shoot, I was afraid this was going to happen.

While looking at Dani's blog I realized that I have completely neglected my own for quite some time, and for that I apologize.  I also apologize because I don't have many new pictures to put up : (  My camera died a few weeks ago so I need to figure out what to send in to use my warranty and get it fixed.

However, just because I don't have many pictures to put up does not mean that things aren't happening.  First, I am still OBSESSED with Korean t-shirts, this one is my best find yet!

Seriously?! How awesome.

This next one is a close second:

When I took the picture I didn't know how to use the flip function on my computer, but incase you can't tell that says, "Boston, MassachuBATTS." ugh. so good. 

Also, after much thinking and talking with friends, I decided to get a cat. Her name is Lola and she is so incredibly wonderful.  I have lovely friends here, but it is so nice to come home to something!  Here she is: 

Once my camera is fixed I am sure there will be many more photos.  She is sooo perfect.  She sleeps next to me, hops up on the couch when I pat it, and is so excited to see me when I come home from work. 

I haven't been on any crazy adventures lately, but staying in Seosan has been nice.  My students are wonderful as always.  I have several classes that I am particularly fond of and I refer to them as my sugar dumplings, when doing that one day my student, Sky, replied, "Teacher, if I am your sugar dumpling then you are my little kimchi," how absolutely adorable. I melted. 

Last night was the first time that I had to say goodbye to a friend and, unfortunately, many of the people who I have become very close with will be leaving within the next two months.  I realize I have not known these people for very long but goodness, we have such a tight knit group here and when someone leaves you certainly feel it.  It was a bummer to say bye, but I know we will keep in touch and in coming here I knew that I was replacing someone and someday someone will be replacing me, unfortunate that it works that way and that people come and go so often, but that is only more wonderful people to have in my life, more couches to crash on and places to visit when I get back to the states!

That's all for now, but plans for a baseball game are in the works for this weekend so hopefully some fun will result from that!

I'll try to shorten the distance between this post and the next!

my mom reminded me that it had been a little while since i had posted anything...

Sorry about that...

My last post was during my vacation and right before I went to Busan!  Busan is a very lovely city on the southeastern coast of Korea, I went there with my friend Joe and we stayed there for four wonderful days.

We left Seosan on Thursday afternoon headed toward Daejon to catch the KTX (a train that goes super fast) and got into Busan around 9:00 on Thursday night.  The Korean countryside is really pretty, here are some pictures from the KTX:

Once we got to the hostel we were staying at we received a warm welcome from Tiger, who runs the hostel, and all of the other travelers there.  It was pretty cool, everyone was hanging out like they were at a friend's house and discussing their plans for the evening, which they wanted to make sure we were included in!  We had missed dinner with them so we went to grab a bite to eat and met up with them a little later on in the evening...Tiger certainly knows how to show his guests a good time.

Once we woke up on Friday we went venturing around Busan, it is a pretty big city but has a very great public transportation system, as does most of Korea, so getting around was really easy.  We had planned on going to the beach but instead wound up spending the majority of the day wandering around different shops and I bought a really cool pair of orange shoes for 5,000 won (about $5.00), and was quite pleased.  That night we went out to dinner with a group of people from the hostel and had Korean BBQ, I seriously cannot get enough of it, it is SO GOOD!

There were quite a few of us, i'm not sure where everyone was when I took these pictures, but these were all that I took at dinner...

After dinner we went to a bar called Thursday Party, it was MADE for foreigners.  They have a beer pong table, darts, and reasonably priced beer, it was lovely.  Once we decided we were done there we moved on to a different Thursday Party (there are 8 in Busan) in another part of town where I met several people from MN and a bunch of other foreigners who live in Busan, it is always lovely to meet new foreigners.  We decided to end that night a little earlier than we had the night before, which was fine with me, so we hopped in a cab and went back to the hostel.

Saturday we went to the aquarium, it was pretty cool, and I took a ton of pictures!  But, before heading in to the aquarium Joe and I thought it would be a good idea to get artificial tattoos of cats, they made us look pretty tough.

We also ran into some large dancing fish people...they were pretty cool.

Then, we entered the aquarium!

There were some pretty cool fish there, unfortunately, I cannot remember what many of them were...

After the aquarium we went back the hostel to see what everyone else was up to and plan our adventure for out last night in Busan.  First we went to dinner with some of the people from the hostel and had sashimi which is raw fish!  I was nervous, but it was actually really good!

These are all of the complimentary sides they give you.

Including shrimp...with eyeballs still attached...

This was the sashimi.

After dinner they gave us soup, complete with a fish head and brains still inside... 

When dinner was done we wandered off to the beach in search of a music festival that we could not find so, instead, we sat on the beach and enjoyed some games, lovely conversation, and watching the tide, which was crazy because there was a typhoon in Japan on its way towards us.

Fortunately for us, the typhoon changed its path and went to China, though it was pretty serious, several of my friends were stuck in Shanghai for several days on their way back from Thailand because of it and around 200,000 people had to be evacuated from their homes.

We made it back without too many complications and I think now, over a week later, I am finally caught up on sleep.  I was going to post some pictures of the view from my hostel, which was right across the street from the ocean, but after an hour of trying to upload them I am done waiting.  I will try again later and write more soon!  I also have today off for Korean Independence day so I am going to go wander around and find a good place to read my book and write some postcards!

Vacation: Day 2!

I could really get used to this, vacation has been very useful for catching up on missed sleep and with people from home!  Before leaving I bought a number from skype with a MN area code, so now I get to surprise friends from home and call them and then they can save that number and use it to call me while I am in Korea...pretty cool!

