Last Thursday, after writing my blog, I went and met the crew out by the stream for some beers. I know the picture is blurry but it was such a fun time that I thought it merited the blog anyway.
Cecily has recently gotten into Naruto. In the past 2 weeks she has watched 90 episodes. I couldn't be prouder. At work on Saturday one of my students said she was going to the comic world festival after school, so when we finished work Cecily and I headed that way. We came across two of the best characters in Naruto: Minato and Jiraiya.
On Saturday, Ben and I joined Nancy and some others for our friend Dami's birthday. Dami used to work at DYB a couple of years ago. We went to the new swanky lounge bar in Itaewon. Dami reserved a booth for us, but I we were ousted by Top from Big Bang (a huge Korean K-Pop band)! Our booth was perfect, in a great spot that wasn't too crowded, but it was kind of cool to hang out in a lounge with one of the hottest K-Pop stars these days. All the girls in the place freaked out every time he passed through to go to the bathroom. Nancy even snapped a picture of Ben and I with Top behind us, but it came out blurry. I told all my students I saw Top this weekend and they all melted, literally.
After the lounge we went to a bar called Bungalow, because it was full of sandy rooms with beach-esque chairs. It reminded me of Kelly's Roadside Saloon, only I still prefer a night out at Kelly's.
Peter recently moved to Bundang and is now teaching in Suji (if that means anything to anyone) but he lives a good half hour away now. So on Sunday, Ben, Suzie, and I went to go visit him. We went to the local park to walk around and check out the bungee jumping.
This was the bungee jumping platform. We were going to do it, but the drop was so short that we decided against it.
Suzie left us to go to Minnie's, so Peter, Ben, and I walked home through this other park.
On our way home we heard some music and a lot of ruckus and stumbled upon this impromptu K-Pop concert. We couldn't figure out who it was but it was free and filled with people.
On Monday, Cecily, Nancy, Alan and I went to a Louisiana-style seafood boil in Itaewon, since Alan is from Louisiana and always talks about how good it is. I'm not much a fan of seafood, or I wasn't, but I forced myself to eat it, and it wasn't half bad! It may have been the super garlicy seasoning, but I actually enjoyed it a lot.
Nancy is more artsy than I so stole her picture from Facebook. They covered out table with paper and then just dropped two huge bags of shellfish on our tables. It was also a lot of fun to eat! In the bag was corn, sausage, oysters, clams, and prawns. I think, I'm still not totally sure what seafood is what yet.
And for dessert Nancy and I got some Taco Bell. I can't walk by one without getting a taco.
We walked home the other day from work and the bushes got so tall! This was only after 2 weeks or so, but they are now over our heads.
Tuesday was "Teacher's Day" in Korea, so I bought all my co-teachers a coffee. One of my teachers felt bad that she didn't get me anything so she went out and bought me pig and turtle bread.
We got flowers from DYB. Usually only Elementary school kids buy their teacher's things for Teacher's Day, and it is usually only your actual school teacher, but Cecily's student gave her a pecan pie! She left it in the teacher's room and we nibbled at it between classes until it was all gone. In one of my classes some of the girls wrote me letters. If you can't read it, the letter in the top right corner reads "To Mario Teacher: Hello Teacher. My name is Yeonwoo Noh. You always forget my name, so I'm so sad. Did you know that? It's okay, because I'm generous. Next time, please call my name" Needless to say I will never forget her name again, but to be fair I'm trying to learn my kids names and its a class full of 25 students and none of them have English names, so I get confused easily. And she sits in the very back and doesn't pay attention in class ever. In fact, none of the students who wrote these letters pay attention. They just sit in the corner and talk in Korean all class, then complain that they are confused about the lesson. Go figure.
A few short stories:
There's a dominant thought in Korea that foreigner's do not like / can't handle spicy food. In some cases they even refuse to serve you the spicy food, even though its not spicy at all. Some examples over the past few weeks:
- Ben and I went to one of the restaurants we go to often and ordered the same thing. However, the guy waiting on us was new. We ordered the yukgaejang, which is a spicy kind of beef stew, and the waiter said "Ok, no spicy", we told him spicy and he just said no. So we had to tell the girls in the back who are familiar with us to make it spicy, and it still came out with less spice than usual.
- Ben, Cecily, and I went to get some chicken after work. We ordered some boneless chicken and they brought out ketchup and honey mustard to dip it in. I know they have spicy sauce, cause last time we went Joon was with us and ordered it, so I asked the guy for some spicy sauce. He had this panicked look on his face and just said "uhh no more spicy sauce", which was a total lie. A few minutes later, maybe by taking a poll with his fellow workers, he brought us out a bowl of the spicy dipping sauce. Ben and I mopped it up and he came back and with a surprised gasp he took the bowl and refilled it.
- When we went for the Cajun style seafood jumble boil, which in Louisiana is always spicy, the guy who ran the store had a conversation with us like this:
Him: "ok, no spicy"
Us: "no, we want it spicy"
Him: "ok, no spicy, spicy on the side"
Us: "no, we want it spicy"
Him: "ok, little spicy, spicy on the side"
Us: "no, we want it spicy"
After realizing it was a losing battle he just walked off and gave us the spicy.
During one of the weeks after they finished testing and were getting into the regular schedule at academy we all had our classes mixed up, just for two days. Nancy had one of my classes. When we teach other teacher's classes we never do anything productive, we just spread rumors about the student's usual teachers. Anyway, Nancy told my class that I used to have long hair, so last week they asked me to see a picture. This week, I printed off the most disgusting picture of me with long hair wearing it down right before I got it cut and passed it around class. The kids gasped in horror. They were all convinced that I had gotten plastic surgery. After a long time I finally convinced them that all I did was get a haircut. I noticed that they never gave my picture back, so I walked up and down the aisles looking for it. One of my guy students had it hiding under his book. I told him to give it back to me and he asked if he could take a picture of it first, knowing full well that he was going to send it to all the students in my other classes. I told him sure, so he took a picture. About five minutes later I stopped the lecture and said "Jeong-Woo, now, you are the only class that has seen that picture of me. If anyone from my other classes even mentions the picture to me, I'm coming after you" His face immediately got so nervous and he dropped his phone on the desk and said "Oh shit".
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