Advertisement
Published: October 14th 2008
Edit Blog Post
Sorry it took me so long to get another update up. I've been lazy. It's been an eventful two weeks. I've been back to Seoul, lost in the Korean Wilderness, and to a Mexican burrito party.
To weekends ago I met up with my friend Ryan to go to Seoul for the weekend. We had a three day weekend, so before we went in I spent the night at his house Thursday night. He lives in a really small town way up into the mountains. The only way to get there is to take a cap from the closest bus stop. I told the cabby where to go, and he seemed to understand. Things were going fine until he drove right through the town where Ryan lives and just kept going! I tried to tell him to stop, but he wasn't listening. I finally got him to stop by basically yelling STOP until he got it. He dropped me off in the middle of nowhere. he has also taken several turns, so I had no idea how to get back to town. I called Ryan, but with no landmarks to describe, he had no idea where I was either. I
knew Ryan lived close to the river, so I found it and just started following it. After about 30-40 minutes of wandering by myself in the Korean wilderness I found a house with the lights on. I knocked and managed to ask which way it was back to town. I called Ryan who set out to come meet me, and then turned in the right direction and started walking again. After about 10 minutes, I passed a house with a bunch of people standing outside. I figured I'd go check with them to make sure I was still going in the right direction. When I walked up a woman saw me and I asked here which way town was. She showed me, but then took me by the arm and made me sit down. It turns out that they were having a barbeque. She made me sit down and eat. So I sat down and had BBQ with a bunch of random Korean people until Ryan could come and find me! Definitely quite an adventure.
Friday we went into Seoul. We saw a movie at the theater on Friday night (Babylon AD it was terrible). Saturday I got to
see some of the city. I did some shopping, and we walked around a park close to downtown. Saturday night I got to meet some of Ryan's friends. Sunday morning we went to church and then went to lunch afterward. Ryan knew a family in the city so no stinky hotel room this time! It was nice to get to see some more of the city, but there is still a lot of it I haven't seen. Hopefully I will get to explore some more another time.
Teaching is going well. I'm getting into the swing of things and have developed a pretty nice routine for my classes. Sometimes thinking of lesson plans can be hard, I've been using a lot of resources on the internet to help. I think my favorite grades so far are 2nd and 4th they both seem to get into the lessons, which makes things much easier for me. 6th grade is definitely my least favorite. They never seem to want to talk...or do anything else. I also teach 6th grade on Monday, so that probably doesn't help either.
Last Tuesday I had an open house for some of the teachers at my
school. We all went out to dinner first (buckwheet noodles...yuck!), then they came over to my house for refreshments. Everyone commented on how big my apartment was. Asian cultures don't waste space, so the fact that I had three rooms was very impressive. I got to teach some of the other teachers how to play Texas Hold em' and also learned how to play Korean poker (fun, but I need to practice). It was a lot of fun, so I think I'm going try to get a semi-weekly poker game going during the week.
This last weekend one of my friends decided to have a Mexican party. He lives in the same town as Ryan, so I stayed at his house again (this time without getting lost). We all met at a local restaurant and cooked real American beef on the grill for the burritos. My friend also had the great idea to invite some of his Korean friends to come too. Watching them try to understand the concept of a burrito was great. Koreans are generally very resistant to anything new, so I don't think they liked it very much. After dinner we had a pinata. We taught
the Koreans how to do it. Watching them play was hilarious. The guy who finally broke it oped apologized over and over again afterward.
Hopefully I'll be quicker to update next week. I'll get pictures up as soon as I can,
Matt
Advertisement
Tot: 0.074s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 8; qc: 48; dbt: 0.0413s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb