Yay Hiking!

Hello..greetings from Korea! Since the last blog and going to Taiwan, we are definitely back in the swing of things at school. We are also now on our 3rd or 4th round of sicknesses. I had it last week and Jared has it this week. Hopefully this is it for being sick and our immune system keeps away everything else for the whole year.

School is okay.

Two weekends ago, our Korean friend took up hiking up the tallest mountain around here, called Munsu Mountain. It took us about 3.5 hours to get up (we did have a 9 and 11 year old with us), and it was beautiful from the top. We could see the ocean and the whole city very clearly. It was a nice, sunny day, although a bit cold when we stopped for breaks. On our way down, we took a shorter route and stopped at a mountain Buddist temple. We spent some time exploring, then headed all the way down for some delicious BBQ and Baskin Robbins!

The past weekend, with Jared being sick, I went hiking again with Eunmi (Korean freind) and the kids. We took a shorter way up, and stopped at the temple for lunch. It was another clear, much warmer day, and we had a great trip.

We are still enjoying the food and the weather has turned warmer now. I think we are past the really cold stuff.

Hope everything at home is super!

New Years in Taiwan!

So, as I said, Jared and I woke up on the Saturday after Christmas and decided to buy tickets to Tawain. We bought them online, took to train to Seoul, and flew out the next morning. The flight was only a couple hours long, and we arrived in Taipei before noon. My childhood friend from my cottage in Canada, Chris, lives in Taipei, and gave us directions to meet him at a temple in the city. After meeting him and Breadon, another cottage friend who was vising Chris from India, we ate a quick lunch at a revolving plate sushi place, and went back to his apartment with beers in hand. Chris and Breadon are part of a hash running club and it was a running/bash day. Breadon left to run, while we drank in preparation for the evening's bash. Around 430p, and feeling pretty good, we left for the bash where we met about 40 mostly guys from around the world, ate some delicious food, and drank more beers. The bash was followed by more bash at a neighboring restaurant, where chants and songs were sung...some more crude than others.

After a fun night in Taipai, we took a train down the east coast and went to a town called Hualien. It was a bit rainy and we found a nice hotel, went to a small night market, and came back to the hotel early for bed. We woke up early the next morning and were happy to find it was a beautiful, sunny, warm day. We rented a scooter and took it up into the mountains along a beautiful gorge. We got out to walk around a few times and check out the huge marble walls. We ended up riding up the mountain for about three hours until it got really cold, had a cup of coffee at a little shop, then came back down. It was a great day, followed by another night of walking around the town.

The next morning, we took another train ride further down the coast to a hot springs resort village called Chippen (Nothing is ever spelled the same in Taiwan, as there isn't an official way to Romanize words, so this place was spelled about 5 different ways...a little confusing). We hiked in a really cool park , although it was cloudy and the lookout wasn't what it promised, then we went back to our hotel which had natural hot springs...and it was hot! We soaked for awhile, while talking to a couple Taiwanse people who invited us to eat dinner with them. They were a group of 6 Canon workers who brought a grill with them and were making a big soup out on the patio next to the springs. Two of them spoke pretty good English; the rest, just a little bit. We had a good meal with them, followed by 3 courses of fruit, and rice cakes. We were very full by the time the food stopped coming.

After our relaxing evening, we decided to go back to Taipei the next day, as it was New Years Eve and we wanted to see the fireworks at the 101 (the second tallest building in the world). We made about 30-40 calls to hotels around Taipai trying to find a room, and finally found one for $90US a night. We took the 4 hours bus ride back up the coast and arrived in Taipai at 7pm. We spent 2 hours walking around looking for our hotel. We ended up making fools out of ourselves by going in a Family Mart and asking them where our hotel was....they looked it up on a map, called people, looked on the computer (for quite a long time), then finally walked outside with us...yeah, it was right next door. It was a pretty nice hotel with a huge hot tub. We ended up getting food and hanging around the hotel until almost 11:30p, before catching a cab downtown. It was completely packed...like thousands and thousands of people. The fireworks were amazing, but only lasted a few minutes. We walked around a bit, checked out some stores, then walked back to our hotel. It was nice to wake up not hungover on New Years Day...like really nice.

