M & A's Random Thoughts... emphasis on the A...

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Here we are again! Sorry it has been so long since the last blog, it seems as though life hasn’t been that exciting lately. But, I will definitely try to be better at writing more often! February was a short but good month. A new teacher for the grade 7 classroom arrived, and Mike and I sort of took her under our wing to help her get acquainted to the way things worked in Korea. We actually even found our way to Costco! For Valentine's Day, Mike and I went to a nice restaurant called ‘Il Praga’, it is an Italian type restaurant. I actually can’t remember the last time we went on a nice date like that!

The same parents of one of Mike's students that took us for the crazy Chinese took us out for dinner again. They picked us up and the son handed me a beautiful bouquet of yellow roses. We are so spoiled in this country! This time they took us for traditional Galbi. We go out for kalbi (it might be galbi or kalbi, I don't know...) quite often, it's a Korean BBQ meal. You cook the meat in the middle of the table and then wrap it in a lettuce leaf with rice and an amazing red pepper sauce. So anyways, we still kinda have the mentality of being a student here because we're trying to save money, so we always go for the cheapest kind of meat. But not with this family. Wow. They ordered the beef, and it was phenomenal. We ate the beef first with some side dishes. The crazy thing about a traditional Korean meal is that they put so many small side dishes in bowls all over the table. Apparently the more dishes you have on the table, the wealthier you are. I just feel bad for the dishwashers... There was one side dish that the couple really wanted us to try. It was grey with little bits of white on it, and it actually had like little hair looking things on it. I think I'm going to puke just thinking about it. The problem is, if someone is treating you to a meal, it's disrespectful to not try something they'd like you to try. So, in their broken English they always tried to explain what exactly the dishes were and this one turned out to be... a cow's third stomach. Wow that's pretty much the last thing I would ever want to eat in my life, even if someone paid me. Well, I dove in first and took one on my chopsticks. While I was bringing it towards my mouth, I got so grossed out I thought I was going to have a panic attack, I started to see little black dots in front of my eyes... but, I somehow managed to get it into my mouth without passing out... Luckily I also chewed and swallowed without gagging the cow stomach up onto the table. I'm not kidding, that was by far the grossest thing I have ever eaten, probably because I couldn't get past the little spiky hair looking things on it... Yuck! The rest of the meal was great though, once again WAY too much food and I couldn't even eat half of what was placed in front of me. The father of the family came straight from work in his company car; he has a driver who drives him everywhere. So we get out of the meal and he motions and the driver picks us up, the father tells us we're going to take this car and they'll drive in their family car. So this business guy's driver drives us home in the fanciest, backseat recliner, heated and air conditioned seats, crazy cool car. I felt like a celebrity or something, getting driven around by a chauffeur.

In the last month we've done a lot of school work on weekends, but we finally got to visit a new area called Myeongdong. There was supposed to be an art market there, so we went one Saturday. It was a little disappointing because the art market actually wasn't set up that day. We found a gentleman to ask about it, and he said that it was still winter season so they were only open certain days. The hilarious thing was that the spring season started just the day later and then it would be open each weekend. We missed it by only one day.

So school has been a bit of a gong show lately. Since the grade 7 teacher came Mike's class has slowed down a bit with only 20 grade 6's. A little less prep time for him which is nice. I got a new student so now I have 13. You remember the renovations that we went through at Christmas? Well, just last week Wednesday the Korean office staff told us that the library was actually moving again into our music room and the music room was going upstairs. So with no notice at all, they closed the library, moved all the books and set up a new library. It’s probably the same sized room, and I’m not really sure why they moved it... Now I don’t have a music room... Today we were having a Pro D day and while we were in the middle of a webcast the office staff were nonchalantly moving a couch down the hallway of the school.... we never really know what they’re up to. Funny because we’re the teachers and should maybe have some input as to how the school is set up, but really, what do we know? I also had a parent bring me a beautiful bouquet of flowers and an authentic Burberry shirt because her child got in a fight with another boy in my class and she was so sorry he made a mistake. Wow, the school system here is something else.

For Mike’s birthday we went to a restaurant called the Daily King Diner. It’s an American style diner that is close to our home. We were surrounded by many friends here from school and we even had cake! The crazy thing was though the gifts he got from his students. I can’t believe how giving people are here.... actually I think it almost becomes a competition... I guess it doesn’t help that Mike started advertising his birthday 3 weeks early. Out of his 20 kids he got something like 16 gifts, anywhere from baked goods to chocolates to a polo shirt to a fancy set of teas. He was spoiled!

There is a teacher at the school that is now 8 months pregnant and we got to go to a baby shower for her. A couple of Korean mom’s hosted the shower, but it actually isn’t normal at all in this culture to have a baby shower. So, these mom’s were hilarious - they informed me that they went to the bookstore, bought and read ‘The Baby Shower Book’. So us Canadian girls decided to show these mom’s how to have a real shower. We brought food and planned games. The one game was pin the baby picture on the belly, and we played a trick on one of the Korean mom’s and made her pin the picture on another person’s butt... You should’ve seen the look on her face when she took her blindfold off! Hysterical!

Mike and I were dropping off our garbage the other day and we found an abandoned dirty convection toaster oven. So we snagged it and tried to sneak it upstairs (I think it’s fair game if it’s in the garbage, but you just never know in this country...). We brought it upstairs and quickly realized that one of the turn knobs was broken. But, my husband is very handy fixing things and took a butter knife to turn the dial and whala! It worked! I have successfully made banana bread and cookies, although it hasn’t been an easy task. I have no measuring cups so I use a mug and a spoon for all the measurements, guessing along the way. I also think I’m using ingredients like sugar and flour but I can’t read the package so... it could be a repeat of the dish soap....

We have officially experienced Korea’s spring “yellow dust storm”. Apparently we had a dust storm starting last weekend. Mike and I had no idea it was happening so there we were, taking a nice walk on the path along the river. We both felt congested like crazy, and were hit with what felt like allergies. It turns out Korea gets these yellow dust storms from dust particles picked up in the wind from northern China and Mongolia, and it can be really bad for your health. I don’t know much about it, but I guess there are different levels of severity. This one wasn’t that bad, and it’s over now so that’s good. I had heard about this ‘yellow dust storm’, but it was really incredible how much it affected us! I’m not sure I could handle that year after year.

Today for our Pro D day at school we went to visit the Science Center. It was a massive building with what seemed to be a lot of empty space. Although most exhibits were just reading and pictures, there were some cool exhibits. We got to sit in a 3-D earthquake simulation which was really cool. It’s like you are travelling in a vehicle along the highway and experience all the way up to a 7.0 earthquake with things flying at you in the screen and stuff. It was very neat.

I guess the switch between winter and spring is quite quick in Korea - last week it was winter coat, tuque kinda weather and all of a sudden a couple of days ago it was plus 17. It’s been humid and warm ever since. I love it!

I hope you all are well and I haven’t bored you too much! Have a great week. We miss and love you all!

Mike and Amy

P.S. We just hit a milestone - Mike ordered McDonalds delivery for the first time - a new low even for us... Gotta love the language barrier, us ignorant foreigners believe that as long as we add an ‘e’ sound to the end of each word, they’ll understand us, so here’s Mike saying on the other end... “Cheeseburger - e, large - e size - e,... oh dear, we have no idea what’s going to come...

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Photos

The Baby Shower
gotta love the games - trying to guess how big the pregnant lady is...

Corner Store
We found this corner store across the street from our building - it shows how much trust there is in Korea - the ice cream bin is OUTSIDE the building, nowhere in sight of the cashier. In Canada, that'd be emptied out by the end of the night!

Comments

[Julie]

Glad to know you guys are still alive and love the hot pic of you two on Valentine's day! Miss you guys!