This past week at work has been exceptionally draining. We are on a long stretch since our last holiday day off (first week of October) and does it ever do a number on you! While I do enjoy that several holidays in Korea are a few days long, I do miss having a holiday practically once a month back home. I have seven more teaching days and nine more full days before my vacation begins and I know it's going to be rough! This past week we had a lot of work to get done as well, and by the end of the week, most of us teachers could feel it all taking a toll on us emotionally. Not only do we create monthly tests which were due this past Friday, our school puts on a huge end of year festival in February. All of the sever year old classes will be graduating and the school is in the process of compiling their graduation books. This meant that all of us who have seven year old classes had to do grad write ups for each of our students, due this past Friday as well. It was a pain and there was some miscommunication and ridiculous expectations that caused more stress and frustration than what was needed. In the end we negotiated with our supervisors (the day before they were due) and it ended up being less of a pain than to begin with but still rough. It did get me thinking more about March when the new school year starts though. I am going to miss my current students so much!! To top it off as well, I am still trying to get over a cold so most of my nights this week were spent in my bed resting or sleeping. I'm feeling better, but still have a terrible cough.
This past week Sally had her birthday party. She's cute. Here is a picture of the two of us. It was funny but awful because the day before her party she was telling the other students that she was going to bring special presents and chocolates for everyone as goodie bags and kept telling them to make sure they brought her a gift. Kids.
We got a new teacher at work, Laura Teacher who came from Chicago. She's a great girl and I have spent some time this past week showing her around. It's strange being on the other side even though I remember being in her shoes only 5 months ago. Friday night we decided to take her out in Suji which ended up being quite a late but fun night, we headed home around 5am. Her apartment is two buildings down from mine so we walked home together. Chuck's building is between ours, the three of us even walked to school together last week! We are such a happy family on our block!
Saturday Sarah and I decided to go see the Hobbit (which was excellent and you should go see it), so during the day Laura and I walked to Shinsegae (the big department store building that have the movie theatre on the 8th floor). Laura decided to join us for the movie, so we grabbed tickets early on in the day (which is necessary otherwise movies sell out). I then showed her that "mall" and Emart. I grabbed Starbucks (the amount of coffee I drink here compared to at home is insane) and ran into one of my student's moms who bought my two Starbucks cakes. It was super sweet of her and so unnecessary but that is the culture here. I feel way too spoiled as a teacher. We then grabbed lunch at a porridge place that Chris showed me a few weeks back. It's sooo good! And really more like thick wild rice soup. So good.
The weather has been so crazy compared to Vancouver. I'm experiencing -10 and it snowed all Friday night and into late Saturday afternoon. While I don't like the snow, I will admit that it is pretty when it's falling down. But I still can't wait to get out of here and get to the 30 degree weather in the Philippines!
Tonight, Sunday, I decided to have some friends over for some Christmas festivities. Yvonne sent me a link a few weeks ago describing how to survive a long distance Christmas and one of the things it said to do was invite your orphan friends over and be along together. So that is in fact what I did. Ben coined it LudaChristmas. I frantically cleaned my apartment (after playing guitar over Skype with my Dad - which was awesome. I regret not learning more about playing the guitar from him) and then relaxed before people started to head over. I had eight people in my small apartment but it was wonderful. Everyone brought over snacks and we ordered pizza. Ben made Gluhwein (a German drink) which we later referred to as hognog as Sarah told us a story about hognog, only to realize that it's actually called eggnog. She is from Africa. We forgive her ;) But the Gluhwein was so good! You boil water and suger, then add in cinnamon, then orange peels with cloves. This is all boiling and simmering etc. Then you add in a bottle of red wine. He made one batch and more was quickly made. We went through five bottles of red wine. So yummy and my apartment smelt so good and Christmasy. We also did a white elephant gift exchange - you had to bring something wrapped from your apartment that you no longer wanted. That was super fun to do. The gifts ranged from tupperware, a life jacket, a hello kitty stuffed animal, make up samples, 2 different books, a toy robot, a rice hat and uno cards. It's quite funny what you accumulate over here from different people. I started out with the Hello Kitty stuffy but it got stolen from me and I ended up with a book called "Why Men Love Bitches". Afterwards we played Risk. I absolutely enjoyed playing a board game! I miss playing board games so much! It was a wonderful night. While a group shot was not taken, Ben, Chris, Kyle, Chuck, Nate, Sarah and Laura all came over. Here are the few pictures that were snapped.
Some of the white elephant gifts under the tree.
Nate in his rice hat - though he later traded for the life jacket.
Sarah and I
Ben, Kyle, Laura, Sarah and Chris while we started our game of Risk.