The next day, we found a cheaper hotel, which ended up being the best one we stayed in the whole trip. It was huge, with an awesome view of the river, the city, and the 101. We met up with Chris again, got some drinks, then met up with the "bashers" again. The night was over way too quickly, and was filled with way too many drinks. Somehow I woke up the next morning at 8, when we had planned to set the alarm, but drunkenly forgot to. We spent the next 14 hungover hours traveling back to our apartment in South Korea....By the time we got home, we had slept off the hangovers and were wide awake to watch movies...luckily we came home on Saturday evening, and had Sunday to fully recover and get our minds back into school.

We have now been back at school for 4 days, and besides the administration being totally disorganized and telling us today about a presentation we need to do with the kids tomorrow (that neither the kids or us know), it has been much better. I started some new disciplinary tactics that seem to be working, and I have been maintaining a positive attitude at most times.

This is super long, and if you're still reading this, that's very cool. I'll update again soon. Hope everyone is doing well...we miss you all very much! The holidays were not the same without family, friends, and snow.

Christmas in Korea!

Sorry I haven't written for such a long time. It's been on my do-to list, but have been quite busy recently. After finishing portfolio's, we had four days of school left before a 10 day, much needed break. The night before the last day of school, all of us foreign teachers had to dress up as Santa Claus and deliver presents to all of the kindergartners in our school. We were divided up to go with a Korean teacher and they drove us around to houses/apartments, and we walked around in our Santa suits, consisting of red pants, red jacket, black belt, gloves, a hat, and an itchy big white beard. We did the "Ho, ho, ho, Merry Christmas," gave them a present, then were off to the next house. It took over 3 hours, but it was pretty fun. Jared was voted the best Santa any of the Korean teachers have seen in the past 10 years of the school being open. He wore sunglasses and really got into it. Hopefully we can find pictures from somebody to post.

That last night of school, we had a teachers Christmas party. The owners of our school took us to a Chinese restaurant, where we had tons of food, and wine and beer. After a great dinner, full of maybe more drinking games then actual eating, we went out with the Korean teachers to another Noribong, a private karaoke room. There we continued to drink beer, but also added int strawberry soju. It was a fun night, but the next day was rough. If anyone has seen me int he past after mixing alcohol...yeah, I still haven't learned.

We finished school on Thursday and had some take out pizza as our Christmas Eve dinner. We then decided to give each other our presents...partly because I was getting a little anxious. We woke up the next morning and did the traditional present opening with the rest of the gifts from our family.

Saturday morning we woke up and decided to go on a trip. I spent all morning on the computer and phone and booked us a trip to Taiwan leaving the next morning. We jumped on the bus to Seoul, spent way too much money on the train, dinner and hotel, and left for Taiwan in the morning. I will write another blog about that experience in itself because it's getting late and I need to get some sleep before school tomorrow. I have realized teaching is about a million times harder to do when I'm tired. I think Jared thinks I'm lame since I'm so time conscious at night, but for me, it's a necessity. Goodnight all!

work, work, work

Not much has happened in the past couple weeks. We have portfolios due this Friday. I think I wrote about it before, but we have to have 10 pieces of graded work per student, plus a comment page, and a cover page. I have 10 of my 11 classes finished, and Jared has 8 of his 10 classes finished...but it did take ALL weekend to get where we are. We literally were working on them all day Saturday and Sunday, while watching movies of course. We are such nerds!

We are still trying to figure out where to go for Christmas. We have put it off so long that everything is super expensive now. We want to go to Thailand or Bali, but it is almost $1000 for the flight right now. We are waiting til last minute deals come, and hopefully the prices will drop, but we will see. I have emailed an English speaking travel agent in Korea, so maybe she will get back to us with good news. I want to do something fun. I feel like we deserve it. We have done very little besides be sick, and prepare work since we've been here.

Jared's Mom and Dad sent us a little battery operated light-up Christmas tree with some gifts today. And my Mom sent some more gifts (and some delicious thin mints!), so we have set up the tree with the gifts and it gives our room a little holiday feel...it's nice.

I really don't have much else to say. Gotta get back to work on my last class, then I can relax for a few days.

