My 1st Korean Wedding and Other Weekend Adventures

Hey everyone,

I'm back with a new post chock full of goodies! From Wednesday-Friday of this past week I had teaching orientation at a resort in Osan, about 40 minutes away from Suwon. The orientation was nice, most of the lectures were pretty useful and it was nice meeting some more English speakers and network a little bit. Unfortunately I really didn't meet many people who live in Suwon so it looks like I'll be doing some more weekend travelling to meet up with new friends, but that's fine with me, the subway in Korea is really inexpensive. On Friday night I met up with a few people from my orientation and we went for Mexican food near a U.S. Air Force base. It was authentic, the chefs were from Mexico City and the food was pretty good, definitely worth the trip to feed my craving. Saturday was my co-teacher's daughter's wedding and I was very excited for my 1st experience at a Korean wedding. The ceremony was very nice, short and concise but very interesting. The wedding wasn't extremely traditional but they did retain some aspects of Korean traditions in the ceremonial process. For example, my co-teacher and the groom's mother were both wearing traditional Korean dresses called hanbok. Also, the bride and groom bowed before their respective in-laws as a symbol of acceptance into the family. After the ceremony we were ushered into a huge banquet hall for lunch, which was incredible. There were vast quantities of traditional Korean food and soooo much fruit. It was great and later on Saturday I went back into Seoul to meet up with Dave and one of his good friends from Boston. We hung out around Ilsan on Saturday night and rested up for Sunday. Today we went to Gangnam, which is an area in southeast Seoul. We ended up at a cafe and spa known for a very special kind of treatment called Dr. Fish. This basically consists of sitting in a pool of water filled with little fish, roughly the size of minnows, that nibble at your feet eating off all your dead skin. Supposedly it's a very healthy and theraputic method of cleaning one's feet. Dr. Fish is not for the very ticklish. The sensation of little fish nibbling at your feet is overwhelming and I couldn't help but burst out laughing. It was definitely a unique experience but my feet felt great afterwards.

That's all for now, next week is one of the two biggest holidays in Korea, Chuseok, which is a holiday celebrating the fall harvest and the honor of family ancestors, so I have Thurs., Friday, and the following Monday off from school. My tentative plans are to go out east to the coast and explore a few national parks, which I'm very excited to do. I hope everyone has a good fast, I know I'll have to explain myself to every teacher tomorrow as to why I'm not eating lunch.

Shana Tovah from Eretz Korea!

I'm back with a week full of thoughts just for my lovely audience. I'll begin by wishing everyone a very wonderful Shana Tovah, I hope your New Years have all had great beginnings, I know mine has despite battling a sore throat. Some things I definitely missed out on were Charlotte's brisket, along with all the other delicious side dishes; since we moved to Minneapolis, the 1st night of Rosh Hashanah is a evening that is always circled on my calendar because of the many culinary delights that are always to be had at the Bermans. Of course I also miss Rosh Hashanah meals with Bubba and the Wolfish side of the family and with Bubbie and Papa and the Winston family. This year I celebrated the High Holidays differently than in the past but it was still a very nice, enjoyable, and spiritual celebration.

On Saturday, part of our Madison group made the trek from our homes to Dobongsan, a mountain in northeast Seoul that is a popular destination for hikers. I was very excited for the hike; the last time I went on a legitimate hike was in Israel back in high school. We started our ascent around 11:30 am and along the way we stopped at a Buddhist temple about halfway up the mountain, which was really neat. There were a lot of hikers who stopped to meditate and pray and the temple had a stone basin filled with fresh spring water for all to drink. It was nice break from the challenging hike. We continued up the mountain and stopped for lunch about 3/4 of the way up the mountain. I brought along an apple (no honey unfortunately) in honor of the holiday and with our newfound energy we made our final climb to the peak. The last stretch of the hike was literally equivalent to scaling the mountain up to the top where the claustrophobic were not welcome. There were probably close to 100 people in a very restricted space, all snapping pictures. The hike up was definitely challenging and tough on the legs but well worth the view from the top. The way down was almost as much fun as going up, getting secure footing was very difficult! In addition to our timidness, the Korean hikers were over zealous in their abilities and would leap over you on the narrow path if you paused for a second (Don't worry Mom, I'm definitely taking you on this hike when you come). We finished our hike around 4:30 pm and that night we went to Hongdae to celebrate Mika's birthday with the majority of our Madison group and it was nice catching up with everyone and comparing our experiences so far.

Last Wednesday I had my first Korean class which was great. It was 2 hours and by the end I felt semi-confident in my ability to read Korean. It's a phonetic language, which makes it much easier when learning to read. I have a short week of teaching this week because of orientation from Wednesday-Friday, but I'm ok with that. Unfortunately that means I'm missing the school production of "The Sound of Music" on Friday, but I was lucky enough to get my own special performance last week. Not quite Broadway, but almost at camp play levels, which is pretty impressive.

In other good news, I finally got a cell phone and a stable internet connection in my apartment so I'm now free to Skype, which is great as Mom and Dad and Bubbie and Papa can attest to. My cell # is 010-4917-1103, but I would recommend Skype if you want to talk since it's free! I've also reached the middle of the letter H of all the songs on my iPod. I was inspired by Dad to try this out; as I type this I'm listening to "Heaven and Hell" by The Who. I'm glad to see the Vikings are 2-0 and that the Twins put up a fight against the Tigers over the weekend, hopefully they'll be able to catch them by the end of the month. That's all from here, enjoy the pics!

2nd Week of Teaching/Weekend in Seoul

Hi all,

Sorry for the longer delay in posts, I was relatively busy last week creating lesson plans and trying to avoid going to the PC bangs (internet cafes) now that my laptop is working again. Unfortunately a healthy computer doesn't equal instant wireless connections as Papa and I found out yesterday. Thankfully I've picked up a stronger signal tonight so here comes a big new entry to the blog.

The 2nd week of teaching went even better than the first week. I'm beginning get more familiar with the students, not so much their names as much as recognizing their faces and associating that with their English levels. It's funny because the more talkative kids in some of the classes aren't necessarily the best English speakers. One thing I've realized is how much the kids love Jeopardy, almost as much as yours truly. If only Mom and Dad had captured my Jeopardy dance on video, they could blackmail me for any amount to keep that video a secret. This week I start all my special and advanced classes, which I'm excited for because the students' English levels are higher and I feel I can be more engaging in my teaching style with more interesting material. All in all I'm beginning to settle into a routine but there will be little surprises, like last week when we were served crab soup for lunch or last Friday when we had a staff badminton tournament and afterwards I played soccer with some of my students for a while. Also, last Wednesday night a group of people from the Madison group and another friend from home, Paul Chodosh, got together for dinner in Paul's town, Byeongjeom, only 2 subway stops away from Suwon. It was nice to meet other people and see how everyone was getting along so far and a few of us were planning out future weekends, trips, etc...

This past weekend I made the long trek via subway up to Ilsan to stay with Dave. Alex also came in again from Paju and we both claimed our respective spots on Dave's floor. I didn't get in until late Friday night so we kept the night low-key. We spent the night playing Winning Eleven, a soccer video game, which I'm sure the parents and grandparents aren't too happy to hear, but we all needed something less taxing after long weeks of teaching. Anyways, Jinhan, Dave's co-teacher, and myself were dominant, winning all but one of the matches, mostly due to Jinhan's skill and much less to my timely passes and stellar defense. Saturday was a much more eventful day thankfully. We took the subway to Insa-dong, a nice neighborhood in greater Seoul, to meet up with Mika, another friend from our Madison group. We walked around through a fairly new area of Insa-dong, which had a very European feel and reminded me of walking in Uptown; there were art galleries, coffee shops, and tea houses everywhere! After our mini-tour of the neighborhood, we met up with Jinhan at the National Folk Museum, which is located at the palace ground of Gyeongbokgung Palace. The palace was first built in 1395 to signify the moving of the ancient capitial of the Joseon Dynasty from Gaeseong to Seoul (known as Hanyang). The palace was destroyed by fire during the Japanese invasion in 1592 and wasn't reconstructed until 1868. An effort to fully restore the palace has been ongoing since 1990. In short, the palace and the grounds in their entirety were amazing! The architecture is so interesting and so different from other historical palaces I've seen. We all enjoyed the excursion and took many pictures. Afterwards we went to check out a little flower sculpture garden across the street and made our way to a picturesque stream, both in an area of downtown Seoul. After dinner, we made our way to the Seoul World Cup Stadium to see FC Seoul take on FC Jeonbuk in soccer. I can't remember the last time I attended a soccer game, but for 4,000 won (roughly $3) who could turn down a ticket? The game was great, the fans are as rabid as any soccer fans worldwide and we really enjoyed ourselves. For a nightcap we went to Itaewon, a very Westernized area of Seoul, to check out Dave's co-worker Andy's friend's band, a British cover band playing everything from Clapton to the Stones, Oasis (sorry Jed) to Zeppelin. They were great and overall, Saturday and the weekend were a great success. On Sunday I made my way to Ichon, right on the Han River for my ultimate frisbee league and arrived back in Suwon around 6:30 pm, exhausted from a wonderful weekend.

I am looking forward to my Hangul class (the Korean language) which starts this Wednesday after school. Hopefully I can pick up the characters fairly quickly; I've already begun to teach myself a little bit. I also hope to have my apartment wired for Internet by the end of the week; I have to wait to pick up my Alien Regisitration Card, which won't be ready till Wednesday. I also hope to get a cell phone either later this week or early next week and will keep you all informed to the status of both. For now that's all from my end, hope everyone is well back home in Canada and the States.

First Week Thoughts

Hi all,

The first week of teaching went great! The kids are mostly wonderful and they definitely seem to enjoy English class. I can tell that it's going to be a good school year. Their English speaking levels aren't great but they are good listeners and it's fun for me because I get to play a lot of games and teach them simple songs (soon we'll move on to the Beatles).

This weekend I ended up going to Goyang in northwestern Seoul to visit my good friend from Madison, Dave. It was an excellent weekend. On Friday night, another friend from our Madison group, Alex, also came in for the night and we got to explore Dave's neighborhood, which was great. We went for dak kalbi on Saturday with some of Dave's co-teachers from his high school who are closer in age to us than my co-teachers. It was delicious as usual and afterward we went bowling. I'm not any better than I was at home. Alex went back to his place in Paju on Sat. night and Dave and I met up with his dad, who was in Seoul for business, for dinner, which was great. My first time having spaghetti in Korea but it was very good. Last night Dave and I went to Hondae to explore the famous nightlife. I can't recall the last time I've seen so many restaurants and watering holes in such a little area but it was a great weekend overall.

I'm hoping to get my computer fixed and then get in touch via Skype and post some pictures of Suwon and travels. I think I'm going to stay in Suwon next weekend to explore the area some more; I've realized it's much larger than I originally thought. That's all for now!

Thoughts on Korean Cuisine

Hi everyone,



While I know I have mentioned some foods that I've tried since I've been here in Korea, I thought I'd take the time to describe some foods that I've really enjoyed. I forgot to mention in my last post that I have now met the teacher I'm replacing. His name is Dan and he taught at Maesong Elementary for 2 years so he has been very good at giving my pointers as well as his lesson plans for each class. Yesterday he actually came to the school and I was able to observe him teaching in the afternoon which was extremely helpful for me. Today definitely went a lot smoother since I began incorporating some of Dan's teaching techniques. Back to the food...On Monday night, Dan took me out to dinner with our friend Hanjoon for Korean barbeque, sum gyeop sal. It was delicious but not as good as the meal we had last night. Dan and I went to his favorite restaurant in Suwon, for dak galbi, which is a Korean-style spicy barbeque chicken with vegetables. It was by far my favorite meal I've had since I've been here. Tonight I went to a Vietnamese restaurant right up the street from me called Pho Tien. I had Vietnamese spring rolls and a seafood noodle soup, both which were great. I feel like I have a pretty good grasp on my surroundings now and every day it is starting to feel more like home to me.

This weekend I'm planning on going on a little trip with some friends to an island off the coast of Incheon. I will post more later.