I am not sure if I mentioned this before, but I am teaching my class "Nothing for Christmas" for our Christmas song contest. So I will be hammering that out this week with them. 10 days until Christmas!!
Last weekend I decided to do a temple stay. Adventure Korea (who I went to Seoraksan with) was doing a temple stay so I signed up. While I agree when people say that they would rather do a temple stay on their own, without a bunch of other foreigners, for my first one, I was happy to have other newbies close by. Plus I was looking forward to getting out of the city and meeting some new people.
Friday was Megan's birthday (a co-worker of mine), so we all went to Ashley's for dinner (the delicious buffet with unlimited wine). There was a big group of us which was fun and we ate and drank the night away. I knew what I was setting myself up for going to Ashley's and having unlimited wine the night before I left for the trip. And knew that the night would not end there. Ben Teacher was great though and kept telling me that it was going to be alright so I went with it. From Ashley's we went to noraebang and sung the night away. It was a great time especially since we sang some Christmas songs! Since Hayley, Chuck and I all live on the same street, we grabbed a taxi together. Getting a taxi here isn't always very easy. The taxi's all originate from a certain city and usually will not go outside of their own city. So it was a bit troublesome to find a taxi. The license plates have numbers on them so you know where the taxi is from - 65 is Suji, my area and none were to be found. Eventually we got a taxi to take us though and I was home by 2am. Knowing that I had to be up in five hours, and still needed to shower and pack was a little rough but it was worth it.
Saturday morning I got up and headed out the door. I was the second person to arrive at the subway station where the pick up spot was and started chatting with the other girl there, Sierra who is from Ontario. Her friend Ashley, also from Ontario came shortly after and we chatted until the bus came. It's awesome when you go on these trips and how easy it is to make instant friends. When we got on the bus I noticed a girl sitting by herself so I made a comment about how we were the only singles on the trip and of course an instant bond was formed. Then an even stronger one formed when I learned she is from Trail, BC, and that I have been to Trail and we both know some of the same people. Such a small world, even this far away. Her name is Michelle. So the four of us Canadians were best friends for the weekend.
We arrived at the temple a bit early, so we were able to go our own way in the village and grab lunch. The four of us opted for some bibimbap and the lovely lady at the restaurant gave us tofu soup as service. I love service. If I haven't mentioned before, it's when a place gives you things for free. Afterwards everyone met at the temple gates. I think there was about fifteen of us maybe? Apparently a huge group cancelled the night before but I enjoyed the size of our group. It was mostly teachers but there was one couple from Poland, the husband works at Samsung. There are so many people here in Korea who work for Samsung that get sent here through work from other countries. I feel like you are either a teacher or you work for Samsung (okay that's not true, I've met doctors and other people too but still).
We were welcomed at the temple and given temple clothes to change into. These are the clothes that monks in training where which was kind of cool.
We then had some free time so us girls explored the temple and took pictures.
Ashley, Me, Michelle (back) and Sierra
Gorgeous weather as you can tell.
We met up with our Adventure Korea guide, Dragon (literal translation from his Korean name) and we learned we would be starting with the bows! Before doing the temple stay, I had heard from my co-worker Sarah who did one before that you do 108 bows. It was time. Honestly it sounds awful but it was probably my favourite part of the trip. It was so relaxing regardless of how it sounds. Every time we bowed down we strung a bead on a string and made our own prayer necklaces that we got to keep too. The monk that did it with us (and hosted us for the weekend) was really cool and sweet too. We were told that we are not bowing to Buddha but bowing to ourselves. We were supposed to thank ourselves and reflect on our lives. I thanked myself 108 times that day. You were just supposed to focus on yourself. Afterwards (with another Korean group that was there for a temple stay too) we went around in a circle and introduced ourselves and had to say a rule for life. I said that people should let their soul be their guide. Here is a video of what the bow looks like standing to kneeling all the way down and back up.
After this we had dinner. Monks do not eat meat so it was rice with kimchi and other Korean style vegetables.We ate the same thing the next day for breakfast and lunch with little variation. When I got home Sunday night, I was excited to have some meat!
After dinner, we got to hear the monks drumming on this huge drum outside in the courtyard of the temple. Wow are they ever talented! Then we got to join them in one of the temple rooms and bowed some more while they chanted. It was very cool and was my second favourite part of the trip. We only stayed about ten minutes doing this with them then we were taken back to another building with our host Monk and we made paper lanterns in the shape of lotus flowers, Korea's national flower. The Korean lady sitting next to me was awesome in helping me do a good job of mine. She kept fixing my leaves and twisting them tighter and showed me what to do. When the lady taking pictures came by she didn't want to have her picture taken but in Korean I said No! and made her take a picture.
