Halloween YR 2

Halloween has always been one of my favorite holidays. Last year, I was able to make the day special in school in my classes and afterschool classes. But this year, it wasn't possible because of my schedule. But thankfully, I still got the chance to celebrate. The weekend before the county decided to do a special Halloween event for the local kids. We all dressed up, did a mini tricker-treating and each of us ran a station that groups of kids rotated through.

The other teachers ran stations of different crafts and activity stations. Mine was a pizza-making station. It was such a mess.

My host mom was in charge of the event, so in the weeks leading up to it, I really got to see a lot of behind the scenes, as well as help, come up with ideas and how everything was going to work.

Day of, I got all dressed up in my Halloween costume, I was a witch, and entered the frantic flurry of preparation. Once the kids started to arrive, it was showtime. I did five rounds of helping 5-9-year-olds make pizza and trying not to get it all over their costumes. There was a bit of a learning curve, where the first two rounds I actually ran out of time and then I started finishing too fast.

The concept was that I gave each of them a piece of bread, they put sauce on, used cookie cutters to shape their cheese, then add toppings to make them more Halloweeny. Some of the designs were really cute.

After the kids went through all of the activities, we went outside for pictures, giving out candy and this thing that I can only describe as Korean Pinata.

On Sunday, we repeated the same thing, but in another town in the county. It was a really nice way to spend Halloween. I'm glad I got the chance to do this activity and share with the Korean children my love of the holiday. Especially because these kids were so young and so cute in their costumes!

Fall Conference in Gyeongju YR 2

Just like last year, in October, Fulbright gets the entire cohort together for Fall Conference in Gyeongju. Much of the conference was the same as last year, with a few exceptions. Thursday night, the other ETAs in Hwacheon and I decided to go to Chuncheon the night before and stay in an Airbnb, so we didn’t have to get up quite as early on Friday morning. It was actually a lot of fun hanging out with the girls.

Once we made it to Gyeongju, Friday and Saturday were mostly just various presentations and small group discussions where we could share what we have learned and bounce ideas off one another. As a first-year, this was so good, as I had been teaching at my placement for only two months. As a second year, however, this was mostly sharing knowledge and answering and questions if the first years had some. The experience was still very valuable, and it was really good to meet the first years since I really didn’t get a chance when I was at Yonsei for Departure Day.

Saturday was special to me though, because I was able to give a presentation this year. I gave a presentation on special education in the classroom. Since I believe most of the modifications and accommodations for students with special needs are just best practices that you can be doing with any student and that if you don’t know who to help, you can’t help, I spent most of my presentation on the different categories of disabilities and their identifying characteristics. I really do hope that people got something valuable out of it.

Sunday was when I really got to have fun. Last year, I went on the tour provided my Fulbright. The problem, however, is that the tour is the same every year. So this year, I elected not to go on it. I decided to just do my typical idea of just wandering around.

Although I didn’t make it everywhere I was intending on going to, I did have fun and it was actually really relaxing. The first place was the World Culture Expo. I wish I had gotten to go back at nighttime because they had a night walk that looked beautiful, but during the day was still pretty good. Afterward, I took a bus into the main area of town and went café hopping, found an awesome restaurant, a pop-up ice cream place, and little shops. It was exactly what I needed.

After our final conference dinner, I decided I didn’t want to stay at the hotel and decided to go to Anapji Pond. This is a beautiful pond right on the old palace that gives a mirror image of what’s above lang. It is breathtaking at night. I actually ran into another ETA there and we decided to walk over to the observatory and see it lit up before heading back to the hotel.

Monday morning, I got the bread that I pre-ordered and made the long 6-hour journey up the country back home. Tuesday, I returned to school, exhausted but grateful that I got to go back to Gyeongju for a second time.

Another Food Tour (Chuncheon This Time)

A few months ago, I wrote about a food tour of Nami Island from a new tour company out of Chuncheon. I had so much fun on this tour, and I absolutely loved my tour guide. When I found out they had a new tour of Chuncheon area, I was so excited. I love Chuncheon, but being a foreigner, it’s hard to really know what to eat and where. 

So bright and early on one of my only days off this semester (Hangul Day) I got up and made my way to Chuncheon. The tour itself was in Myeongdong area. This is my favorite area in Chuncheon. It is the shopping area. Our first stop was at this dumpling place. It was next to two other shops that served the exact same food, but this one had been there the longest. We went in to get what our tour guide called “Korean Soul Food.” Food that makes you just feel good and whole. We got fried mandu (dumplings; this restaurant’s dumplings were vegetarian) and tteokbokki (savory rice cake pieces in spicy sauce).

After we ate, we were already full. And this was only stop one! So, we decided to walk for a little bit before going to our second stop. Our tour guide took us to one of the older Catholic Churches that looked like a little natural oasis as compared to the built-up city around it. It was actually really beautiful. But from the outside, I would never have guessed that it was a church.

