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!

Beijing!

Sorry for the delay in this posting. Last weekend was Lunar New Year (in Asia, people celebrate both the solar and lunar new year and the lunar new year is a much bigger deal than the January 1st celebration). We went to Beijing for the long weekend! We stayed really close to the Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square. We went to the Great Wall of China, saw an amazing Chinese Acrobat show, ate Peking Duck and went to a night market where they sold everything from scorpions to sheep testicles. We were told that this was mainly a foreigner attraction and the Chinese don't really eat these things, but you never know! We tried a scorpion, but all it really tasted like was deep fried batter with salt.

We had heard that if you go to Beijing, you must do two things: Visit the Great Wall and try Peking Duck. Well, we wouldn't necessarily agree. The Great Wall was amazing, but we will never try Peking Duck again. The chef comes over to the side of your table and cuts the duck up in front of you. They first serve you a plate of the skin and all of the waiters watch as you put it into your mouth. It basically tastes like deep fried fat. We probably ate about 2 bites of the duck and then ate little pieces of salad. The other chinese food we tried though was really great (although very fatty).

The people were incredibly friendly with wonderful senses of humour. It was actually quite quiet because most of the Chinese leave the big cities to go to the countryside to be with their families. This was both good and bad because it wasn't so crowded, but on the other hand there were many places closed that we would have loved to see.

We went to a tea shop where they served us several kinds of tea and told us about what they did and how they were beneficial to you. There might be something true to this because the Chinese are very healthy, live long and look really young for their age so maybe we should all start drinking lots of green tea.

It was a fabulous weekend although really cold! Here in Pohang it is about 16 degrees and unseasonably warm. It feels like spring!

New Video!

Hold onto your hats because we've got a new video! We realize we've been incredibly negligent in our posts AND our videos. We have been taking an online course in special education which consumes most of our free time, but anyway, here is a video about a large chain of superstores called E-Mart. It's like Wal-Mart and we live right beside it so we frequent it on a very regular basis. Enjoy! Dinner at E-Mart

MaryAnne's Birthday in Seoul

We headed to Seoul this past weekend to celebrate MaryAnne's birthday! We left early Friday morning and go to Seoul by about 1pm. We checked into our hotel and then did a bit of wandering around the area of Itaewon which is the "foreigner's area." In the evening, we headed to the theatre to see the musical Hairspray. It was fantastic although a bit strange since it's a show about race. The music and dialogue were in Korean with Korean actors so the black characters wore brown face paint and afro wigs and the white characters wore blonde wigs. The singing and dancing was really great though! The really cool part was at the end when two guys got up on stage and the crowd started going crazy. Everyone was screaming and cheering. The two guys performed a few songs and dances and after the show, we found out that they were very famous Korean popstars.

After the show, we headed back to Itaewon to go to some clubs which were really fun...the area is nice because it's the most diverse we've ever seen in Korea. There are tons of people there on business, in the army, local Koreans, you name it.

The next day, we went to Yongsan which is an area of Seoul that just sells electronics. You can get any electronic product for MUCH less than you'd pay in a retail store. It's just rows and rows of technology. We picked up another computer for the online course we started last week. You can also buy really cheap DVDs with movies that are still in theatres for $2 each. We got a bunch of movies that are playing at home in the theatres now. Afterwards, we went to Myeungdon which is the shopping district. It was packed! It was difficult at times to move through the crowd! We had dinner at a great Chinese restaurant (the same one we ate at last time) and then went to the bus station.

We missed the bus by 15 minutes so had to wait four hours for the next one. We found out that there are "DVD rooms" where you can select a movie, go to a private room and watch a movie on a big screen tv for a really small amount of money. In the bus terminal, there are also private coin operated karaoke booths. For 50 cents, you can sing 3 songs! We went to a PC room to kill some more time and then got on our bus and returned back to Pohang at about 4am.

Today the new school year starts so we have all new classes. Grades switch over now in Korea so we'll be starting new textbooks with new students.

Christmas in Korea

We've been trying to keep busy here which is hard to do since we're in this small town...anyway, Santa paid us a visit on Friday evening and left us some presents as well as a very non-traditional Christmas dinner. Then we went out to the karaoke bar and sang some very non-Christmas-y music. The next night we went out with Misty and Brian to play some pool and had a great time! The Koreans are really fond of billiards but they don't have pocket holes. The pool hall has bright lights, no music and many older, Korean men pushing balls around on a table. They'll wear special gloves, drink and smoke. Anyway, there was one regular pool table so we played, or tried to play there.

The next time we post may not be until 2010 as we leave on Friday!!!!!! So we wish you a MERRY CHRISTMAS AND HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!

Deagu Part Two

We went to Daegu on Saturday for the day to do a bit of shopping and just to get away from Pohang. It was a fairly chilly day, but sunny. We arrived at about 11am, had some coffee and then headed to the shopping area. Compared to last time, we found way better deals and we now know the stores that we like and actually look forward to going inside them. There are certain stores here which you can tell are supposed to be the equivalents to GAP, Old Navy, Abercrombie, etc. The insides of the stores look and even smell the same as certain stores at home. Anyway, we sometimes joke around with each other about clothes we've bought, like "Oh my god! Is that coat a COAX?" "Sure is." "And it's not a knock-off?" "Nope. It's the real deal." Obviously, it's the small things that amuse us here in Korea.