Well, the fish was a lot of work but it turned out just fine!  My friend Sabrina, who is from China, had never had fish prepared like this before (battered and fried), and she was quite excited about it!  She said that the way I cooked the fish proves that I am a good cook...we'll see about that.

Today was another lovely day of vacation!  For the first time since I moved here I went to a restaurant where you have to sit on the floor to eat, I was pretty excited.  Unfortunately I did not take any pictures because I was a guest with older people who I did not know, so I didn't want to seem rude or offend anyone by photographing the whole event.  It was an enjoyable experience though, so I will repeat it and take pictures next time!

I also learned how to make kimbap today!  It is like Korean sushi and is very tasty!  My first roll was not the prettiest of them all, but I think I got the hang of it and will be practicing this art much more in the months to come.

That's all for today, I got some lights for Bianca so I think I'm going on a bike ride tonight!

First day of vacation!

Today has been quite exciting!  I purchased a bike, it's name is Bianca, and it brings me around Seosan at the speed of light.

I also just purchased some fish from the fish market! They didn't take the skin off...so that should be an adventure.  Once that is accomplished I am going to cook dinner for myself and my friend Sabrina...I'll let you know how it all turns out.

That's all for now, keep it real.

Hanging out in North Korea and Seoul.

On Saturday I went to the DMZ and it was awesome.  The tour started out with a brief presentation to give the history of the DMZ and talk about how it is controlled now and how it is used.  The presentation was actually quite interesting and I learned a lot about how it was formed and what it all means.  Here are a few pictures of the slides:

After the presentation we got on a bus and went to headed up to the DMZ!  Our tour guide was Sgt. Jenkins, he was a really cool guy and did a great job explaining everything.  Once we got to the DMZ we went through the freedom house and right up to the border between North and South Korea.  The border is marked by concrete that is about 12 inches wide and 2 or 3 inches high and it runs throughout the border.  Once we got out there we were able to not only have a very clear view of North Korea, but we also saw a North Korean soldier who was watching our every move.  We had to be very mindful of our body language and hand gestures, if the North Korean soldiers would have misinterpreted something or felt as though we were threatening them they probably would have shot at us. seriously. 

North Korea, if you look closely you can see the soldier a little left of center in the photo.

The blue buildings are used for meetings, we got to go inside!  In the middle of those buildings is the border between North and South Korea, neither country has more of the building than the other...I think.

A blurry photo of the North Korean soldier.  If you look in the lower right hand corner of the window on the left you can see another pair of binoculars from a soldier who was watching us from inside the building. 

After seeing that we got to go inside the blue buildings, it was pretty cool!  I actually stood in North Korea for about 10-15 minutes, I also took a picture with one the South Korean soldiers.  They are not the friendliest of individuals, but then again they have a pretty serious task on their hands.  One man got too close to a soldier and he was stiff armed by the guy.  They are always standing in a ready position and I certainly would not mess with them, I am pretty sure they could tear your arm off with their pinky finger.  

Proof that I was north of the border!  The raised cement in the picture is the boundary that I was trying to describe earlier.

ROK soldier in ready position.  The guy in the polo is the one who got stiff armed.

Me, in North Korea, hanging out with my new soldier friend. 

After being led around there we hopped back on the bus and saw some other pretty significant areas in the DMZ.  We saw the bridge of no return and a monument that was erected in honor of officers who were killed by North Korean soldiers in the 70's (i think) while they were chopping down a tree.

Once we were finished there our tour continued on to a tunnel that North Korea dug, they claimed it was for mining but no one believed that.  Unfortunately I couldn't bring my camera with me but it was pretty cool.  We put on hard hats and went pretty far down to a very narrow tunnel with a very low ceiling, I hit my head several times while I was crouched down walking through the tunnel and some of the people I went with were much taller than me, I can only imagine how uncomfortable the walk was for them.  Once we reach the "end"(the tunnel continued into North Korea, but we obviously could not go that far) there was a steel door with a small rectangle cut into it so we could look in to North Korea.  It was just their end of the tunnel, but it was still neat.  To prevent people from going to North Korea or coming from North Korea there was about six feet in front of the door that was filled with barbed wire, that certainly enough of a deterrent for me. 

After the tunnel we went on to an observation deck where we could look into North Korea and actually see a village, it was pretty cool.  Again, unfortunately, we were not able to take pictures close up because it could pose a threat to South Korean security.  After that we had an opportunity to purchase some souvenirs, there was North Korean beer available and it is actually quite good.  One of my friend's informed me that it was because Kim Jong Il bought a brewery from Germany and now has it in North Korea making beer for him.  With that the tour concluded and we headed back to Seoul where we continued our day.

Once we returned to Seoul my friends and I went to a part of the city called Insadong.  Of the three different areas of Seoul that I have been to this one is by far my favorite, it has a very cool artsy vibe to it and has really neat shops all over!  There was also a really cool outdoor mall there that had garden throughout it and some really neat artwork.  All of these next photos are of Insadong and the mall.

When we were finished wandering around we headed back to Seosan and sampled some of our North Korean purchases.  It was a very long and full but very awesome day.

Living in Korea is getting better everyday, and I am truly very happy here.  The opportunities to travel are wonderful and so affordable, living in a new culture is such an amazing experience and is helping me to learn and grow in ways that I could never have imagined.  

This week is my vacation!  I was going to visit an Jeju, an island off the southern tip of Korea, but I think that now I may head back to Seoul for a day or two to explore Insadong more and check out the touristy parts and then maybe head to Busan, which is another large city in Korea. 

I'll be sure to update where this week takes me!