A bit of travel

Two weekends ago, Jared and I traveled to the original capital city of Korea, Gyeongju. We visited a park that had about 15 temples with gold Buddhas inside and people praying. It was pretty interesting to see. We then spent a day walking around a park that held tombs of old kings or important people. They were big mounds that were scattered all over the city, but there was a high concentration in one park we walked through. We then checked out a few other touristy things, like the oldest remaining star observatory in Asia, as well as another temple. It was a good, but a very cold weekend. We took tons of pictures and I will try to post some.

Last weekend we were planning on going hiking with a Korean friend, but I got very sick and spent all weekend (literally) in bed. It was horrible...it started Friday at school and by Monday morning, I was feeling healthy enough to go back to school (thank goodness). :)

This weekend, on Friday we went to dinner with another couple and a Korean friend. We had the most delicious BBQ, some mec-ju (beer), and soju (cheap alcohol). We went out to play pool after dinner and ended up having a great night. The next morning, the two other girls and I (Hannah and Kasham) made plans to go to a spa. We met at 10:30 and spent a few hours frolicking in hot tubs with about 50 naked Korean women. It was, at the very least, very interesting. We then got a massage from older women who were just wearing bras and underwear. It ended up to be more of a painful experience than anything. They out on these exfoliating gloves and rub your whole body right until til point of drawing blood. It was gross to see how much skin they rubbed off. They also did a rough face massage and packed our faces with this cucumber gel stuff. After the painful exfoliation, we got short massages from these women standing and walking and putting their knees into our backs. At times it was uncomfortable to be naked among all these people, but it is very common and normal here in Korea. I doubt I will get another "massage" again here, but I do feel clean now, and the tubs were pretty amazing.

After the spa, we met the boys (Jared and Daniel, who we work with), got Chinese food, and came to our house to watch Twilight. Hannah hadn't seen it yet and we all wanted to remember it before seeing New Moon that night. We spent a couple hours shopping before getting dinner (cheesy chicken spicy rice), then went to see New Moon. We all pretty much loved it, although Jared and Daniel were not as enthusiastic as us girls....

Today was filled with school work. We have portfolios for each student due in 2 weeks. We have to have 10 pieces of graded work, as well at a comment page, and cover sheet for each student. We have 12 classes with up to 13 kids in each class. Basically it's going to be a ton of work for us. I worked on them all day and added to the one I have finished already, I have four classes completed. Jared is about halfway finished with his first class. I think it may be a stressful two weeks.

Hope everyone is doing well. The weather is cold here now...maybe in the 40s, but we are missing the snow. Hopefully everyone is making up for us not being able to ski.

top 10 funny/interesting things we found in korea

These are things we have observed since we have been here:

10. While walking on the street, we often have kids stare at us and sometimes say hello...we have a few times had grown men walk up to us, say hello, then start giggling. We usually then say, "How are you?" and this brings on another hello and more giggling.

9. Our school (and the rest of Korea) is absolutely paranoid about the swine flu. They give everybody hand sanitizer in every class, as well as check all the students temperatures when they arrive at school and throughout the day. To check temperatures, they use the same ear thermometer for everyone...no changing the cover or anything. Then, they have a water machine with two cups, a pink and a blue. All the girls share the pink one, and all the boys share the blue one. That is over a hundred kids a day. It's hilarious! They are so worried about the outbreak of this flu, but they don't seem to realize germs are spread by spit. (and trust me, I have seen some kids sucking on the side of that cup, or drooling all over it...gross!)

8. Everywhere you look here, there are shops...small ones, but tons of them. And everything similar is grouped together. There are some parts of town that have literally 15 cell phone shops in a row, and half of them will be the same company. Then there are plant stores. There will be 10 of them next to each other, but you can't find any of them a mile down the road. The "thing" near us is towel shops. We must have 10 towel shops right next door to each other and all they do is sell towels...mostly small ones that say the date on it. We can't figure it out because they have tons and tons of them displayed outside their store, but we have never seen anyone buy any or anyone inside the store. I wonder what happens to the towels that have old dates on them...weird stuff!

7. We went out of town this past weekend and our bus driver, while driving a bus full of people, was casually reading a book while driving! Also, almost every taxi you get into here, has a tv/gps (but always set on tv) in their front window. Seems a bit distracting...plus, there is some crazy driving hat goes on here, although we haven't seen or heard any accidents yet.