We went out for lunch at the best pizza place we've found to date. Most of the pizza here tastes a bit off...with globs of mayonaise, large chunks of mashed sweet potatoes and other curious things for pizza. This restaurant was called Poppa Johns and tasted almost identical to pizza at home.

In the evening, we went to see New Moon which we thought was really good, but not great. This was probably mostly due to the crazy foreigner who sat beside me and kept staring at us every time he laughed. At one point he turned to me and said "do werewolves eat vampires?" to which I replied "I'm not really sure." He smirked and said "cause I never learned this in high school." There is something to be said about foreigners who choose to stay in Korea for longer than a year. They all seem to be crazy!

We headed back to Pohang at about 10pm on a bus which was about 150 degrees. The Koreans seem to prefer extremes when it comes to everything and temperature is not exception. A room will either be freezing or unbearably hot.

Anyway, it was nice to break up the time between now and Thailand. 11 days and counting!!!

Conversations with Koreans

Yesterday I asked my high school student about Christmas.
Me: Do you celebrate Christmas in your family?
Student: Yes
Me: What are your Christmas traditions?
Student: I play with my friends
Me: Oh...okay. Do you have a Christmas tree?
Student: No
Me: Do you exchange Christmas presents or have a special dinner on Christmas?
Student: No
Me: Oh. What religion are you?
Student: I don't know.
This is the part where I switch to another subject trying to get more responses. Usually in my high school classes, the only noises are the sound of my own voice and the ticking of the clock.

Also yesterday, I was talking with my grade 5 class about how food gives us energy and how some foods can give us energy in a very short amount of time. They were having trouble thinking of what types of foods these might be so I said "these are foods that kids REALLY love, but are usually not allowed to eat often." Several children shouted out: "Meat!"

Two Thanksgivings in one week?!

Yesterday was the American Thanksgiving and we were lucky enough to have two turkey dinners in one week! On Saturday, Dan and Nicole made a turkey dinner which in Korea, is very difficult to do. You can't really buy turkey here as it's not popular, not to mention stuffing, gravy, cranberry sauce, etc. They had a turkey delivered to them and then heated it up on a large toaster oven since nobody here has an oven. Everything was made from scratch including the pumpkin pie. It was SO delicious and we had an amazing time!

Yesterday, our school took us for another Thanksgiving meal at Postech which is the University here. It was buffet style and had everything from turkey to sushi to kimchi to fried rice. We went for lunch and everyone had to teach afterwards so we spent the rest of the day feeling so full. Nicole came to the Thanksgiving lunch even though her due date was yesterday.




As you can see from some of the pictures, it was a very different kind of Thanksgiving meal, although still very tasty. One dessert was a piece of cake with a large piece of zucchini stuffed on top. The stuffing inside the turkey was a mixture of eggs and bread. It was really interesting to see what the foreigners put on their plates as opposed to the Koreans. We took up two large tables and there were 8 foreigners and about 15 Koreans. The Koreans put WAY less food on their plates and mainly took things like vegetables, raw fish and fruit for dessert while the westerners piled up turkey, meat, fried foods, etc. The same thing happened when we went to a sushi buffet with my adult class. They all took very, very small portions and mainly things like vegetables. All of the westerners wished however that we had worn elasticated waistbands and desperately wanted a nap after our meals!

Hiking

We went on our first hike last week and it was really great. It's about a 2km hike to the top of the mountain and the incline was much steeper than we had imagined. The weather here goes back and forth between winter and fall weather. Yesterday it was 16 degrees and a few days before it was 5. It's been consistently really sunny though which is great and we're only about a 2 minute walk to the mountains so we plan on going once a week. The Koreans take mountain climbing very seriously. They're always decked out in the proper gloves, walking sticks, jackets, hats, shoes, etc. We met a foreigner at the top who told us he had once been chased down the mountain by a dog. There is apparently a dog farm (and by dog farm, I mean slaughter house) on your way up to the mountain so we were a bit scared that we will run into one next time we're climbing. Some other people told us though that we shouldn't worry as they take their dog to the mountains all the time and the other dogs would not hurt people.

Anyway, we're just about to have a Thanksgiving meal with our school so we will be sure to post pictures tomorrow!!!

As promised....

here is the link for our new movie, "Cooking With MaryAnne Enjoy!

The weekend...

It was a rainy Friday, but we ventured downtown anyway to do a bit of retail therapy. We found a few nice things at really great prices. The weather has all of a sudden turned really cold (and very windy)! Friday night, we helped a co-worker bring in things for her classroom and then went out for dinner for some very bad pizza and panini. The pizza had raisins, sweet potatoes and some other unidentifiable ingredients and tasted like it had been microwaved.