My lantern :)
My lantern lit up.
We got to choose the colour of our lanterns and afterwards when everyone was finished our Monk told us the significance of the colour we picked as this was supposed to be a reflection of our souls. As you can see, mine is very colourful which is supposed to mean that I think like a child which I can agree with to some extent. I am playful and silly, so I can see it. Yellow meant that you desire money, pink meant that you are passionate about something and purple meant you are creative. We all had a snack together then headed to our shared rooms, lights out was at 10pm and we were getting up at 3am the next day.
The four of us girls shared a room together and it felt like we were 13 again having a sleepover. So much talking and laughter and silliness, it was great - but got way too hot and stuffy in the room! Waking up at 3am was fine but it was so cold outside. We listened to the Monks drum again then bowed and listened to the chant in the temple room once more. From there we headed to another room and did meditation. We did a half hour of sitting meditation and a half hour of laying meditation, again we were supposed to focus on ourselves and our lives and where we want our lives to go. Keep in mind we were doing this at 4:30am so several people fell asleep unfortunately, but I don't blame them.
After breakfast we had free time until 7:30am, so I took a nap. Then we helped clean the temple grounds with these great brooms.
This was followed by tea time with our Monk. We were also able to ask her questions. This temple is one of the most famous temples in Korea. She started thinking about becoming a monk when she was 13 (I think). Monks get to choose which temple they would like to study and live at. We bowed 108 times because apparently we have 84,000 thoughts. This can be categorized into 108 thoughts which can be further categorized into 3 thoughts (impermanence, suffering and not-self ... I believe). So in the broken and lost translation that is why they bow 108 times. Also they get up at 3am because apparently all living things begin to wake up at 3am so they wake up with the rest of the living things. Or something like that. Again, things got lost in translation. Our monk was supposed to be able to speak English, but she couldn't, so our poor guide, Dragon had to translate everything the best he could. He did a great job, but a lot of stuff definitely got lost in translation.
After this we had more free time until lunch, some people went for a hike, others hung around. I went and watched the Monks prepare cabbage to make kimchi (right now is kimchi making season) then I went back to sleep as I wasn't feeling well. Being in a hot stuffy room, to frozen outside, and staying in a temple without soap did not help the small cold I already had.
I really enjoyed the weekend and am glad that I did the temple stay. I would like to do another one in the Spring as it really refreshed my mind. I would not recommend doing one in this cold season though! Here is a group shot of us holding our lanterns.
In other news ...
This weekend that is just ending was really really great. I had such a great weekend and am just going to leave it at that. I also had my second jimjilbang experience, but my first overnight jimjilbang experience.
We are also getting a new teacher at school tomorrow as Hayley is leaving. The new teacher, Laura arrived tonight. I over-napped and missed out on meeting her over dinner with three other co-workers but met up when they finished and walked her back to her hotel with them. It was a bit weird being on the other side of the table, as I still remember being in her shoes five months ago quite well.
I am also still trying to get over this cold that I have. Korea is a bit funny because everyone goes to the doctor so often. When I first had a cough weeks ago, my supervisor told me I should go see the doctor. Something I didn't and still don't think is necessary at all. I have a common cold, it is nothing I need a doctor for, just need to fight through it, eat and sleep well.
A good friend of mine is in the process of making some changes in his life and his blog posts have really made me consider rawness. Rawness: "unnaturally or painfully exposed". I am always in awe of his posts because they are always so raw and it's something that I appreciate. His latest post had me in tears. Like I expressed to him, it was as if he looked into my soul and was able to find words to the mess inside of me. "It was not until I moved cross-country that I became much more painfully aware of this longing for roots. Having the separation from the people, places and landscape that I know torn away, not only did I feel alone ... but also became very aware that I felt lost. That I felt like I had no home anymore. I had no familiarity in my life, nor did I have a place where I could feel comfortable and safe."
Rawness.
Change all of those verbs to the present tense and you too have looked inside of me.
I'm sorry but also not sorry.
I'm a few days shy of being in Korea for 20 weeks now. I still have really hard moments among the really good moments. While I generally keep this blog pretty fluffly (did I mention I have a hard time opening up?) I hope you too can appreciate rawness when given the opportunity to accept it.
Happy December everyone! It is officially the day where I would fully decorate for Christmas. Although I had already put up my tree here, I did get to open a few gifts from my sister that were Christmas decorations which was fun. She sent me window stickies, which I love, some lights, an advent calendar, a pumpkin candle and a small tree (which I will use in my classroom). My place is as Christmasy as it's going to get now and I'm happy to have some decorations in my place. Although today was overwhelming hard for me at the same time because this is always an exciting day that I look forward to and to spend it alone was sad. But I suppose this is only the beginning of it.
