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!!!