6. Commonly, but most often at night, we see men walking arm in arm or hand in hand together. Sometimes they have had too much soju (they country's cheap alcohol), but sometimes their just being friendly. Even the older (and younger) boys in our school are very affectionate with each other.

5. During our third week here, we got new teachers at our school. The first night they were here, we all took them out to eat. Ally, of the new teachers, ordered a side of rice with our meat that we were cooking. As Ally is eating her rice, Daniel (another teacher who has been here 7 months), reaches over the table and takes a scoop of her rice and starts eating it. He didn't realize it until it was almost to his mouth, and then said, "oh, can I have a bite of your rice?" It is the only way people eat here. They share everything. Many meals are ordered to come out on one big plate and everyone eats of the plate. It's pretty cool, I think!

4. When we hail a cab, everyone gets in on the passenger side, even if you are already on the driver side. You need to walk around and get in on the other side. I don't know why-Korean culture. Also, cars here are not allowed to turn left, except at a stoplight. So if there is a side road on the left that you need to get to, you have to pass the road, then hang a u-turn and go back to the street to make a right on it. It seems to make driving in general more dangerous to me...people making u-turns all over the place.

3. There are no napkins or paper towels here. At most restaurants, you will either have a roll of toilet paper or individual style kleenex at your table. If a kids spills water or juice in class, they run and get toilet paper. If a kid vomits on the floor, they use toilet paper to clean it up (yes, I have seen this). Toilet paper is used for everything that a napkin or paper towel would be used for in the states.

2. The Korean language is very whiny, especially when women are speaking. Their sentences seem to always end in a drawn out whine tone. The word for "yes" is nay, but they, again especially women it seems, use a extremely whiny sound instead. It's something like "uuagnhh". So ALL THE TIME in conversation, you here this sound over and over again. In classrooms when kids are reading out loud, the teacher will use this sound to encourage them to keep reading...it's kindof annoying. Thankfully (yes, sarcasm) Jared has picked up this sound and often answers my questions with an "uuagnnhhgg" instead of a simple and polite (I think), "yes."

1. Actual quotes from school work turned in by kids:
Nick teacher was trying to teach sequence or consequence. A kids wrote,
1. I got angry.
2. So I punch my baby.
3. My baby is die.

Another teacher had a boy turn in a couple sentences about his best friend. The boy ended his paragraph with this:

"My best friend is Jack. I want to always be intimate with him."

Those are the things that I have found most interesting or funny while being here in Korea. We went out of town this past weekend, so I'll write about that soon, and hopefully get some pictures up!

We are still here...

Things are going a bit better since my last post. I (we) definitely have days that we hate being here, but most days are pretty good. Only one day this week did I think about quitting and going home to something more fun and easier. So that was better than last week. Maybe next week, I will enjoy every day.

Really, most of the kids are enjoyable. There are just those select few that ruin it for everyone else...but hey, it's like that everywhere in life, right?

I have finally finished "Into the woods," by Bill Bryson. I've been working on that book for months. I don't know why it took me so long to finish...I very much enjoyed it. It's very inspiring to go try to hike a long trail. Maybe part of the pct next summer...hmm... Now I have started and am deeply into the 4th Harry Potter book. I decided to read the series a couple summers ago and have been reading other books into between each book. They seem to have picked up recently, so I doubt I'll be able to avoid the 5th after I finish this one. That doesn't make me nerdy, does it?

We didn't make it to a National Park last weekend because Jared got sick, and we were both too tired from work that we just sat inside all weekend and watched movies. Last night was a co-workers birthday and we all went out for dinner..cheesy, spicy rice cooked in the center of the table. It's pretty good. Today, we are going to go walking. I'm not sure where yet, but I know we need to start thinking about Christmas gifts, so maybe we will go shopping.

If anyone has a request from Korea, let me know. Apparently shipping is cheap from here to the states. And if anyone wants to send any Cheetos or something fun, we are always happy to accept gifts... :) jk

Our address, for those who have asked:

Kate Tomlinson/Jared Trine
877-6 Daldong, Namgu
Ulsan, South Korea 680-030

Hope everyone is staying warm. It's still nice-ish here. 50s and 60s.