A few weekends ago, I visited Seoraksan. It is the third highest mountain in Korea and is park of one of the bigger national parks here. I went through a company called Adventure Korea and Chris decided to join me in the adventure as well. We started the Saturday morning bright and early at 6am got onto the bus then the subway to our pick up point. We ended up getting there quite early so we wandered around and bought the freshest bagels I have ever eaten from Paris Croissant. On the website where you sign up it showed that 29 seats were available for the trip - they must advertise elsewhere too though as there were three bus fulls of us, each bus fitting probably around 50 people. There was a good chunk of people going. What I find interesting about the chartered buses here is that they don't have toilets on them like they do back home, therefore are reliant on rest stops, which is not a bad thing, but I don't understand why it is.
The drive there was mostly relaxing, except the trip organizer on our bus decided to play ACDC at 8:30 while everyone was trying to sleep. Yet later when we were on the bus at 5pm they turned off the lights and did not play any music - what?! Before arriving at the park we stopped for lunch which was a bibimbap buffet (rice, with veggies and a spicy sauce with egg). It was good, but the restaurant that my co-workers and I usually go to for bibimbap near our school is much better! Here is a picture of me with my self made bibimbap.
There were two options for hiking when we got to Seoraksan - Ulsanbawi which is the longer hike and includes several stairs or Biryong Falls, which is easier and you get to see a waterfall. We opted to do Biryong Falls, but I would like to go back in the spring and hike Ulsanbawi. Here are some pictures from that part of the hike.
The park is gorgeous, and some of the trees still had their leaves which added to the beauty. It's supposed to be really beautiful during the peak of Fall when the leaves begin to change. When we first arrived we purchased tickets to take the cable car up to another part of the mountain, so we headed back and checked out a massive Buddha and a temple before getting on the cable car.
We climbed up to the top most part of this section of the mountain using rope and crevices for our footing.
As you can see from the pictures, the weather began to change during this second half but it didn't start to rain until we were in line for the cable car to go back down. The rest of the day was sunny and I wore my t-shirt for most of the time. We also played in the leaves.
This second half of the hike is called Geongumseong walking course, though it wasn't really a walking course. It started to get dark so everyone piled back onto the buses and we headed to our accommodations for the night - which were a lot nicer than expected! I figured we would be staying in a pension (a room with mats on the floor), but we stayed in a motel and Chris and I got to share a legitimate bed! I also had my first jjimjilbang experience. A jjimjilbang is a Korean public bathhouse, which are super popular here! They are cheap (under ten dollars) and you are given special clothes to wear while inside. We used the pools first. This consisted of a huge room filled with several different pools (there were at least six at the one we went to) and each pool is a different temperature. There were hot ones, moderate ones, cool ones, an outdoor one, one with minerals (looked like mud water). This room is segregated so it was female only, the men have their own on the other side of the building. This is because you go in completely naked! You get undressed, walk in, shower yourself then use the pools at your leisure. This was such a weird experience as you would never find something like this at home and it was especially weird as there were so many of us foreigners and we all just met. I got over though and enjoyed the hot pools and saunas. Afterwards we put on our special clothes and checked out the co-ed room, which is a big room with mats that you can sleep on, there is a big TV, and several smaller rooms that are different temperatures again. We didn't' stay in this area for too long as we had not eaten yet.
A small group of us girls that just met grabbed food at a restaurant nearby which only served Samgyeopsal (pork belly). Not my favourite, as you can imagine it's very fatty, but I ate some anyways as my body needed something after hiking during the day. Afterwards, Chris and I grabbed some snacks and chung-ha (a nice tasting rice wine) and went back to our room and watched Korea's Next Top Model before passing out.
We stayed in Osaek Valley which was about an hour away but still part of the national park. The next morning everyone headed out to walk and explore Heulimgol Valley - which was also very gorgeous and we had excellent weather again. Below is Chris and I with Dana, our new friend from Toronto. We also met and have kept in touch with a couple who lives nearby us. He is Indian/Korean and she is from Germany.
The water was so blue!!
For lunch we had a tofu soup, so yummy then headed back to Seoul. There was a lot of traffic and it took ages, we ended up getting out the bus and took the subway the rest of the way home. On a side note, I tried to like tofu so much back at home, cooked it different ways etc. And not, here, I love it, I even crave it sometimes! Tofu in soup is so good!
It was a really great weekend and nice to spend some time completely submersed in nature. I will be posting more pictures on Facebook, so check those out! Here is a group shot:
