Greetings from my chilly classroom!
I can't believe how quickly the month of December has flown by! I was looking at my past posts and I realized I haven't written anything new since the Manila tournament, which seems like a while ago, and I guess it's been about a month. It's amazing how fast time flies by when you're busy and occupied day in and day out. Anyways I'll try and give everyone a brief but informative description of the past few weeks, but I think I might have to break this up into two parts.
The pictures above and below were taken during my Advanced class' cooking class at the beginning of the month. It was a special activity my co-teacher and I planned to give the students a little break after their test in my class and before their test in their regular classes. Each group of students made their own spaghetti and it was pretty interesting to see some of the ingredients that each group brought. The mother of one of the students gave her daughter American cheese to put on the pasta instead of parmesan (why, i don't know). In fact none of the groups used parmesan cheese (it's pretty hard to find, especially around my school); all the other groups used mozzarella cheese, or as the students called it, "pizza cheese." And, of course, each group had some sweet Korean pickles to go along with their meal. When each group was finished cooking, I came around and sampled some from each group and most of them were pretty good, although I don't think I'd recommend American cheese ever. I know the kids enjoyed it, which is really what mattered and they learned some new vocabulary words and practiced words they already knew. All together it was an afternoon well spent. 
The following weekend my school had a teacher's trip planned so we all met at school Saturday morning and departed for our day-long adventure in Seoul. Our first stop was part of the old Seoul Fortress, which in recent years has been restored and is open to public to hike. We hiked a decent portion of the old fortress wall in pretty chilly weather and most of the teachers were glad to be done and moving on to lunch when we finished. We had lunch at a traditional Korean restaurant that served a very old fashioned Korean meal that consisted of many side dishes and a few different main dishes. There was kimchi (of course!), kimchi and seafood pancakes, fish, spicy octopus, bulgogi, japchae, a few different kinds of vegetables, an assortment of rice cakes, and of course, soju! It was a delicious meal and afterwards, we made our way to Seoul World Cup Stadium where we were going to see a traditional Korean holiday musical performance. If I had to compare the performance to something, I think it would be like the holiday pantomimes in the UK. There was singing and dancing and a storyline, but it all seemed like it was sort of a farce or more like a lampoon. The only problem with the performance was it was done entirely in Korean so I couldn't really understand anything, aside from changes in the plot based on scenery or costume changes. Otherwise it was pretty enjoyable (even if I did sneak in a little nap time as well). The next day the few members of the tribe from Ultimate and some other frisbee players (including are wonderful hosts Clay and Jackie) got together for a Hannukah brunch. Needless to say the camaraderie and food were both excellent. There were homemade latkes, bagels, cream cheese, lox, sufganiyot, and homemade applesauce. It was a great time and I'm glad both years I've been here I've been able to celebrate Hannukah in some capacity. The food is the best part of the celebration; well, food, friends, and family.
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| View of part of Seoul from the top of the Fortress Wall |
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| Performers from the Korean holiday musical |
The students had their final tests on December 16th, so the last week of school was a difficult stretch to get through because they were tired and didn't really feel motivated to learn and I don't blame them. Thankfully now we both have some time off before I come back to teach winter camp. This past weekend I went skiing with Nate at Yongpyong, the largest ski resort in Korea, but I'll write more about that in a separate post. In short, it was a very fun, cold, but enjoyable weekend. Right now I'm looking out my window in my classroom and it's started to snow a little bit, but it doesn't look like anything that'll stick on the ground. In other news, I'm getting pretty excited for my trip to Thailand. I leave this Thursday (Dec. 30th) and will be there until Jan. 9th. We're arriving in Bangkok, flying to Phuket the next day, then we are in Phuket for a few days, Ko Phi Phi for a few days and back to Bangkok to finish off the trip. I'm excited for the food, the weather, the relaxation, pretty much all of the trip. Nate and I also booked tickets to go to Hong Kong over the Chinese New Year (which is the first week of February), which I'm pretty excited about, so much dim sum waiting for me. That's about all the news from this end. For everyone celebrating Christmas, I hope you had a good celebration! To everyone on vacation or about to be on vacation, I hope you enjoy yourselves, I know I'm going to! Oh, and how could I forget, GO BADGERS!!!
Here's a little video of the cooking class:
What I'm listening to: "Backstreets" by Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band
What I'm reading: Trinity by Leon Uris
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