Hey all,
Back with another post, sorry for the longer period in between posts, there just wasn't enough to really justify a new post until now. If you're thinking that the menu above is from the teacher's dinner, you would be incorrect. Mom and Dad found it at the glorious Holiday Inn Yorkdale, famous for their seasonal culinary exploits. It appears the end of February was Korean week (or month) not sure. Anyways, the menu is pretty accurate and sounds delicious to me, although much different from our menu last Friday night at our teachers' Shabbat dinner (sorry Bubbie and Papa, just a joke). As for the strapping young lad on the right, it's not me, nor my father, but Uncle Niel, modeling Bubba's new traditional Korean mask. The first week and a half of the semester has gone pretty well, the kids are excited, which makes teaching them much easier. But, I really haven't done a tremendous amount of teaching either. Last week, they had a lot of opening ceremony stuff going on so I basically taught half days and this week I'm teaching all my regular classes, but no special class until next week. Now, onto the teachers' dinner last Friday.
The dinner was done to welcome all the new teachers to our school, 6 in total, I believe. My former co-teacher was one of the departing teachers, but her replacement was already at our school. Anyways, the dinner was great! We went to a sushi restaurant in Suwon and had a boatload of different fish and all were delicious. In addition, per Korean tradition, there were two different kinds of Shabbas wine, samsuchon (which is a fruit-based wine) and soju (basically watered-down rocket fuel). Needless to say, spirits were running high throughout the entire dinner and afterwards, we went to fabreng...I mean noraebang (Sorry, for a second I thought I was back at Chabad in Madison for Shabbat, it's funny how the traditions are the same across cultures). Noraebang is Korean karoke. Most of the teachers showed up and after a few Korean songs were sung and after much badgering by my fellow co-workers, I decided to show off my skills. To play it safe, I chose "Twist and Shout" by the Beatles and went into Ferris Bueller mode.
Needless to say, I knocked it out the park, a perfect 100%, and received a raucous round of applause from the other teachers. From noraebang, everyone headed their separate ways, some teachers chose to stay out and some called it a night. The rest of the weekend was more low-key, save for Saturday night. I went out to Gangnam with a few friends to explore an area of Seoul that I'd only been a few times and it was definitely an enjoyable night.
This weekend I had originally planned to do a culinary tour of Seoul on Saturday, during the day, but this month's excursion is all booked up, so I'm going to try and do this next month. Don't worry though, plenty of other things to do. A friend of mine plays on a hockey team in Suwon and his team is playing Saturday afternoon, so I'll probably end up going to the game and then Sunday the first annual (to my knowledge) Toilet Crawl or Toilet Crawl 2010! For those of you that are confused, perplexed, or just generally don't understand what I'm talking about, let me explain. Beginning in the late 1990s, as part of a beaufication process, the city of Suwon decided to upgrade its public restroom facilities, and in doing so, is now ranked as having the best public restrooms in the world. Given that I live in this city, the opportunity was much to great to pass up, being a man who appreciates a fine public restroom. Here's some more information on Suwon's "restroom culture":
And a map with pictures of each magnificent architectural feat:
There are 44 in all and we hope to hit the majority of them, weather permitting.
Seeing that it's March, I'm getting pretty excited for baseball season to start. It has already started here, along with the soccer season, and I'm hoping to get out to a few games at some point in the future. I read earlier today that my namesake, Joe Nathan, may be out for the season, which would be a bad blow for the Twins, but I'm hoping it's not as serious as they may think it is. In other news, the Badgers are gearing up for the Illini on Friday in the Big Ten tournament. The hockey teams are getting ready for the Final Five and even the women's basketball team looks to be in the tournament this year, which would be great. I can't wait for Selection Sunday and March Madness to begin. I can guarantee that we will have a pool out here, hopefully I'll do better than I have the last few years. Moving completely away from sports for a second (I can't really talk about how embarassing the last two Wild games were, goodbye playoffs...), I got a nice little Passover package from Mom and Dad today, so now I'm all set with matzah, boxed gefiltte fish (I'm a little skeptical), and fruit jellies. Now I just have to figure out how to explain Passover to my co-teacher. That's all for now, more to come after the weekend.
iPod A-Z song update: "Where Do You Go To (My Lovely)" by Peter Sarstedt (great song, if you haven't heard it, please trust me and check it out)
New Music link: I realize it's been a while since I've done one of these, I forgot the last few times I went to the blog. Anyways, this band has been a favorite of mine since I first heard them 4 years ago. Sidenote: after reading Rolling Stone's Spring Music preview, I'm now really excited for all the music coming out the next four months, tons of goodies, which some of you will or have already read about and will see up on here when time permits.
Different band, still good music:
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