Tokyo, leaving Korea and the next month...

Two weeks from today we will be in Cambodia. It is amazing that our time in Korea is almost over! We got back from Tokyo late Sunday night and had a blast. Although geographically close, there were very few similarities between Japan and Korea. The people were friendly beyond belief, so helpful, the food was great, the streets were cleaner than any other city we've visited and it was super expensive! Although we only had three days there, we made the most of it and packed as much sight seeing as possible. We learned a valuable lesson never to wear flip flops while sight seeing again!!

Our apartment is pretty much empty. Everything we've accumulated over the past year has been thrown away, passed down to other foreigners living here or shipped back home. Even our suitcases are packed! We get into Phnom Penh, Cambodia on June 25th and stay there for 4 days before flying to Siem Reap to see Angkor Wat. From there we fly to Hanoi, Vietnam where we'll stay for about 12 days. We plan on taking a boat cruise for 3 days of Halong Bay as well as some type of tour to see the very north part of Vietnam. Then we fly to Bali for a couple of weeks which we're REALLY looking forward to. Everything about Bali looks absolutely amazing!! We have a layover in Malaysia for a night before going to Hong Kong for 3 days and then....TORONTO!!!! We're so excited about coming home!!

The next couple of weeks should be pretty busy. A family we teach invited us out on Sunday night for dinner which should be...interesting. At first we thought we were agreeing to have sushi. As it turns out, this is a different kind of raw fish experience. My student described a "wood colored fish in a bowl of ice water with vegetables and red hot sauce." Things we wouldn't have dreamed of putting in our mouths a year ago have become tolerable to even enjoyable, but it sounds like this may be good for the photos only!

Anyway the World Cup starts today and we will of course be cheering for Canada, but we have to support Korea somehow!

Busan, beach and birthday!

It was a FANTASTIC weekend here in Korea! It really feels like the middle of the summer with the weather consistently being above 26 for the past week. We headed off to Busan to enjoy the nice weather. We got a hotel by the Haeundae beach. Well, it was really a love motel which we desperately need to make a movie out of. Here in Korea, love motels are frowned upon because they're associated with cheating spouses and secrecy. For foreigners though, they're a dream! For $50 we got a room right by the beach with a huge flat screen tv, computer, as many dvds as we wanted and a complimentary bag with toothbrushes, razors, hair accessories and every other toiletry you would need overnight.

This was one of those rare occasions where there were SO many restaurants we just didn't know what to eat! We went to T.G.I Fridays which was great and definitely a change. It even overlooked the ocean. We also tried this amazing place called where you can make your own ice cream.

We hung out at the beach and at times, we forgot we were in Korea....looking at the green-blue water and mountains in the distance, we felt like we were in some tropical area! Afterward, we went to an area called Nampodong where we shopped, had some great sandwiches and then headed back to the bus terminal. It was a great birthday weekend!

The only negative thing we experienced was the crazy taxi drivers. Being in fear for our lives is nothing new to us when sitting in the backseat of a taxi cab. This was a whole different level though. Our taxi driver actually skidded to a stop making the tires squeal and then had to pump the break to move it again. He weaved in and out of a two-lane highway going more than 120km/hr when the speed limit was 80.

Other than that though, it was a perfect weekend!! Will post some pictures soon!

Positive Polly Posting!

It has recently come to our attention that there has been some negative nelly's posting on this blog! Sometimes Korea has the tendency to bring out a little negativity in us, but we are extremely grateful to have had the opportunity to come here! We really wouldn't take back this experience for anything. Living in another country so different from home and having the chance to visit countries we might otherwise never see (not to mention free living expenses!) are amazing!

Yesterday we went to a soccer game and met a few people (one of whom was from Canada). Both of them thought Korea was amazing and the Canadian thought Korea was even better than being home!

I had my students do a writing activity for Mother's Day today and was really impressed by how they took out a marker, used it and immediately put it back in the proper place. This is something we don't often see back at home. Usually by the end of some art activity at home, the markers are all over the table.

Children's Day!

Wednesday is one of the many national holidays in Korea. Unfortunately, a national holiday doesn't necessarily mean you get the day off. Buddha's birthday at the end of the month happens to fall on a weekend so we don't get the day off. If a national holiday falls on the weekend, Koreans don't give you the following workday off. Anyway, Wednesday is "Children's Day" which means there is no school. None of our students are really celebrating, just "relaxing." After work, we did go to E-mart and see a bunch of kids holding toys so maybe their parents were allowing them to pick out a present.

We will be going to see the Pohang Steelers (soccer team) and enjoying the nice weather. Today got up to 28 degrees and felt like summer! It was absolutely magnificent!!

