Blogs from Gyeonggi-do, South Korea, Asia - page 30

America has its fair share of commercial holidays. I won't list them, but you can imagine which holidays were created simply to sell things, and which holidays over time have become extremely commercialized. Well, in Korea, there's a day called Pepero Day. Now Pepero is a candy treat of sorts. It means "thin, like a stick" and is simply a thin cylindrical cookie-stick dipped in chocolate. Most Holidays are commemorating some special date, or event. Now, why would there be a holiday celebrating candy? Does it have some historical or religious significance? Or is there simply no shame at all in being direct about the commercialism of the holiday? I'm going to go with the latter, because it turns out that Pepero is manufactured solely by Lotte which is a huge department store in Korea. They ... read more

Alright, so karaoke is huge over here. Maybe some of you knew that, maybe some of you thought you knew. Karaoke isn't just for a random Tuesday night at a Mexican bar like Amigo's with cheap Tequila shots and townies doing their impressions of Barbara Streisand and Ray Charles. Oh no, my friends, one need not wait for Karaoke Night at the local dive just to "mix things up a bit." Karaoke is its own business around here. Any night of the week, at practically anytime. And, no, you don't have to know which bars have karaoke, all you need to do is walk to the closest Norebong which are more common than 7-11s. A Norebong is a venue set up strictly for the karaoke "lover". I put lover in quotes because I'm not sure the ... read more

션로 I think that says Shawn Roe in Korean - or Shawn Lo is how they pronounce it. I've started teaching a couple classes of my own. It's the last week of the session, but my first time with the kids, so it's kind of weird how they're doing it. The kids are either done or finishing up with their parts of the book, and I'm coming in at the end as a new teacher. So I usually just spend the first class introducing myself and getting a feel for the class. But we have to give homework every night, so I have to give the kids an assignment of some sort. It's odd. I made a couple classes write sentences for HW and some write essays. The next session starts Monday, Nov. 6, so I ... read more

Halloween at the school was lots of fun. Since Halloween fell on a Tuesday and we teach our elementary kids on Monday, Wednesday, Friday, we got to have two parties. The first party was with the elementary kids. I have 4 kids in my E1 class (Elementary level 1), of which 3 dressed up. One was a witch, another was a skeleton and the last was a mini Dracula. I say mini because I also went as Dracula. These kids are nine years old so they are still young enough to have fun, but not get as scared as some of the other kids. My job for the activity portion of the day was to work at the game station. This job consisted of staying at a certain area in the gym and waiting for the ... read more

Hey, ok, I have to write before things come out of my head!! TRAFFIC RULES (or lack thereof) There is no such thing as yielding here, it's more like a giant game of chicken, the last one who pulls out before getting hit wins the first spot in the line. Red lights do not mean stop, they mean slow down, look both ways and if it's clear, keep going! Scooters are not motor vehicles, they behave like pedestrians. They swerve through cars, on the sidewalk, almost run people over...oh and helmets must only be present, not worn. You see countless people riding with their helmets on the back of their bikes! One more thing I noticed, hitting the car next to you seems like a normal things, I was sitting in a car, with our American ... read more