Our second stop was what I was looking forward to the whole trip. dakgalbi. This is my absolute favorite Korean dish and Chuncheon dakgalbi is famous. I have written previously about it, but it is made of chicken, cabbage, sweet potato, tteok (rice cake) and a spicy sauce. It is so delicious. Our tour guide took us to her favorite one in the area, and I was really happy. It was so good. When we finished, we also got a serving of fried rice with cheese. This is fried up in the same pan as the dakgalbi and includes whatever is left over. It was so good, but I was so full at that point. How were we going to go to two more stops?

Next, we went to this little café that is actually quite unique. It was both a café and the owners were licensed in traditional Korean medicine. So, you could enjoy a drink and get seen by a doctor. Here we had a very traditional medicinal tea called 십전대보차. It was this really bitter tea that is said to be really good for your health.

Our final stop was at this cute little bakery where she had pre-ordered walnut brownies with our names on it. How cute?

All in all, I’m really thankful to the Tasty East Tour Company for a delicious day and I hope there will be more tours in the future that I can try out!

Four Day Weekend in Seoul

Korea doesn't seem to have many national holidays that close schools, but in October, there are two right back to back. And I took advantage of both of them. The first holiday was on October 3rd. This was Foundation day. Because it fell on a Thursday, Friday became what is called a "sandwich" day. My school is kind enough that we also got this day off. It was fantastic. This meant that I had my only four day weekend of the whole semester. And what just happened to fall on the same weekend? The International Fireworks Festival in Seoul. I decided that I really wanted to go to that. The fireworks were on Saturday, which meant I could spend the other two days exploring Seoul and go home on Sunday.

Thursday
On Thursday, My host mom, host sister and I all went to Seoul. My host mom had to go into the office on Saturday so they could come with me only on Thursday and go home on Friday morning. We took the train from Chuncheon and we had our first adventure; finding the guesthouse we were staying at. My host mom really wanted to stay in Myeongdong, so the first night, we stayed in that area. While we were wandering around trying to find this place, we found this little hole-in-the-wall restaurant that served Pork Cutlets and Curry. Exactly what my host sister wanted to eat. I got a cheese pork cutlet and let me tell you, the cheese pull was awesome. It was so delicious.

With a full belly, we decided to take the train to Gangnam area. Here we went to the COEX Mall to see the giant library inside the mall. Afterwards, we went on a search for Cheesecake (really hard to find in Korea apparently) and spent some time shopping.

Then we went down to Ikseon-dong and Insa-dong, some beautiful traditional streets with lots of pretty shops and restaurants. Unfortunately, we actually did it backwards. Ikseon-dong had all the restaurants and we weren't hungry when we walked through there. Insa-dong was mostly shops. By the time we got there, we were hungry. We actually had this really cute moment in Insa-dong. My host sister was complaining that her feet hurt so we stopped to listen to this guitarist, and he actually asked me where I was from and to tell him my favourite song. I don't think he would know any songs I would suggest, so he asked me if I like Elvis Presly and he proceeded to play one of his songs. The couple who was sitting next to us apparently complemented my host mom on her Korean, not realizing she was Korean, I suppose because she was speaking English with me.

After we ate, we went down to Gyeonbukgun where there was a big protest going on. My host mom was curious. By that point, it was late and we were all exhausted. We went back to our guesthouse and went to bed.

Friday
The next morning, we went to a few places my host mom wanted to visit before going to Yongsan Station to get lunch and send them home.

Once they left, I went back to Myeongdong, did a little bit of shopping before grabbing my bag from the guesthouse and making my way to the other side of the city to where I would be staying for the rest of my stay. I didn't have much time, I got my stuff settled and made my way back across the river to go to a show. I love theatre and I usually shy away from going to them because of the language barrier, but this show was actually mostly physical comedy. There was some speaking, but it was mostly in English with a little bit of Korean being understandable for my Korean ability. It was so much fun! And so funny. I'm so glad that I went, even if I barely made it before the show started and had a bruised knee from falling outside the subway station.

The show was only about an hour long and so afterwards, I got dinner and decided to walk along the Cheonggyecheom Stream.

Saturday
Saturday was less exciting. I wandered around the city mostly. I saw Dongdaemun area and went looking for a gift for my friend's birthday. Around four, I headed over to the Han River to get a place to see the fireworks. I actually made friends with another group of foreigners while I was there. I'm so glad I brought a jacket because it got cold quickly that day.

The fireworks were so beautiful. There were daytime fireworks, that seemed to be made of colored powder and then once it got dark there were three different fireworks shows of various lengths. It ended around 9 and I was both freezing and exhausted. I walked back to where I was staying and went right to sleep. The next morning I went home, exhausted and tired of being in the city for too long. I was so happy to see my bed.

It was a great weekend and I'm so thankful that even if it was a city I've been to a bunch of times, I always have a place that's not too far from me that I can go to and experience something new every time.