We are mentally keeping a list of the things we are most excited to come home to...obviously family and friends top the list and food comes in at second, but there are a few other things that we will add to over the next 7.5 weeks.
- clothes dryers: We cannot WAIT to dry our clothes in a machine!! Not only does the laundry take 3x as long but our clothes never smell nice...not sure if it's the apartment, but because they take so long to dry, they get a really bad mildew smell. It's really gross. Our apartment is always cold even in this nice weather!! Also, towels and clothes are never soft. The thought of drying bedding and putting the hot, soft sheets onto the bed and lying down makes me miss home so much!
-ovens: It has been 10 months since we've cooked anything in the oven. We miss the smell of cookies baking in the oven, roasted asparagus, lasagna, and basically anything else that can be cooked in an oven. Having a toaster will also be a plus!
-friendliness: strangers who smile at you on the street, people holding a door open for you, waiting until you get off the elevator before getting on, pleases, thank-yous, etc
-NOT being stared at 24/7 like you are a freak of nature and random children NOT yelling "HELLO!" and then laughing and running away

New Movie and other stuff...

There are now officially only EIGHT WEEKS LEFT until we leave this school!! To be more precise, there are 39 more working days (not that we're counting or anything!!). MaryAnne has already packed for our month long trip in July and put all of our winter clothes in suitcases. We are SO excited about leaving Korea! There are definitely pluses to being here, but right now we're feeling extremely happy about returning to Canada.

We're not familiar with every school in Korea (obviously) but from our limited experience here, the Korean education system seems to be absolutely atrocious. The parents at this school are some of the most inconsiderate, obnoxious people we have ever encountered in our entire lives. We both go out of our way to make our lessons interesting, as hands-on as possible and engaging (things Korean children are not really used to), but parents really have a way of ruining everything. For some bizarre reason, they are allowed to sit in on their child's class. This really does not help the students OR the teacher. It in fact does the exact opposite. Anyway, enough of this rant, we're just thankful that we only have 8 weeks left!

One more bizarre thing to add to the list of Korean oddities is their belief in fan death. We made a new movie about it. It's called Fan Death: The Movie Hope you enjoy it!!!

The weather is FINALLY getting nicer here and we might head to Japan in a couple weeks. We're really in the home stretch now and cannot wait to see everyone and a million other things. If there is one positive to come out of living in Korea for a year is that we're a million times more grateful to have the lives that we do and live in such a great country!!

Canadians in Seoul?!

We headed into Seoul this weekend for an unexpected surprise: Two of MaryAnne's students from home would be there for the weekend! It was really sweet. One little girl moved with her brother and mother to Toronto for the year to learn English. She moved back to Korea in July. The family keeps in touch with another family from Toronto. The little girls talk on the phone to each other twice a month and the mothers are very good friends, too. Anyway, the Toronto family decided to visit them in Korea for two weeks. They were so excited to see MaryAnne! We went for lunch and caught up on some Toronto news.

Afterwards, we walked around for quite some time trying to find a love motel. These are the cheapest places to stay in Korea. They range in prices anywhere from $30.00-$150.00 per night. They are generally places where Koreans go to have affairs, but we had read so many good stories about the excellent ammenities available that we had to check them out. The first places we looked at were in the $30.00 range and clean, but basically just a bed, TV and bathroom. You could also rent these rooms by the hour. We found one in a nice area with tons of cool stuff inside (don't worry...video will be coming soon!) including a computer with hundreds of current movies that played on the 50" TV.

The next day was a bit rainy but we wandered around and did some shopping. We also saw some yellow dust! This is something we've heard about from our students for months. Apparently for a couple weeks, all the pollution and sand from China blows over Korea creating really bad smog. You're supposed to wear a mask. We didn't really see anything, but our students told us today that it was indeed there.

One more thing: We were trying to find a coffee shop by the bus station and saw these posters for Tim Hortons. Obviously Tim Hortons is NOT in Korea (let alone Pohang), but this is a perfect example of how little regard there is to copyright laws. We cannot WAIT for Tim Hortons coffee!!!!

Happy White Day!

Here in Korea, Valentine's Day is celebrated twice: Once on February 14th and once on March 14th. The idea is that women buy for men in February and men buy for women in March. The displays of candy are insane...tons of lollipops put together in flower-like bouquets, chocolates like you've never seen before, etc. Please enjoy our gift to you with a new video! How to Make Korean Kimbap This is one of the first Korean foods we actually liked so if you haven't tried it, you should...or maybe you'd prefer to stick with sushi.

Anyway, we finished part one of our special education course and are going to sign up for part two. Time is starting to go by REALLY fast and we can't believe that it will soon be time to go home. We're thinking about doing a month-long tour of some south-east Asian countries when we leave (Cambodia, Vietnam, Malaysia and Indonesia). We still have to speak with the director but if it's possible, our last day at school will be at the end of June, we'll travel for a month and then come home to Toronto.

Now that the course is over, we'll make sure we keep up to date with this blog, posting photos and making more videos. It's a great journal for us because many of the things we thought back in August are really different from the way we think now. This has been a really huge learning curve and it took a while to adjust to being all the way over here, but we've really grown to appreciate so many things about teaching abroad!

Anyway, hope you enjoy the new video!