Dear Korea..., Chuseok, Fireworks, & Zoo

Dear businessmen who sit next to me on the subway,
        I know why you smell. When you wake up in the morning and go to work please do not stop at the track to work out in your business clothes. You sweat out all the soju you were drinking until 4 am last night and your mexican shower does not hide it.


Dear writers of English signs, billboards, and English books,
        There are many foreigners living in Korea.  Many of us speak English as a native language and would be more than willing to help you write them correctly. A pool hall called "3 Balls" does not sound like a place you go to play billiards. When asking me for the time you do not need to say "What time is it now?" A simple "What time is it?" is fine. I know it's now, I won't tell you what time it was or what time it will be.


Dear small children and your parents at a restaurant,
        Small children please do not stare at me while I eat. We aren't at the zoo at feeding time.
        Mothers and fathers of the small children, please keep your kids at the dinner table.  Yes, you call them over, but while you are busy drinking they have left the table and have wandered back to mine and they are still staring at me. I know you called them back a second, third, and fourth time, but they have returned and they look hungry. However, I am not the one responsible for feeding them. While we are on the topic, please keep them at you table in general while at a nice restaurant. They should not be playing in the water fountain, crawling under my table with toys, or playing hide and seek.


Dear Restaurants,
        I am very thankful that whenever I visit you, no matter where I go, you offer a wet towel with which to wash my hands before I eat. I would like to point out that cleanliness does not need to go beyond that.  I do not need gloves to eat chicken fingers, hamburgers, or ribs. I accept when eating such foods that I may get a little messy, but I do have napkins and I am very capable of cleaning myself. I'll even wait for my ribs to cool off before stuffing my face, so the offering of insulated gloves inside of the plastic glove is appreciated, but very unnecessary.


Dear Baekseok Chef,
        The toilet next to the kitchen is not a garbage disposal and the fact that I know you are bringing kitchen utensils into the bathroom and using them to dispose food makes me want to vomit.


Dear Mrs. Kwon,
        Your schools sucks. I am not staying. Do not assume that I am because I would rather get a full body wax while lying on a bed of nails coated in salt and lemon juice.


Dear Cable Company,
        Why did you drop the discovery channel? It was the only channel offered in English.




It has been a very busy month for us.  Hooray! Now that it has started to get cold we no longer feel the need to hide in our apartment away from the sweltering heat. We met a very nice Canadian, who just happens to be named Monica (we will refer to her as Monica T.), that we have started spending a lot of time hanging out with. She has really helped us in finding fun things to do and making Korea not seem so bad.


On Sept 20, all of the kids at Monica's and my schools dressed up in the traditional style clothing, the hanbok, for Chuseok, Korean Thanksgiving.  Since Chuseok is one of the biggest holidays in Korea, we had a mini-vacation Tuesday-Sunday.  We decided to celebrate Chuseok by having a taco fiesta and inviting all of our foreign friends to join in.  It was more delicious than any Korean feast could have been.  Here are some pictures of our students all dressed up for Chuseok:

On Oct 9, we went into Seoul for an International Fireworks Festival.  There were fireworks from Korea, Japan, China, and Canada.  It was a lot of fun, but more crowded than we have ever seen.  We took the subway and finally got to see what a "subway pusher" is.  They are people who push more people onto the subway.  We were jammed into a subway car, so packed, that we could not even turn around.  For any of our readers that our claustrophobic, you would not have enjoyed this experience.  It took us 4 hours to get home it was so crowded, and we even decided to walk 3 miles in the opposite direction of the crowd to catch a different subway.  Here are a few pictures to prove just how busy it was.  The subway looked like it was vomiting up people. 

Last week, we went to the Seoul Zoo and had a lot of fun.  It was a pretty nice zoo, although Monica would like to add that it was nothing in comparison to the San Diego Zoo, but really, who can compete with that?  We watched the Dolphin show at the zoo, which was up to par with Sea World's show, except that we couldn't understand anything the trainers were saying because it was all in Korean.  :/  I made friends with a guanaco (cousin of the llama), but when I tried to pet it Monica freaked out at me because she was afraid I would get bitten.

This Friday, we had 2 of Monica's Korean teachers, Hannah and Chloe, along with Monica T. come over for another taco night.  Hannah and Chloe had never had tacos before so Kyle enjoyed making tacos and his homemade tortillas in order to broaden their food horizons.  We played card games and had a really good night.

We've been continuing to work on our TESOL and are more than 1/2 way done!!!  We have also started using and been enjoying the sam-gap-sao grill we inherited from Kyle's ex co-worker, Jordan, after he quit.  It makes for a very tasty dinner and now we can cook in the luxury of our apartment instead of having to go out to eat.

New news on the krazy Kwon front:

Kwon has finally sold my school.  For real this time.  The other Korean teachers, 95% of my students, and I are moving to Monica's school starting in Nov.  We are interested to see how this works since Monica's students are much farther behind than my students and we're not sure if she is going to try and integrate the classes or keep my school as a separate entity within the Baekseok school.  We will let you all know how that works out once it has taken place.

Monica and I are looking forward to this week since our schools are having Halloween parties on Friday.  Monica has planned an entire week of Halloween activities for her 5 year olds so look forward to our next post after Halloween!  Hope all is well with you!  We miss you & love you!  M & K

M:  132 days!  Only 95 actual work days!