if we're at a store, they have little things they will throw in. Sometimes it's because we're foreigners, other times becuase of the amount we spend.

Today is the beginning of the new curriculum. Luc had a branch meeting about it yesterday and said that everyone was more confused after it than before. I have a branch meeting today. Should be interesting.

Did we lose our blogging audience? There were no comments on the last post. Luc and I cried.