Saturday night we had friends over for the first time since moving to Korea. We moved back in the couch and the chair and made a very non-Korean meal (hamburgers, fries and salad). It's sometimes a bit of a challenge cooking because we don't have an oven so we have to do everything on the stovetop. It was really nice to have people over. Dan and Nicole are expecting their baby in just over a week and we will be taking care of their dog, Tong (Korean name for dog soup -- what Tong would have become had he not been rescued) while they're in the hospital. He is a VERY sweet dog, but so nervous. It takes him a while to warm up to us but we think we've won him over. He didn't want to leave and Dan had to (literally) drag him out of our apartment.



This coming weekend we are celebrating Nicole's last day of work and having a Thanksgiving meal. The U.S. Thanksgiving is next week so our school is even having a Thanksgiving dinner, so two turkey meals in one week??? We thought we wouldn't taste turkey until we were back in Canada!

November 11th in Korea

While other countries remember soldiers who died in the war, Koreans celebrate "pepero day" on November 11th. To those of you who are not familiar, pepero, often called "pocky" at home is basically a tall, thin breadstick covered in chocolate. Sometimes it's covered in strawberry, vanilla, sprinkles, etc. Because the pepero resembles the number one, friends, spouses, etc exchange these treats on 11/11. Apparently the tradition began in the 90s when students would give each other pepero as wishes to become tall and thin. So there you have it. Happy Pepero Day from a country obsessed with appearances.

Seoul!

We finally made it to Seoul! The bus drive took about 4 hours. We decided to stay in an area of Seoul called Itaewon which is the foreigner section. We were REALLY surprised by how nice our hotel was!! We were expecting a sort of middle of the road Holiday Inn type of hotel, but we really lucked out! We felt really spoiled by how luxurious the hotel was and wish we could have stayed there longer! That night, we went to some foreigner bars in Itaewon and met a new friend from Michigan (so far we have met four people from Michigan -- is there something really undesirable about this state or something?!). The bars were really fun and we saw a show at one of them. We headed back to our hotel for (a very short) sleep and woke up early the next morning. We wandered around Itaewon a bit...it was so bizarre because SO many people were foreigners, children, senior citizens, babies, you name it. A lot of people looked like they were there on vacation and of course, there's also a large population of military people who stay in Itaewon.

We took the subway to Miyungdon which we had heard was a really popular area for shopping. It was so unbelievably crowded. I guess that's what happens when you have such an enormous population crammed into such a small geographical area. The shopping was good, but the crowds at time were really overwhelming, especially because we've spent three months in a small town with a population of 500,000, but feels morel like 50,000.

We went to an amazing Chinese restaurant for lunch/dinner and I don't think either of us have ever eaten so fast and enjoyed a meal so much! It was such a nice treat and change from the Korean food we've been eating. We walked around for hours and hours until our feet fell like they were going to fall off. We shopped ourselves out but really didn't buy too much! There was a forever 21 in Seoul as well as some other American stores, but the crowds in the stores, the temperature (Koreans seem to really like hot, hot temperatures inside) AND how overpriced many of the things were deterred us from buying too much.

We took the 9pm bus back to Pohang and got here around 1am. We really love Seoul, but there is SO much to see and do. It's definitely a place we will need to come back to several more times in order to really see and do all there is to do. We got a little taste of it and it was really refreshing to get out of Pohang. Now we're less than 6 weeks away from our trip to Thailand. The countdown begins!!!!

Fun weekend!

This was a really fun and busy weekend! Friday night we went out to a restaurant with new friends, Misty and Brian. They're a couple from Atlanta and have been in Korea for a year and prior to that, they taught in Spain. After dinner, we went to a hookah bar and had a little too much seju. Seju is very similar to soju, but the taste is a bit sweeter and tastes less like rubbing alcohol. After a couple hours, we headed over to the noory bar and belted out a few songs. We won't torture you with any videos (although there are plenty) except for our 10 second dedication to Ellen with our (very poor) rendition of Tomorrow. We can't wait to come home and go to the noory bar with all of you. It just might be one of our new favourite hobbies!

Saturday night we went to a Halloween party at a foreigner's apartment and then to one of the foreigner bars downtown. We only stayed at the bar for about 10 minutes, mostly in part because of my paranoia that we would win best costume. One of the bartenders had come around and asked for our names. Then some guy got on the microphone and called out the nominations for "sexiest costume." Four girls were chosen and had to stand on a table and the audience had to cheer for which costume they thought was best. Because the audience cheered equally for all four of them, the girls had to do a dance-off. For MaryAnne this would not have been a problem, but there's not enough sojo OR seju in the world that could get me to do that.

Today, we went to the grocery store and bought all of the ingredients to make a Korean traditional stew. MaryAnne has been become quite a fan of this Korean chef on YouTube and is in the process of making the dinner right now. We realize we've been really negligent in making videos, but there is now new inspiration with MaryAnne's adventures in Korean cooking.

Today is November 1st and I am covered in mosquito bites and still wearing shorts and tshirts. It's very strange.